Introduction
On August 2011, the official count of US military (air force and army) bases in Germany was about forty-two. Bases close all the time, though no new ones are opening in Germany. Forty-three is a number within two or three of the exact figure. About forty-five to fifty years earlier, when my story of unsatisfied soldiers is going on, those that took what we used to call “French leave” from the military, often ended up literally in France, usually Paris. At that time, 1966-67, Germany was half as large as it is today, and there were almost twice as many US bases. In West Germany, the US was deploying against what it considered "the Soviet threat" or simply-- Communism. West Germany was an outpost of western civilization that must be defended. In East Germany, the Soviets were counter-deploying. Bonjour the Cold War. Germany had been divided into West and East. At the end of the Second World War, the United States and the Soviet Union had been frozen in their respective positions at the defeat of the German Nazi Army. Both sides could have gone even farther, the Americans east and the Russians west, to hear them tell, but out of the spirit of more or less cooperation then reigning between the various countries winning the war, both stopped in their tracks by mutual agreement. The armies stayed where they were until the Soviet Union imploded in 1991. Berlin, the former capital, was situated in East Germany but was divided between the western countries and the USSR. In June1948, the USSR tried to block Allied access to Berlin completely but the US and Britain organized a successful airlift for supplies, and in June 1949, the status quo was reestablished. Neither side wanted a war with the other, and the Cold War remained cold.
This past history is a short explanation of why American troops were in Germany, West Germany at that time. Story 1, Max’s Anti-Vietnam Network, is about the GI’s who were fed up with the army and walked away from it. It is told by two civilians. One is an American, June, and one a former US resident, Max. They go to Amsterdam to set up a network to help American deserters find their way from Germany to Paris, where anti-Vietnam civilians, both American and French, were trying to get asylum for them. The term deserters soon became resisters inside the army, nickname RITA. As long as a soldier did not openly declare that he was deserting, the military itself considered him as AWOL (absent without leave) for a maximum of thirty days. By then we hoped the soldiers we were helping would be somewhere safer than Paris, or that Paris would have become safer for them.
The RITA’s had found their way to Amsterdam all by themselves, but in Amsterdam the Dutch police turned any captured American soldiers back to the US military police, and the MP’s brought them back to Germany. Side comment: the deserters knew this, often harassed in the military and anyway bored to death in Germany, far from home and family if any, often figured a few free days in friendly A’dam, largely English speaking (even in Europe, more people knew English than Dutch), with friendly girls providing friendly hash, was worth a month in a military stockade. We thought we should use our superior knowledge of the terrain, and the political situation, to help them get out of there before they got picked up. Every deserter as one less soldier for Vietnam was our political motivation. It was a soldier's own decision whether or not he wanted to quit the army. Our Vietnam motivation was our own, and most escapees from the US military were not particularly anti-Vietnam (that was the expression—war was understood). In fact, rumor in the States had it that by volunteering for the military, a soldier would be sent to Germany instead of Vietnam, which was the fate of the draftees. As the war rolled on, units began to be sent from Germany and the soldiers felt cheated and consequently became anti-Vietnam. But the early deserters were usually “fufas” (fed up with the f—king army).
In 1967, when the opening story begins, France and all the other European countries, was in the turn-back mode of handing back any irregular US soldiers. A big factor in favor of France was that General De Gaulle had been head honcho since 1958. He had even changed the system of government from a purely parliamentary one to a presidential one, with himself as first president. One of his first acts on taking over had been to request all foreign armies, by which he meant the US, to take up their guns and tanks and other lethal toys and leave the sacred ground of France. I am perhaps adding the word sacred but that was part of his idea of France. Pragmatically, no general wants another army on his terrain, whether they are old war buddies or not. Any defending against the Soviet threat could be done as well, if not better, by the French army without any imports. De Gaulle was not at all cutting ties with his erstwhile allies, and France remained a principal pillar of NATO, but the US military left French soil. It was not worth angering their French ally for the privilege of supporting the military indefinitely in another country. The United States was already well entrenched with military bases in Italy, Spain, and, of course, West Germany. So were France and Britain in West Germany.
De Gaulle was not a supporter of Resistance Inside the Army, whether on base or off, but there were no US MP's in France which was a plus point. RITA’s or deserters, to use both our term and theirs, who fell afoul of the law for whatever reason, were taken in hand by the civilian French police and, as in other European countries, returned to non-sender. The French police called Germany and got in touch with the US military there, which sent an MP to pick up “their soldier.” So Paris was not safe either, but we felt there was more chance of getting US soldiers asylum in our adopted city than elsewhere, or at least having the right to demand asylum while the soldier in question was still on French soil. Anyway, if we found a good test case, we intended to give it a trial.
The network was Max’s creation. Max had been a refugee child in the States, gone to college, worked for the leftwing electricians union, and applied for first citizenship papers; in the early fifties, the McCarthy people had started inquiring about him. Figuring it was all up with his stay in North America, he went back to Europe and tells me, June, most of his story on the drive to Amsterdam. We had met in PACS, Paris American Committee to Stopwar. Quite a few PACS members had found themselves in Paris for displeasing the right-wing crackdown on liberals sponsored by President Harry Truman and enthusiastically pursued by Senator McCarthy. I forget his first name. Max once said, “If you remember their names, it shows they are human.” But most of PACS felt very leery about deserters: on the one hand, positive, after all they were Americans against the war, but PACS would have been happier if they had voiced anti-war sentiments like some draft resisters did, instead of getting involved in fights on the Boulevard Saint Michel Saturday nights, negative. “Let the French take care of them,” they said, meaning the French leftist groups that were helping with the deserters. But there were problems there, besides the language problem. The deserters were American and we were American, Max too if all things had been equal, and it was our war and our responsibility. So off we went to Amsterdam. Germany-Holland-Paris was the route the guys we met seemed to be taking. Paradoxically, when we got back to Paris, two young men found us in Paris: one had quit the military from Rome, the other directly from the States. But the guys still continued to arrive from the German bases, so the network was serving its purpose.
Max was unique among anti-Vietnam civilians because he believed in publicizing the young Americans who had quit the army: simply by letting them speak for themselves. Therefore, he contacted the New York Times, Life magazine, the Saturday Evening Post (of which only the first still survives), all wide-circulation media, and got the word out that under special conditions the GI’s in Paris could be interviewed. One of his principal motives was to destroy the myth that deserters were destitute, picking up cigarette butts in the gutter, desparate enough to become spies for Russia. Being interviewed was also good for the ex-soldiers’ morale. They were isolated in Paris, with no way of explaining to America why they did not regret quitting the army. America was their audience, not France. It was all very well to talk about Resistance Inside the Army, but how were you to resist from the Boulevard Saint Michel? Max realized it was good therapy for these young Americans to stand up for themselves, often before a hostile barrage of questions from the journalist: “Don’t you feel badly quitting the army, when your buddies are fighting with the Cong in Vietnam?” Buster, Baby B (according to Max’s alphabetization by the date of arrival in France) got very good at this verbal battering, “Why should I go kill people who’ve never done me nothing? I’ll go back free for nothing as soon as we get out of Vietnam.”
Despite his authoritarian ways, Max was very popular with the deserters, RITA’s, by late 1967, and certainly in May ’68. Perhaps because they knew he was protecting them. He was not authoritarian with them, but with the journalists. Which they liked. I have gone beyond the setting up of the network to give the reader the necessary background that made a network from Germany through Amsterdam to Paris a necessity to continue our support for “the guys quitting the army.” But the work was to take many unexpected twists and turns before it was through. One of the most important was our test case to get deserters asylum in Paris: how and why one of the guys took it upon himself to request legal asylum, eventually confronting the Paris legal authorities, and how it turned out. To learn about this, you will have to read the story.
This past history is a short explanation of why American troops were in Germany, West Germany at that time. Story 1, Max’s Anti-Vietnam Network, is about the GI’s who were fed up with the army and walked away from it. It is told by two civilians. One is an American, June, and one a former US resident, Max. They go to Amsterdam to set up a network to help American deserters find their way from Germany to Paris, where anti-Vietnam civilians, both American and French, were trying to get asylum for them. The term deserters soon became resisters inside the army, nickname RITA. As long as a soldier did not openly declare that he was deserting, the military itself considered him as AWOL (absent without leave) for a maximum of thirty days. By then we hoped the soldiers we were helping would be somewhere safer than Paris, or that Paris would have become safer for them.
The RITA’s had found their way to Amsterdam all by themselves, but in Amsterdam the Dutch police turned any captured American soldiers back to the US military police, and the MP’s brought them back to Germany. Side comment: the deserters knew this, often harassed in the military and anyway bored to death in Germany, far from home and family if any, often figured a few free days in friendly A’dam, largely English speaking (even in Europe, more people knew English than Dutch), with friendly girls providing friendly hash, was worth a month in a military stockade. We thought we should use our superior knowledge of the terrain, and the political situation, to help them get out of there before they got picked up. Every deserter as one less soldier for Vietnam was our political motivation. It was a soldier's own decision whether or not he wanted to quit the army. Our Vietnam motivation was our own, and most escapees from the US military were not particularly anti-Vietnam (that was the expression—war was understood). In fact, rumor in the States had it that by volunteering for the military, a soldier would be sent to Germany instead of Vietnam, which was the fate of the draftees. As the war rolled on, units began to be sent from Germany and the soldiers felt cheated and consequently became anti-Vietnam. But the early deserters were usually “fufas” (fed up with the f—king army).
In 1967, when the opening story begins, France and all the other European countries, was in the turn-back mode of handing back any irregular US soldiers. A big factor in favor of France was that General De Gaulle had been head honcho since 1958. He had even changed the system of government from a purely parliamentary one to a presidential one, with himself as first president. One of his first acts on taking over had been to request all foreign armies, by which he meant the US, to take up their guns and tanks and other lethal toys and leave the sacred ground of France. I am perhaps adding the word sacred but that was part of his idea of France. Pragmatically, no general wants another army on his terrain, whether they are old war buddies or not. Any defending against the Soviet threat could be done as well, if not better, by the French army without any imports. De Gaulle was not at all cutting ties with his erstwhile allies, and France remained a principal pillar of NATO, but the US military left French soil. It was not worth angering their French ally for the privilege of supporting the military indefinitely in another country. The United States was already well entrenched with military bases in Italy, Spain, and, of course, West Germany. So were France and Britain in West Germany.
De Gaulle was not a supporter of Resistance Inside the Army, whether on base or off, but there were no US MP's in France which was a plus point. RITA’s or deserters, to use both our term and theirs, who fell afoul of the law for whatever reason, were taken in hand by the civilian French police and, as in other European countries, returned to non-sender. The French police called Germany and got in touch with the US military there, which sent an MP to pick up “their soldier.” So Paris was not safe either, but we felt there was more chance of getting US soldiers asylum in our adopted city than elsewhere, or at least having the right to demand asylum while the soldier in question was still on French soil. Anyway, if we found a good test case, we intended to give it a trial.
The network was Max’s creation. Max had been a refugee child in the States, gone to college, worked for the leftwing electricians union, and applied for first citizenship papers; in the early fifties, the McCarthy people had started inquiring about him. Figuring it was all up with his stay in North America, he went back to Europe and tells me, June, most of his story on the drive to Amsterdam. We had met in PACS, Paris American Committee to Stopwar. Quite a few PACS members had found themselves in Paris for displeasing the right-wing crackdown on liberals sponsored by President Harry Truman and enthusiastically pursued by Senator McCarthy. I forget his first name. Max once said, “If you remember their names, it shows they are human.” But most of PACS felt very leery about deserters: on the one hand, positive, after all they were Americans against the war, but PACS would have been happier if they had voiced anti-war sentiments like some draft resisters did, instead of getting involved in fights on the Boulevard Saint Michel Saturday nights, negative. “Let the French take care of them,” they said, meaning the French leftist groups that were helping with the deserters. But there were problems there, besides the language problem. The deserters were American and we were American, Max too if all things had been equal, and it was our war and our responsibility. So off we went to Amsterdam. Germany-Holland-Paris was the route the guys we met seemed to be taking. Paradoxically, when we got back to Paris, two young men found us in Paris: one had quit the military from Rome, the other directly from the States. But the guys still continued to arrive from the German bases, so the network was serving its purpose.
Max was unique among anti-Vietnam civilians because he believed in publicizing the young Americans who had quit the army: simply by letting them speak for themselves. Therefore, he contacted the New York Times, Life magazine, the Saturday Evening Post (of which only the first still survives), all wide-circulation media, and got the word out that under special conditions the GI’s in Paris could be interviewed. One of his principal motives was to destroy the myth that deserters were destitute, picking up cigarette butts in the gutter, desparate enough to become spies for Russia. Being interviewed was also good for the ex-soldiers’ morale. They were isolated in Paris, with no way of explaining to America why they did not regret quitting the army. America was their audience, not France. It was all very well to talk about Resistance Inside the Army, but how were you to resist from the Boulevard Saint Michel? Max realized it was good therapy for these young Americans to stand up for themselves, often before a hostile barrage of questions from the journalist: “Don’t you feel badly quitting the army, when your buddies are fighting with the Cong in Vietnam?” Buster, Baby B (according to Max’s alphabetization by the date of arrival in France) got very good at this verbal battering, “Why should I go kill people who’ve never done me nothing? I’ll go back free for nothing as soon as we get out of Vietnam.”
Despite his authoritarian ways, Max was very popular with the deserters, RITA’s, by late 1967, and certainly in May ’68. Perhaps because they knew he was protecting them. He was not authoritarian with them, but with the journalists. Which they liked. I have gone beyond the setting up of the network to give the reader the necessary background that made a network from Germany through Amsterdam to Paris a necessity to continue our support for “the guys quitting the army.” But the work was to take many unexpected twists and turns before it was through. One of the most important was our test case to get deserters asylum in Paris: how and why one of the guys took it upon himself to request legal asylum, eventually confronting the Paris legal authorities, and how it turned out. To learn about this, you will have to read the story.
As a result of resistance by drafted americans, the Pentagon went with the "all volunteer army" and privatized military non-combat logistics through companies like Vice President Dick Cheney's "Halliburton Corporation", then came up with subsidized "private armies" like "Blackwater" and proxy armies like Saudi Arabia and Israel to do the fighting.
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