WE SAY NO TO YOUR WAR!
Song written and sung by The Covered Wagon Musicians active-duty Air
Force people Mountain Home AFB, Idaho
The Covered Wagon Musicians:
A1C John Carson
A1C Dave Davis
Sgt. Tom Derreck
Sgt. Patrick Henry
A1C George Herkert
A1C Al Kramer
A1C Joe Massaro
Carolyn Mugar
Vic Pacania
Airman Penny Rand
A1C Jim Schaffer
A1C Tom Spaulding
INTRODUCTION
The creativity unleashed by the GI movement is monumental. No doubt the Pentagon looks on in wonder and envy at the ability of this self-defining resistance movement to get people moving, giving their best to situations. But they'll never be able to manufacture or buy the "secret formula" because it is the antithesis of the
military mentality of an imperialist command.
When people know that they are acting in their own best interests, often for the first time in their lives, they can do seeming miracles. This is the source of strength from which all the great social and political revolutions have come, and from which the world-shaking changes necessary in our country will come. When at last people understand the source of their agony and alienation, their oppression and repression, they find ways to change things that were undreamed of before.
This is what happened at Mountain Home Air Force Base. Young people who came into the service as a last resort, from cities and towns all over America where life for them had become unbearable, through community and love, and understanding of both the big and the personal picture of what life in Imperialist America really means, found a way to live.
Many of the projects of anti-war military people scattered around the world have discovered such fountains of energy in themselves, but this is the first to produce its own recording of songs which have played an important part in their daily lives and struggles. We feel these songs and their spirit can play an important part in other movements, and this is why we have helped them realize the production of a record. Now that you have heard it, we hope you will help it get around, and let the people at Mountain Home know how you were affected by their music. You can write them, and subscribe to their paper, The Helping Hand, at Box 729, Mountain Home, Idaho 83547.
The Covered Wagon: Finding The Power To Affect Our
Destinies
Notes by Mark Lane
Mountain Home, Idaho, is a relatively obscure desert town with a population under seven thousand. It relies for sustenance on the Mountain Home Air Force Base (MHAFB), located ten miles away. Until the early '70s, the base was stocked with F-4 Phantom Jets, the workhorse of the air war in Indochina. Now the highly computerized F-111 has arrived, the one hailed by Robert MacNamara as the plane for wars of the future. Today it is on its way to Thailand. For the Air Force, the future is here.
During the spring of 1971. MHAFB celebrated Armed Forces Day. A few days later, a group of GIs, supported by a couple of civilians, brought the GI movement to the Air Force at Mountain Home. They called themselves "Covered Wagon," and their newspaper "Helping Hand," both Air Force security code phrases to be used when coming upon suspected sabotage. At these words, all men and women, GIs and officers, are required to unite in the face of a common enemy!
The first issue of Helping Hand published a picture of children playing on instruments of death at the base that Armed Forces Day,
with the caption, "Never again!" The Intermountain Observer, Idaho's statewide weekly paper, recently summed up the ensuing year's activity this way: "In 1971 as in previous years, Armed Forces Day was a big celebration at Mountain Home AFB. Crowds flocked to the base to pay tribute to the Air Force and inspect the latest gadgetry in aerial warfare. But by 1972 the crowds and the celebration took a different form. Rather than risk a confrontation with The Covered Wagon and its supporters, who had marched to the base and assembled outside its gates, the Air Force called off Armed Forces Day at Mountain Home. The decline and fall of Armed Forces Day has coincided with the birth and growth of the Wagon, a GI resistance movement here in Idaho which just marked its first anniversary. The Covered Wagon has had an impact in our state reaching far beyond the gates of Mountain Home Air Force Base."
Residents of the Northwest are well aware of events surrounding the development of the Covered Wagon as a presence here. Reactions have ranged from day-to-day help and unqualified support by some, letters of encouragement from Senator Frank Church (D-Idaho), all the way to the burning of the first coffeehouse. Last August, GIs and local friends marched 40 miles through the desert sun on the anniversary of Hiroshima, in a witness for peace. Jane Fonda, Dick Gregory, Donald Sutherland, Country Joe MacDonald and others made the journey to Mountain Home to support the project. In November, 1971, the old Mountain Home theatre, where the first coffeehouse had been opened the previous June, was burned to the ground "by arsonists" according to the Chief of Police.
Yet a few months later the Wagon, in a coalition for change which included Chicano farm workers, blacks and High School students, took over the Democratic Party nominating machinery in Elmore and Camas counties. The GI-led coalition elected four of the six delegates to the Idaho Democratic nominating convention. All four, pledged to George McGovern, were Covered Wagon activists who played leading roles at the state convention and participated in writing much of the platform on foreign policy, GI rights, sex and drug education in the public school system, and support for the farm workers' organizing. During the past year, hostility from some quarters toward the Wagon grew so intense that the local newspaper published letters urging physical attacks upon the Wagon and its members. A number of members were subsequently attacked, the doors and windows of the coffeehouse were smashed on 20 different occasions, a member of the City Council, speaking at a council meeting, voiced approval for the attackers, insisting they were "just doing their thing." My own life has been threatened more than 80 times by count. One minister prayed at a regular Sunday morning service for God to destroy the Covered Wagon. Later, as the Wagon burned, the minister hastily arranged for a special thanksgiving service. Not a single church has opened its doors to our members in Mountain Home, and some have literally slammed their doors in the faces of GIs.
Yet, Democratic candidates for Congress and US Senate have hit the Covered Wagon while touring, shaking hands and soliciting votes. The candidates know full well how rural Idaho views the local GI movement, but they also understand the growing power of the organized GIs at the base.
A few months after the Wagon was born, General William Westmoreland was honored at a dinner given by the Boise Chamber of Commerce at the Rodeway Inn. A careful reading of international law, the various treaties to which our country is signatory, and the judgment at Nuremburg, led us to the conclusion that the General should have been brought to trial as a war criminal rather than feted. We said so. The local sheriff was offended, and 9 of us, including GIs and Vietnam veterans, were unlawfully and brutally arrested. Some of us faced the possibility of a 1 1/2 year jail sentence, but a serious investigation by the
State Attorney General, assistance from a leading conservative lawyer, and the facts, freed us. The sheriff was defeated soundly the next time he ran for re-election.
While we were grateful to our civilian friends in Boise, a larger question persisted. Why had there been so few Boise residents present at the Rodeway Inn demonstration?
A little later, when the U.S. resumed underground nuclear testing at Amchitka, a group of Boise residents, led by a minister, a newspaper editor, students, the wife of the Attorney General, and others, organized an act of civil disobedience on Capitol Boulevard, the main street in town. GIs joined hands with Boiseans, who stopped traffic for fifteen minutes until the bomb was exploded in Alaska.
Covered Wagon members spent New Year's Eve huddled before a small charcoal fire in front of the main federal presence in Boise, the Post Office, to remind ourselves and others that people were still dying in Southeast Asia while our countrymen celebrated. We marched on the headquarters of Morrison-Knudson to call attention to the fact that their executives were responsible for the manufacture of the tiger cages being used in South Vietnam by Mr. Thieu. We joined women and children in a symbolic circle in front of the Post Office last summer, in support of those who surrounded the Capitol in Washington, D.C. to protest the continuance of the war.
In each of these actions, growing numbers of Boise residents participated. And when Dan Sudran of the United Farm Workers asked us, on less than 24 hours notice, to join a picket line in front of the State Capitol in protest of the restrictive farm-labor bill that had just become law, we arrived in such numbers that we constituted nearly half the demonstration! One of the GIs who traveled 40 miles to march had, only two months previously, referred to Chicanos as "spics," calling them welfare
chiselers who should be deported. And that, I believe, is the real story of the Covered Wagon. It is the story of men and women who have, by working with others, liberated themselves from the diseases of war, hatred, ignorance, racism and injustice, diseases that abound in epidemic proportions in our acquisitive society.
Three basic organizing tools made a significant difference in the Covered Wagon's development. They are:
1. The fact that a general membership meeting of the Wagon has taken place every week for more than a year, chaired by a different GI every week. All present may make motions, speak, and vote, and there are no rules for membership. Everyone present, including wives of GIs, high school students from the community, farm- workers, career officers dropping in out of curiosity, construction workers from an M-K road building project, even a local amiable drunk, is a member. And everyone present helps make policy for the Wagon.
2. The fact that our newspaper, Helping Hand, contains informative articles, valid analyses, good art work, and almost no rhetoric. We don't speak excessively of giving power to the people—we try to ac- complish it. The newspaper is a collective effort, edited by different GI's each month. In the process, scores of GIs have developed skills and confidence in their ability to express ideas.
3. The fact that the Covered Wagon's counseling service has made many hundreds of GIs aware of their rights. On numerous occasions the Base Commander has been forced to back down in the face of airmen armed with an understanding of the regulations. GIs have refused to accept
Article 15 punishment (non-judicial administrative actions) and demanded court martials, only to be acquitted later. The Base Commander has dismissed charges, rather than risk the loss of a court-martial attempt, in other cases.
Perhaps the most dramatic counseling stories are the day-to-day
counseling of applicants for discharge from the Air Force as conscientious objectors. The regulations for CO. discharge are quite specific. They
require that the applicant prove he is opposed to all wars under all circumstances. The fact that the airman has volunteered for the service (the Air Force does not draft) means he previously, in most cases recently, held very different beliefs.
During the past ten years, approximately 2,500 members of the military, in all branches of the service, applied for discharge as conscientious objectors. Only 20 percent of these have been discharged, for an average of 50 a year for all branches of the service. However, during the past year, 68 GIs have received honorable discharges as conscientious objectors at Mountain Home AFB. The base is small, representing less than two-tenths of 1 percent of the Armed Forces, so it is somewhat astounding to discover that more men have been discharged as c.o.'s here than the annual national average for all
branches of the service throughout the world for the last decade. Equally startling is the fact that not a single GI applicant who was
counseled at the Covered Wagon has been unsuccessful!
Approximately 30 CO. applications are now pending. Many other enlisted men have been discharged for effective anti-war organizing, and a number of officers have been asked to resign for working with the Covered Wagon. The goal of our members has been to change their brothers and sisters stationed on the local branch of the genocide machine, volunteers in an Air Force that drops the equivalent in fire power of 3 Hiroshima-type bombs on the people of Southeast Asia every week. The United States Air Force has certified, through the issuance of discharge certificates, that almost one out of each ten enlisted men on the base has undergone such a substantial change that further service in the military constitutes an impossible conflict for him. It has made a similar determination regarding almost 10 percent of the members of the Women's Air Force who were stationed at the base when the Wagon opened.
While figures are impressive, the stories of individuals are more than moving. Airman First Class Tom Spalding, a
brawling, tough veteran of the war in Indochina, who cheered when the students at Kent State were shot down, met a couple of Wagon members, visited the Wagon one night and has never left. After he won his discharge from the Air Force he settled in Mountain Home to continue his work with the GIs.
Sgt. Steve Hawkins, a sensitive man who carried his violin and his classical music with him to Vietnam where for a year he loaded bombs, came home to find the Covered Wagon and a new commitment. His inability to ever forgive himself for playing a part in the war drives him to work against it in remarkable spurts of energy. When he was about to be discharged, as his four-year term was almost completed, he changed the beneficiary on his military life insurance policy to the Covered Wagon and demanded that he be discharged as a CO,
Second Lieutenant Tom Mason, a former Young Republican for Goldwater, decided he could no longer play a part in what he realized the United States Air Force had become. The AF said he was no longer able
to organize anything well enough to remain in, and he was discharged. Later, he organized the 40-mile, 2 day march of 50 GIs and civilian supporters through the desert, with talent and precision that the military dreams of yet rarely achieves. Tom returned to his native Oregon to serve as campaign manager for a woman who won the Democratic nomination for state legislature.
Jimmy Schaffer, a talented musician and composer, attended his first Covered Wagon meeting on a great high. He was later discharged as a CO., turning his back 6n illegal personal pleasure trips because he feels they make movement activists too vulnerable. Through long hard hours of study and work, he has become the best CO.
counselor in the movement, having just completed a book on the subject.
The work is not without its problems for active duty GIs. Several Wagon members
have been court-martialed for minor infractions overlooked when committed by non-activists. Captain Steve Miller. the intelligence officer at the base, was punished for writing for Helping Hand. His security clearance was taken away and he was placed in charge of the base hotel, told to make sure the linen was clean and the light-bulbs working.
Gary Aker, a member of the staff judge advocate's office, believed in the concept of military justice until he saw its application at the base. He became the Wagon's lawyer, wrote articles about military injustice that challenged and upset liberals and was asked to resign by the Wing Commander. Today he is practicing law in San Francisco, still representing GIs in need of help.
Tom Tierney, rode his bicycle onto the flight line to prevent bombers from landing and F-4s from taking off. The base froze into absolute inaction. Later he explained that if the Vietnamese could hold off the strongest military force in history for 10 years, one man could tie up one base for 10 minutes. Tom was discharged, hitch-hiked back in time to walk with us through the desert, and then returned to his bicycle shop in Denver where his spare time is spent working with Vietnam Veterans Against the War and with active-duty GIs at Lowry AFB.
Penny Rand is a former WAF, who stayed several months to work with the Wagon after her discharge. She drew many of the cartoons and illustrations for the Helping Hand. Now she is working with runaway children in Detroit, a long way from her home-town in Oklahoma.
John O'Connor's father is helping make munitions in Chicago while John is helping organize GIs at Lowry AFB, near Denver. I first met him when we spoke on the same platform, the first time I was invited out to Boise for a "Festival of Life," in April of 1971. Several GIs were there, and when I asked if they had considered forming a group, they replied that probably no one would dare to participate. A little later, when the first issue of the Helping Hand appeared. it was nearly unanimous that all the articles be anonymous, since even among the bravest from the base were in the grip of fear that resulted from isolation. John was the lone dissenter. (By the second issue, everyone had decided it was better to sign their articles!)
This spring, as we marked the first anniversary of the Wagon, a group of Mountain Home GIs preferred charges against General John Lavelle, for violation of the Uniform Code of Military Justice by bombing Vietnam contrary to orders. They also preferred charges against General John Ryan, Chief of Staff of the Air Force, for acting as accessory after the fact. This case, of course, has since become a national issue which has shocked the nation.
These GIs have committed themselves to working through the system so long as that is
possible. But, through innovation and experiment, they have found ways to work through the system that the system never believed existed! And they have found, as well, that the power to affect their destiny is in their own hands when they are organized.
The Covered Wagon is the first GI project to produce a long-playing record comprised of songs written and performed by active-duty people, with a little help from their friends. That is as it should be, for if the Wagon is a bulwark against militarism, racism, sexism, injustice and war in a state known for its active John Birch Society, it is also known throughout the Northwest for its warmth, friendship, good humor, and—above all—its music. The Covered Wagon is a music wagon.
The original Wagoneers, many now scattered throughout the world, some organizing against the war in Thailand and Vietnam, will perhaps always remember that during the first dark days, when physical attacks could be expected each night, the music never stopped. And they will remember that when the landlord locked the Wagon's door against its members, operating on instructions from the Chief of Police who insisted that his orders came from "Washington," a non-stop, singing-talking troubadour going by the name of Barbara Dane made a trip to Mountain Home and didn't leave until all was well again.
Recorded at the Covered Wagon
Mixing and re-engineering by
Jonathan Thayer, A-l Sound Studio
Booklet edited by Barbara Dane
Photographs by Carolyn Mugar
and Covered Wagon
Booklet production by
Collective Graphics Workshop
Printing by Faculty Press
Production supervised by
Barbara Dane
