Jeff Sharlet (1942–1969), a Vietnam veteran, was a leader of the GI resistance movement during the

Vietnam War The Vietnam War (also known by #Names, other names) was a conflict in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. It was the second of the Indochina Wars and was officially fought between North Vie ...

and the founding editor of ''Vietnam GI''.

David Cortright David Cortright is an American scholar and peace activist. He is Director of Policy Studies at the Kroc Institute for International Peace Studies at the University of Notre Dame and chair of the Board of the Fourth Freedom Forum.

Biography

Early life

Sharlet was born and raised in

Glens Falls, New York Glens Falls is a city in Warren County, New York, United States and is the central city of the Glens Falls Metropolitan Statistical Area. The population was 14,700 at the 2010 census. The name was given by Colonel Johannes Glen, the falls refe ...

, a small town in the foothills of the Adirondacks, and later in the state capital of Albany. In 1960 he graduated from

The Albany Academy The Albany Academy is an independent college preparatory day school for boys in Albany, New York, USA, enrolling students from Preschool (age 3) to Grade 12. It was established in 1813 by a charter signed by Mayor Philip Schuyler Van Rensselae ...

, a private military academy.

Military training and assignment: Philippines

Restless during his first year of college, Sharlet withdrew and decided to fulfill his military obligation. In return for a three-year enlistment in the

United States Army Security Agency The United States Army Security Agency (ASA) was the United States Army's signals intelligence branch from 1945 to 1976. The Latin motto of the Army Security Agency was ''Semper Vigiles'' (Vigilant Always), which echoes the declaration, often ...

(ASA), a communications intelligence outfit, he was promised a year's training in a Slavic language followed by a European posting. But at the

Army Language School The Defense Language Institute (DLI) is a United States Department of Defense (DoD) educational and research institution consisting of two separate entities which provide linguistic and cultural instruction to the Department of Defense, other f ...

he was bumped into the

Vietnamese language Vietnamese ( vi, tiếng Việt, links=no) is an Austroasiatic languages, Austroasiatic language originating from Vietnam where it is the national language, national and official language. Vietnamese is spoken natively by over 70 million people, ...

course. He and fellow students spent six hours a day in class over 11½ months. In early 1963 Sharlet was sent to

Clark Air Base Clark Air Base is a Philippine Air Force base on Luzon Island in the Philippines, located west of Angeles City, about northwest of Metro Manila. Clark Air Base was previously a United States military facility, operated by the U.S. Air Forc ...

in the

Philippines The Philippines (; fil, Pilipinas, links=no), officially the Republic of the Philippines ( fil, Republika ng Pilipinas, links=no), * bik, Republika kan Filipinas * ceb, Republika sa Pilipinas * cbk, República de Filipinas * hil, Republ ...

where he was assigned to the 9th ASA at Stotsenberg Field Station as a Vietnamese translator/interpreter. With a Top Secret/Cryptographic security clearance he and fellow linguists monitored

Vietnam People's Army Vietnam or Viet Nam ( vi, Việt Nam, ), officially the Socialist Republic of Vietnam,., group="n" is a country in Southeast Asia, at the eastern edge of mainland Southeast Asia, with an area of and population of 96 million, making i ...

radio communications.

Vietnam duty

In late August 1963 Sharlet and a small team of linguists were flown to Saigon on short notice and transferred to the Army Security Agency's 3rd Radio Research Unit, Davis Station, Tan Son Nhut Air Base outside the capital. The transfer occurred at the time of the secret US-backed coup planning by South Vietnamese generals against the Ngo Dinh Diem regime. From Davis Station, Sharlet and seven others were dispatched to Phú Lâm, a US Signals base, where they worked on a remote corner of the base apart from Army signals personnel. Each day's product was sent by heavily armed jeep down to Tan Son Nhut from where it was airlifted to Washington, D.C. for analysis at the

National Security Agency The National Security Agency (NSA) is a national-level intelligence agency of the United States Department of Defense, under the authority of the Director of National Intelligence (DNI). The NSA is responsible for global monitoring, collecti ...

. Very shortly before the November 1 coup which overthrew Diem, Sharlet and the special team were pulled out and ordered back to

in the

. By then, as he later related to family, he was beginning to experience doubts about the U.S. mission in Vietnam. A few months later, Sharlet was shipped back to South Vietnam, this time on the eve of the

January 1964 South Vietnamese coup Before dawn on January 30, 1964, General Nguyễn Khánh ousted the military junta led by General Dương Văn Minh from the leadership of South Vietnam without firing a shot. It came less than three months after Minh's junta had themselves come ...

by General

Nguyen Khanh Nguyễn () is the most common Vietnamese surname. Outside of Vietnam, the surname is commonly rendered without diacritics as Nguyen. Nguyên (元）is a different word and surname. By some estimates 39 percent of Vietnamese people bear this s ...

against the junta on January 30. Following the quick success of the coup, Sharlet was reassigned north to Phu Bai Combat Base an Army Security Agency base south the

DMZ A demilitarized zone (DMZ or DZ) is an area in which treaties or agreements between nations, military powers or contending groups forbid military installations, activities, or personnel. A DZ often lies along an established frontier or bounda ...

. There he was attached to Detachment J, a branch of the 3rd Radio Research Unit providing communications support for commando operations in North Vietnam. Sharlet was also seconded to a nearby Marine intelligence unit for Long Range Reconnaissance Patrols. By the time he finished his Vietnam tour late May 1964, Sharlet had seen enough

political corruption Political corruption is the use of powers by government officials or their network contacts for illegitimate private gain. Forms of corruption vary, but can include bribery, lobbying, extortion, cronyism, nepotism, parochialism, patronage, in ...

and military incompetence of the

Army of the Republic of Vietnam The Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN; ; french: Armée de la république du Viêt Nam) composed the ground forces of the Republic of Vietnam Military Forces, South Vietnamese military from its inception in 1955 to the Fall of Saigon in April ...

(ARVN), often compounded by exaggerated, upbeat reports by U.S. military advisors, to become thoroughly disillusioned with U.S. involvement in what he considered a Vietnamese civil war.

SDS days at Indiana University

Sharlet returned to college fall of 1964, re-entering

Indiana University Indiana University (IU) is a system of public universities in the U.S. state of Indiana. Campuses Indiana University has two core campuses, five regional campuses, and two regional centers under the administration of IUPUI. *Indiana Universit ...

(IU) in Bloomington where he majored in Political Science. In early 1965, the Vietnam War escalated with the launching of U.S. bombing raids against the North and the landing of

Marine Marine is an adjective meaning of or pertaining to the sea or ocean. Marine or marines may refer to: Ocean * Maritime (disambiguation) * Marine art * Marine biology * Marine debris * Marine habitats * Marine life * Marine pollution Military * ...

combat units in the South. By April, student protest against the war had begun to spread on U.S. campuses. At IU, early organizers of a chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) in 1965 included Bob and John Grove, Robin Hunter, Peter Montague, Karl North, Rick Ross, Bernella and David Satterfield, Jim Wallihan, and Sharlet. In the fall of 1965 Sharlet joined SDS, and during his following two years at IU participated in, helped organize, or co-led SDS demonstrations against campus visits by several prominent pro-Vietnam War speakers, including former Vice President

Richard Nixon Richard Milhous Nixon (January 9, 1913April 22, 1994) was the 37th president of the United States, serving from 1969 to 1974. A member of the Republican Party, he previously served as a representative and senator from California and was ...

General Maxwell Taylor Maxwell Davenport Taylor (August 26, 1901 – April 19, 1987) was a senior United States Army officer and diplomat of the mid-20th century. He served with distinction in World War II, most notably as commander of the 101st Airborne Division, ni ...

, General Lewis Blaine Hershey, and President Lyndon Baines Johnson when he spoke in nearby Indianapolis. On campus, he supported the protest against the arrest of two members of the leftist youth W.E.B. Du Bois Club, Bruce Klein and Allen Gurevitz. During his tenure as SDS co-chairman Spring term 1967, with the help of Bob Tennyson, Sharlet took public issue with IU President Elvis Jacob Stahr, Jr., a former Secretary of the Army, over his criticism of the

New Left The New Left was a broad political movement mainly in the 1960s and 1970s consisting of activists in the Western world who campaigned for a broad range of social issues such as civil and political rights, environmentalism, feminism, gay rights, g ...

and later played a significant role in getting SDS activist Guy Loftman elected IU student body president. Sharlet won a Woodrow Wilson Graduate Fellowship which he chose to use at

University of Chicago The University of Chicago (UChicago, Chicago, U of C, or UChi) is a private research university in Chicago, Illinois. Its main campus is located in Chicago's Hyde Park neighborhood. The University of Chicago is consistently ranked among the b ...

in its Political Science PhD program beginning fall 1967.

Chicago and 'Vietnam GI'

During his IU years Sharlet had pondered the question of how to give voice to opposition to the war which he knew existed among many Vietnam GIs. In the summer of 1967 he went to New York City where he met fellow ex-Vietnam GI Jan Barry Crumb and joined his fledgling organization,

Vietnam Veterans Against the War Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is an American tax-exempt non-profit organization and corporation founded in 1967 to oppose the United States policy and participation in the Vietnam War. VVAW says it is a national veterans' organization ...

(VVAW). Returning to Chicago Sharlet began graduate work, but by the end of the Fall term decided to withdraw to resume his anti-war work full-time. Using his Woodrow Wilson Fellowship funds, Sharlet launched the first GI-run anti-war paper addressed to GIs, calling it '' Vietnam GI'' (''VGI''). The first issue was dated January, 1968. His associate editor was David Komatsu, and the editorial board of ex-Vietnam GIs included Jan Barry, oseph Carey William Harris, Peter Martinsen, Dink McCarter, James Pidgeon,

Gary Rader Gary Eugene Rader (January 14, 1944 – November 1973) was an American Army Reservist known for burning his draft card in protest of the Vietnam War, while wearing his U.S. Army Special Forces uniform. Afterward, he engaged in anti-war acti ...

, Francis Rocks, David Tuck, and James Zaleski. A civilian

conscientious objector A conscientious objector (often shortened to conchie) is an "individual who has claimed the right to refuse to perform military service" on the grounds of freedom of thought, conscience, or religion. The term has also been extended to object ...

, Thomas Barton, served as VGI's East Coast distributor and was responsible for unobtrusively shipping bundles of the paper to Vietnam. ''Vietnam GI'' quickly became a success among GIs stateside and in Vietnam where soldiers like Terry DeMott, a helicopter door gunner in the Americal Division stationed near Chu Lai, and a number of sympathetic unit mail clerks helped circulate the paper surreptitiously. It was free to GIs, and requests for individual subscriptions as well as multiple copies for distribution in stateside barracks and Vietnam combat units soared, with the print run reaching 30,000 copies by fall 1968. Letters-to-the editor indicated that single copies passed through many hands. In August a separate "Stateside" edition of ''VGI'' was launched. Between issues, Sharlet worked wealthy liberal circles on both coasts for contributions to support production costs.

Barbara Garson Barbara Garson (born July 7, 1941, Brooklyn) is an American playwright, author and social activist, perhaps best known for the play '' MacBird!'' Education and personal life Garson attended the University of California, Berkeley, where she e ...

, author of ''MacBird'', a widely performed anti-war play of the late 1960s, was an especially helpful West Coast contact. While traveling, Sharlet kept in touch with civilian activists running GI coffee houses outside major bases, including Judy Olasov at Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri; Larry Langowski at Fort Sill, Oklahoma; and Donna Mickleson, national coordinator of the coffee house movement based in the San Francisco Bay area, as well as draft resistance groups which distributed ''Vietnam GI'' at induction centers, including CADRE (Chicago Area Draft Resisters) and the Boston Draft Resistance Group in New England, which not only helped by having the paper printed in Boston but also by shipping copies into Vietnam and distributing it throughout New England. In late 1968 Sharlet visited the Oleo Strut, the highly activist GI coffee house, and nearby Fort Hood in Killeen, Texas. Run by Josh Gould and Janet "Jay" Lockard, it was associated with the strike of the "Fort Hood 43," Black troops who refused riot duty at the August

1968 Democratic National Convention The 1968 Democratic National Convention was held August 26–29 at the International Amphitheatre in Chicago, Illinois, United States. Earlier that year incumbent President Lyndon B. Johnson had announced he would not seek reelection, thus making ...

in Chicago. Sharlet also represented the burgeoning GI anti-war movement at conferences in Japan and in Sweden where he worked with the theologians Harvey Cox,

Michael Novak Michael John Novak Jr. (September 9, 1933 – February 17, 2017) was an American Catholic philosopher, journalist, novelist, and diplomat. The author of more than forty books on the philosophy and theology of culture, Novak is most widely known ...

, and the late Richard John Neuhaus

Illness and death

The success of ''Vietnam GI'' and the growing GI protest against the war led to national media coverage for Sharlet and the paper in ''Esquire'', ''New York Times'', and on NBC Nightly Television News as well as the AP and NEA newswire services. In early 1969 a problem first experienced in Vietnam resurfaced, and he underwent surgery for kidney cancer. As David Komatsu wrote in ''Vietnam GI'', "From there it was steadily downhill all the way. At the end, he said he had many new ideas for our fight, but was just too exhausted to talk about them." Sharlet died on June 16, 1969, age 27.

Posthumous recognition

Sharlet's work as a founder of the GI protest movement was eulogized in the underground press throughout the country, including ''The Movement'', ''Veterans Stars & Stripes for Peace'', ''Guardian'', and ''The Old Mole'' of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

David Dellinger David T. Dellinger (August 22, 1915 – May 25, 2004) was an American pacifist and an activist for nonviolent social change. He achieved peak prominence as one of the Chicago Seven, who were put on trial in 1969. Early life and schooling Dellin ...

with Barbara Webster published a long remembrance of Sharlet for the magazine ''Liberation''. A new GI underground paper, ''Next Step'', published in

Heidelberg Heidelberg (; Palatine German language, Palatine German: ''Heidlberg'') is a city in the States of Germany, German state of Baden-Württemberg, situated on the river Neckar in south-west Germany. As of the 2016 census, its population was 159,914 ...

, then

West Germany West Germany is the colloquial term used to indicate the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG; german: Bundesrepublik Deutschland , BRD) between its formation on 23 May 1949 and the German reunification through the accession of East Germany on 3 O ...

, was dedicated to him, while Fred Gardner, in the definitive account of the 1968 Presidio Mutiny 27, ''The Unlawful Concert'' (1970), dedicated his book to "Jeff Sharlet, founder of Vietnam GI, dead at 27." During past decades a number of scholars of the Vietnam anti-war movement have written about Sharlet and ''Vietnam GI'' in books and journals, including in recent years Andrew E. Hunt, ''The Turning: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Against the War'' (1999); David Cortright, ''Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War'' (reissued 2005); Bob Ostertag, ''People's Movements/People's Press'' (2006); and a new middle school text, ''The American Journey: Modern Times'' (2009). Most recently, in 2012, the ''Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award'', the first literary prize for military veterans, was inaugurated at the University of Iowa. The most dramatic tribute has been the award-winning documentary, ''Sir! No Sir!'' (2005), on the Vietnam GI anti-war movement screened in theaters across the country and recently shown on Sundance Channel, co-dedicated to Sharlet, as the director David Zeiger put it, "for starting it all."In the late 1960s

David Zeiger David Zeiger is an American film director, writer and producer. He is most well known for the documentary ''Sir! No Sir!'' (2005), which is the only full-length film chronicling the extensive antiwar and resistance activity of U.S. troops durin ...

had been a civilian volunteer at the Oleo Strut, the GI coffee house near Fort Hood, Texas. For his filmography as a writer/director, see David Zeiger-Moviefone.

Notes

References

*Bibby, Michael. ''Hearts and Minds: Bodies, Poetry and Resistance in the Vietnam Era''. Rutgers University Press, 1996. . *Brigham, Robert K. ''ARVN: Life and Death in the South Vietnamese Army''. University Press of Kansas, 2006. . *Cortright, David. ''Soldiers in Revolt: GI Resistance During the Vietnam War''. Anchor/Doubleday, 1975; reissued Haymarket Books, 2005. . *Dommen, Arthur J. ''The Indochinese Experience of the French and the Americans''. Indiana University Press, 2001. . *Duncombe, Stephen. ''Notes from the Underground: Zines and the Politics of Alternate Culture''. Verso, 1997. . *Foley, Michael S. ''Confronting the War Machine: Draft Resistance During the Vietnam War''. University of North Carolina Press, 2003. . *Franklin, H. Bruce. ''Vietnam and Other Fantasies''.

University of Massachusetts Press The University of Massachusetts Press is a university press that is part of the University of Massachusetts Amherst. The press was founded in 1963, publishing scholarly books and non-fiction. The press imprint is overseen by an interdisciplinar ...

, 2000. . *Freeman, Jo, ''At Berkeley in the Sixties''. Indiana University Press, 2004. . *Gardner, Fred. ''The Unlawful Concert: An Account of the Presidio Mutiny Case''. Viking, 1970. . *Geier, Joel. "Vietnam: The Soldier's Revolt", ''International Socialist Review'', no. 9, August–September, 2000 at http://www.isreview.org/issues/09/soldiers_revolt.shtml]. *Glessing, Robert J. ''The Underground Press in America''. Indiana University Press, 1970. . *Grant, Zalen. ''Facing the Phoenix''. Norton, 1991. . *Halberstam, David. ''The Making of a Quagmire''. Random House, 1965. . *Halstead, Fred. ''Out Now! A Participant's Account of the American Movement Against the Vietnam War''. Monad Press, 1978. . * *Lewes, James. ''Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers During the Vietnam War''. Praeger, 2003. . *Lewy, Guenter. ''America in Vietnam''. Oxford University Press, 1978. . *Moser, Robert R. ''The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era''. Rutgers University Press, 1996. . *Nicosia, Gerald. ''Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans Movement''. Crown, 2001.. *Ostertag, Bob. ''People's Movements/People's Press''. Beacon Press, 2006. . *''Pentagon Papers: As Published by the New York Times''. Bantam Books, 1971. . *Prados, John. ''The White House Tapes: Eavesdropping on the President – A Book and CD Set''. New Press/Norton, 2003. . *Rinaldi, Matthew. "The Olive-Drab Rebels: Military Organizing During the Vietnam War", ''Radical America'', vol. 8, no. 3, 1974, pp. 17–52 at http://dl.lib.brown.edu/pdfs/1124977588835950.pdf. *Sheehan, Neil. ''A Bright Shining Lie: John Paul Vann and America in Vietnam''. Random House, 1988. . *Wynkoop, Mary Ann. ''Dissent in the Heartland: The Sixties at Indiana University''. Indiana University Press, 2002. . *Zeiger, David, writer/director. ''Sir! No Sir! The Suppressed Story of the GI Movement to End the War in Vietnam''. DVD, 84 mins. + extras. Displaced Films, New Video Group, 2006.

External links and sources

Vietnam GI resistance online archives

Vietnam War online archives

ASA history

ASA Davis Station, Saigon

Sixties Project

Jeff Sharlet and Vietnam GI Web site

Details of the Jeff Sharlet Memorial Award at the University of Iowa
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sharlet, Jeff 1942 births 1969 deaths People from Glens Falls, New York United States Army soldiers American anti–Vietnam War activists United States Army personnel of the Vietnam War Defense Language Institute alumni Activists from New York (state) The Albany Academy alumni Deaths from kidney cancer Deaths from cancer in the United States