The Death of Sgt. Van Dale Todd
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Are Iraq veterans going to be treated the way Vietnam veterans were? <!--break--> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Thirty two years ago, near the end of the War in Vietnam, I was living in San Francisco, and my close friend, ex-Sgt. Van Dale Todd, a combat veteran of the 101<sup>st</sup> Airborne, lived in a another apartment of the same building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was an old Victorian house out on 29<sup>th</sup> Street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sometimes Van would take a notion to hit the wall which separated our apartments with his fist and shout, "Who the fuck would join the Marine Corps?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I'd yell back, "Airborne sucks!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"The Marine Corps sucks!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Only two things come out of the sky," I'd yell back again, "Bird shit and fools!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was how we said good morning to each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was our ritualized greeting.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">We were both active in a veterans antiwar group, and the two of us used to get together almost every day and talk about the war, politics and other things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told me about his experiences in "Nam," the killing he'd seen and participated in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Although I'd spent four years in the USMC, that was before Vietnam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So while we both opposed the war and shared similar opinions on it, Van often reminded me that he was the one who'd been there and experienced it. "You weren't in Nam," he'd often say, "You're coming from a philosophical point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You don't know what it's like to see your buddies die in front of you."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It seemed to be Van's one-upmanship, or at least that's the way I took it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>People who've been through a certain experience sometimes insist that they have a special claim on knowledge and understanding of the subject.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">One night at around midnight he came to my place and pounded on the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I've got something to show you!" he shouted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I opened the door I could see he was terribly upset, apparently in a violent mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He demanded that I go with him to his apartment and see whatever it was that he wanted to show me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As soon as we went in, he took out a bottle of bright red pills and swallowed all of them in front of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I killed seven people in Nam," he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He'd told me that before, but this time he added, "I can't live with it any more!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He also told me once again, as he had so many times before, "You don't know what it's like to see your buddies die."</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I told him to sit down and take it easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Within minutes he had passed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I went for help and got him to a hospital where he died a week later without ever regaining consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I later learned that the red pills he'd overdosed on were Seconal, which is a type of sleeping pill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>People also told me, "When somebody O.D.s on downers, you never want to let them sit down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You gotta keep them walking."</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van had once believed in the war, and he was a guy who fought for what he believed in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He enlisted in the Army, volunteered for Vietnam, asked to be assigned to the airborne infantry -- and got it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And when his year in Nam was up, he asked for another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In all he spent seventeen months in combat with the 101<sup>st</sup> Airborne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was back in 1969 and 1970.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>After returning from Vietnam, however, Van began to have second thoughts about the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He took part in peace marches, and on April 17<sup>th</sup>, 1972, he and I were part of a group of sixteen ex-GIs who occupied an Air Force recruiting office in San Francisco to protest the war.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Nevertheless, Van was not really political, or maybe I should say he wasn't much given to theories or philosophical speculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead of looking at what U.S. corporations were doing around the world, and how he'd been exploited into defending them, he blamed himself for what he'd done, and tormented himself for having "enjoyed" it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I loved combat," he used to say, shaking his head remorsefully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I was so sick I loved to kill."</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">By the time I'd met him, of course, he was no longer in love with war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In a diary we found after his death, he'd written: "Vietnam left me so alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why or how could I take the life of a human?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why was killing humans fun?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Can God forgive me?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It must have bothered him back in Vietnam, too, because he'd found refuge in drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I got this medal for killing two people," he'd say, showing me a bronze star, "and when I did it I was high on opium."</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van didn't want another G.I. sent to Nam because he knew that a person can come back traumatized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He said many times, "I don't want my little brother Sam, or anybody's little brother, to go and see what I saw or do what I did."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But as much as he hated the war, he still believed very deeply in something he called "America."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And in Van's "America," there was still something left of that romantic, mythical age when you could just walk into the White House and talk with the President and tell him the problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van saw public officials as people who listen -- which sometimes they do, but not quite as often as Van seemed to think.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I believe that's what his thinking was on April 17<sup>th</sup>, when sixteen of us occupied the Air Force recruiting office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>After three hours' occupation, Federal Marshals broke the door down and arrested us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We spent the night in jail and were bailed out the next day.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">On April 21, we went back to court for a preliminary appearance and got our first look at Judge Lloyd Burke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Judge Burke sat there, just leaning on his elbow and looking completely bored, like an old railroad engineer gazing at the scenery along the spur he's been chugging up and down for the last twenty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The charge was "disorderly conduct," and using the pretext that it was a "minor offense," the judge refused us a trial by jury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When our attorney pointed out that trial by jury was a Constitutional right, stated in the Sixth, Seventh and Fourteenth Amendments, Judge Burke just said, "Overruled," without even lifting his chin off his elbow, and then he set our trial dates.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">To Van, it was a pretty heavy shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>About all he could say when we got home was, "The Man [Judge Burke] just doesn't give a shit about us!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Did you expect him to?" I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"No-o-o," Van answered slowly, "I guess not."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And he just sat there for a long time with a vacant look in his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I tried to explain to him that this judge wasn't there to give us a fair trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Judge Burke's a cog of the war machine," I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"He was obviously assigned to our case for the purpose of putting some quasi-legal façade on a very dubious process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The reason for denying us a jury trial is that he wanted to find us guilty."</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Our group had done a similar action in December 1971, occupying the offices of the South Vietnamese Consulate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We'd been tried by a jury and acquitted at the end of a four-week trial in March 1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So this time the powers-that-be apparently distrusted the jury process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Perhaps Van understood my explanation, but he seemed unable to accept it.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Five of us, including Van and myself, went on trial a week later in the courtroom of a different judge, Judge Robert Schnake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This judge didn't lean on his elbow, but he did reaffirm the decision to deny us our Constitutional right to trial by jury, and then found us all guilty at the end of a two-hour session.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The irony of this process is compounded if one pauses to recall that trial by jury is one of the most fundamental American rights which Van and other GIs had supposedly fought to defend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Although it has often been wrongfully denied, as it was in our case, the right to trial by jury is an ancient principle of English and American law which existed before the U.S. Constitution was written, and even before the thirteen colonies were founded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><b><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></b></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Before sentencing we were each allowed to say a few words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van, wearing all his medals on his fatigue jacket, stood up and began: "I was a machine gunner . . ."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told of the horrors he'd seen and even committed himself, and of his buddies he'd seen die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told the judge that the government just had to stop sending American GIs to Vietnam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Judge Schnake nodded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He seemed to be listening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But he sentenced each of us to 30 days and fined us each $50.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We appealed it, and the way it eventually turned out, we paid the $50 but didn't go to jail.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Judges Burke and Schnake were both former prosecutors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As judges they did their job as functionaries of the system that sends American GIs abroad to kill or be killed in defense of U.S. corporate strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But to Van there was no such thing as a "system" -- just "America."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These judges represented the "America" he believed in, and the experience devastated him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>From then on, he acted like a person utterly lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He became so lonely that he dropped by my apartment five or ten times a day, sometimes even at one or two in the morning.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van had been known to smoke a joint before, and occasionally I'd seen him stoned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But after seeing these judges, he seemed to be stoned much more of the time, as well as drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'd never seen him inebriated before that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Two small glasses of wine had been his limit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But after the trial, he'd often put away half a gallon of wine in a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The overnight change in him was phenomenal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>His war memories bothered him more and more, and he'd talk about people he'd seen killed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Do you know what it's like to see your buddies die?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He'd keep saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And he told me of a woman he'd killed, and he'd say: "Do you know what it's like to kill a mother who's crying because her children are all dead?"</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">It was two weeks after our trial that he took the overdose of Seconal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We gave him a veteran's antiwar funeral, and veterans came from all over the Bay Area, almost everybody wearing military fatigue jackets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We buried him in his combat uniform with his service medals and his button which proclaimed him to be a member of VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>While five veterans and a woman carried out the coffin, everybody lined up in two rows and gave Van a clenched-fist salute.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">On returning home that afternoon, I went next door, into the vacant apartment where Van had lived until so recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Airborne sucks!" I called out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van's things were gone, and the place was empty now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was an emptiness that left room for my voice to echo back and forth between the walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I tried again, louder than before, "Only two things come out of the sky!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Again, there was an echo, a louder echo of course, but still only of my own voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was followed by the creaking of wooden floorboards under my feet in this old Victorian house.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">That was 32 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Today our soldiers are fighting in Iraq, and since last fall there have been reports of GI suicides over there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>An article in the November 23, 2003 issue of the Oakland Tribune read: "Since April, the military says, at least 17 Americans -- 15 Army soldiers and two Marines -- have taken their own lives in Iraq. The true number is almost certainly higher. At least two dozen noncombat deaths, some of them possible suicides, are under investigation according to an AP review of Army casualty reports."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The situation was alarming enough that the U.S. military sent a mental health assessment team to Iraq to see what could be done to prevent suicides and to help troops better cope with anxiety and depression.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Although I'm glad to see that the military is making an effort, I think it is limited in what it can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The basic problem starts with the fact that American GIs are in Iraq, and memories of that experience are likely to be a lifelong affliction for some of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I should hardly need to point out that Van did not kill himself while he was in Vietnam; it was after he came home that he died, some two years afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If GIs are killing themselves already, it's a bad sign for the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It should be obvious that we have to get our troops home, out of Iraq.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">However, even pulling our troops out of Iraq wouldn't be quite enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van didn't kill himself only because of his traumatic memories; what really did him in was his discovery that something he believed he'd fought for wasn't real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When Van got his day in court, it was without a jury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He expected to be heard when he spoke on a subject he knew so well -- the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead, the judges made it graphically clear to him that he had no voice, and the commercial media also failed to relate any of his story or what happened to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As far as I can tell, his death was not even recorded as a statistic.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Since Americans across the political spectrum tend to respect GIs and veterans, the government and the commercial media often try to manipulate our feelings of obligation to serve their own purposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Support our troops," they tell us, when they're sending them out to be killed, injured, traumatized and subjected to poisonous substances.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">After the Vietnam War, veterans had all sorts of problems that the government was slow to deal with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Likewise after the First Gulf War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The same thing is likely to happen again because the people in power today are extremely unwilling to put money into any program that doesn't directly benefit some major corporation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Today's veterans can expect to see monuments constructed in their honor, but when this war is over and they speak out about real problems, they are likely to find that they have no more voice than Van did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Ironically, given our government's misuse of the armed forces and neglect of veterans, it may be left to the antiwar movement to defend these people's rights.</font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 1.5in 0pt 0in"><a href="http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/07/1687667.php"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><u><font color="#800080">http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/07/1687667.php</font></u></span></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><a href="http://www.artwithoutcredentials.com/peaceSign/"><u><font face="Times New Roman" color="#800080" size="3">http://www.artwithoutcredentials.com/peaceSign/</font></u></a></p><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <p /></font></font></p><p />
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safe_value (String, 24298 characters ) <p>Are Iraq veterans going to be treated the wa...
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<p>Are Iraq veterans going to be treated the way Vietnam veterans were?</p> <!--break--><p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Thirty two years ago, near the end of the War in Vietnam, I was living in San Francisco, and my close friend, ex-Sgt. Van Dale Todd, a combat veteran of the 101<sup>st</sup> Airborne, lived in a another apartment of the same building.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was an old Victorian house out on 29<sup>th</sup> Street.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Sometimes Van would take a notion to<br /> hit the wall which separated our apartments with his fist and shout, "Who the fuck would join the Marine Corps?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And I'd yell back, "Airborne sucks!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"The Marine Corps sucks!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Only two things come out of the sky," I'd yell back again, "Bird shit and fools!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was how we said good morning to each other.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was our ritualized greeting.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">We were both active in a veterans antiwar group, and the two of us used to get together almost every day and talk about the war, politics and other things.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told me about his experiences in "Nam," the killing he'd seen and participated in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Although I'd spent four years in the USMC, that was before Vietnam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So while we both opposed the war and shared similar opinions on it, Van often reminded me that he was the one who'd been there and experienced it. "You weren't in Nam," he'd often say, "You're coming from a philosophical point of view.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You don't know what it's like to see your buddies die in front of you."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It seemed to be Van's one-upmanship, or at least that's the way I took it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>People who've been through a certain experience sometimes insist that they have a special claim on knowledge and understanding of the subject.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">One night at around midnight he came to my place and pounded on the door.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I've got something to show you!" he shouted.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When I opened the door I could see he was terribly upset, apparently in a violent mood.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He demanded that I go with him to his apartment and see whatever it was that he wanted to show me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As soon as we went in, he took out a bottle of bright red pills and swallowed all of them in front of me.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I killed seven people in Nam," he said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He'd told me that before, but this time he added, "I can't live with it any more!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He also told me once again, as he had so many times before, "You don't know what it's like to see your buddies die."</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I told him to sit down and take it easy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Within minutes he had passed out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I went for help and got him to a hospital where he died a week later without ever regaining consciousness.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I later learned that the red pills he'd overdosed on were Seconal, which is a type of sleeping pill.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>People also told me, "When somebody O.D.s on downers, you never want to let them sit down.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>You gotta keep them walking."</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van had once believed in the war, and he was a guy who fought for what he believed in.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He enlisted in the Army, volunteered for Vietnam, asked to be assigned to the airborne infantry -- and got it all.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And when his year in Nam was up, he asked for another.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In all he spent seventeen months in combat with the 101<sup>st</sup> Airborne.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>That was back in 1969 and 1970.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>After returning from Vietnam, however, Van began to have second thoughts about the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He took part in peace marches, and on April 17<sup>th</sup>, 1972, he and I were part of a group of sixteen ex-GIs who occupied an Air Force recruiting office in San Francisco to protest the war.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Nevertheless, Van was not really political, or maybe I should say he wasn't much given to theories or philosophical speculation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead of looking at what U.S. corporations were doing around the world, and how he'd been exploited into defending them, he blamed himself for what he'd done, and tormented himself for having "enjoyed" it.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I loved combat," he used to say, shaking his head remorsefully.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I was so sick I loved to kill."</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">By the time I'd met him, of course, he was no longer in love with war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>In a diary we found after his death, he'd written: "Vietnam left me so alone.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why or how could I take the life of a human?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Why was killing humans fun?<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Can God forgive me?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It must have bothered him back in Vietnam, too, because he'd found refuge in drugs.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"I got this medal for killing two people," he'd say, showing me a bronze star, "and when I did it I was high on opium."</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van didn't want another G.I. sent to Nam because he knew that a person can come back traumatized.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He said many times, "I don't want my little brother Sam, or anybody's little brother, to go and see what I saw or do what I did."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But as much as he hated the war, he still believed very deeply in something he called "America."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And in Van's "America," there was still something left of that romantic, mythical age when you could just walk into the White House and talk with the President and tell him the problem.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van saw public officials as people who listen -- which sometimes they do, but not quite as often as Van seemed to think.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">I believe that's what his thinking was on April 17<sup>th</sup>, when sixteen of us occupied the Air Force recruiting office.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>After three hours' occupation, Federal Marshals broke the door down and arrested us.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We spent the night in jail and were bailed out the next day.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">On April 21, we went back to court for a preliminary appearance and got our first look at Judge Lloyd Burke.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Judge Burke sat there, just leaning on his elbow and looking completely bored, like an old railroad engineer gazing at the scenery along the spur he's been chugging up and down for the last twenty years.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The charge was "disorderly conduct," and using the pretext that it was a "minor offense," the judge refused us a trial by jury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When our attorney pointed out that trial by jury was a Constitutional right, stated in the Sixth, Seventh and Fourteenth Amendments, Judge Burke just said, "Overruled," without even lifting his chin off his elbow, and then he set our trial dates.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">To Van, it was a pretty heavy shock.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>About all he could say when we got home was, "The Man [Judge Burke] just doesn't give a shit about us!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Did you expect him to?" I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"No-o-o," Van answered slowly, "I guess not."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And he just sat there for a long time with a vacant look in his eyes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I tried to explain to him that this judge wasn't there to give us a fair trial.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Judge Burke's a cog of the war machine," I said.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"He was obviously assigned to our case for the purpose of putting some quasi-legal façade on a very dubious process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The reason for denying us a jury trial is that he wanted to find us guilty."</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Our group had done a similar action in December 1971, occupying the offices of the South Vietnamese Consulate.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We'd been tried by a jury and acquitted at the end of a four-week trial in March 1972.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>So this time the powers-that-be apparently distrusted the jury process.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Perhaps Van understood my explanation, but he seemed unable to accept it.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Five of us, including Van and myself, went on trial a week later in the courtroom of a different judge, Judge Robert Schnake.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>This judge didn't lean on his elbow, but he did reaffirm the decision to deny us our Constitutional right to trial by jury, and then found us all guilty at the end of a two-hour session.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">The irony of this process is compounded if one pauses to recall that trial by jury is one of the most fundamental American rights which Van and other GIs had supposedly fought to defend.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Although it has often been wrongfully denied, as it was in our case, the right to trial by jury is an ancient principle of English and American law which existed before the U.S. Constitution was written, and even before the thirteen colonies were founded.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It goes back to the Magna Carta of 1215 A.D.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><b><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></b></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Before sentencing we were each allowed to say a few words.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van, wearing all his medals on his fatigue jacket, stood up and began: "I was a machine gunner . . ."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told of the horrors he'd seen and even committed himself, and of his buddies he'd seen die.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He told the judge that the government just had to stop sending American GIs to Vietnam.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Judge Schnake nodded. <span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He seemed to be listening.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But he sentenced each of us to 30 days and fined us each $50.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We appealed it, and the way it eventually turned out, we paid the $50 but didn't go to jail.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Judges Burke and Schnake were both former prosecutors.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As judges they did their job as functionaries of the system that sends American GIs abroad to kill or be killed in defense of U.S. corporate strategy.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But to Van there was no such thing as a "system" -- just "America."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>These judges represented the "America" he believed in, and the experience devastated him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>From then on, he acted like a person utterly lost.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He became so lonely that he dropped by my apartment five or ten times a day, sometimes even at one or two in the morning.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Van had been known to smoke a joint before, and occasionally I'd seen him stoned.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But after seeing these judges, he seemed to be stoned much more of the time, as well as drunk.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I'd never seen him inebriated before that.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Two small glasses of wine had been his limit.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>But after the trial, he'd often put away half a gallon of wine in a day.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The overnight change in him was phenomenal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>His war memories bothered him more and more, and he'd talk about people he'd seen killed.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Do you know what it's like to see your buddies die?"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He'd keep saying.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>And he told me of a woman he'd killed, and he'd say: "Do you know what it's like to kill a mother who's crying because her children are all dead?"</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">It was two weeks after our trial that he took the overdose of Seconal.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We gave him a veteran's antiwar funeral, and veterans came from all over the Bay Area, almost everybody wearing military fatigue jackets.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>We buried him in his combat uniform with his service medals and his button which proclaimed him to be a member of VVAW (Vietnam Veterans Against the War).<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>While five veterans and a woman carried out the coffin, everybody lined up in two rows and gave Van a clenched-fist salute.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">On returning home that afternoon, I went next door, into the vacant apartment where Van had lived until so recently.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Airborne sucks!" I called out.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van's things were gone, and the place was empty now.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was an emptiness that left room for my voice to echo back and forth between the walls.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I tried again, louder than before, "Only two things come out of the sky!"<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Again, there was an echo, a louder echo of course, but still only of my own voice.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It was followed by the creaking of wooden floorboards under my feet in this old Victorian house.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">That was 32 years ago.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Today our soldiers are fighting in Iraq, and since last fall there have been reports of GI suicides over there.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>An article in the November 23, 2003 issue of the Oakland Tribune read: "Since April, the military says, at least 17 Americans -- 15 Army soldiers and two Marines -- have taken their own lives in Iraq. The true number is almost certainly higher. At least two dozen noncombat deaths, some of them possible suicides, are under investigation according to an AP review of Army casualty reports."<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The situation was alarming enough that the U.S. military sent a mental health assessment team to Iraq to see what could be done to prevent suicides and to help troops better cope with anxiety and depression.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Although I'm glad to see that the military is making an effort, I think it is limited in what it can do.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The basic problem starts with the fact that American GIs are in Iraq, and memories of that experience are likely to be a lifelong affliction for some of them.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>I should hardly need to point out that Van did not kill himself while he was in Vietnam; it was after he came home that he died, some two years afterwards.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>If GIs are killing themselves already, it's a bad sign for the future.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>It should be obvious that we have to get our troops home, out of Iraq.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">However, even pulling our troops out of Iraq wouldn't be quite enough.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Van didn't kill himself only because of his traumatic memories; what really did him in was his discovery that something he believed he'd fought for wasn't real.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>When Van got his day in court, it was without a jury.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>He expected to be heard when he spoke on a subject he knew so well -- the war.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Instead, the judges made it graphically clear to him that he had no voice, and the commercial media also failed to relate any of his story or what happened to him.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>As far as I can tell, his death was not even recorded as a statistic.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">Since Americans across the political spectrum tend to respect GIs and veterans, the government and the commercial media often try to manipulate our feelings of obligation to serve their own purposes.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>"Support our troops," they tell us, when they're sending them out to be killed, injured, traumatized and subjected to poisonous substances.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font face="Times New Roman" size="3">After the Vietnam War, veterans had all sorts of problems that the government was slow to deal with.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Likewise after the First Gulf War.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>The same thing is likely to happen again because the people in power today are extremely unwilling to put money into any program that doesn't directly benefit some major corporation.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Today's veterans can expect to see monuments constructed in their honor, but when this war is over and they speak out about real problems, they are likely to find that they have no more voice than Van did.<span style="mso-spacerun: yes"> </span>Ironically, given our government's misuse of the armed forces and neglect of veterans, it may be left to the antiwar movement to defend these people's rights.</font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 1.5in 0pt 0in"><a href="http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/07/1687667.php"><span style="FONT-SIZE: 10pt; FONT-FAMILY: Arial"><u><font color="#800080">http://www.indybay.org/news/2004/07/1687667.php</font></u></span></a><font face="Times New Roman" size="3"> </font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><a href="http://www.artwithoutcredentials.com/peaceSign/"><u><font face="Times New Roman" color="#800080" size="3">http://www.artwithoutcredentials.com/peaceSign/</font></u></a></p> <p class="MsoNormal" style="MARGIN: 0in 0in 0pt"><font size="3"><font face="Times New Roman"> <br /> <p></p></font></font></p> <p></p>
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