Waging Peace: Vietnam's anti-war exhibition brings GIs and Viet Cong together. By Hannah Ellis-Petersen
Susan Schnall still
remembers the shrieks of Vietnam veterans that
would ring out at Oak Knell naval hospital throughout the night, as men – some
not yet 20 – grappled with the agony of their injuries and the terrible
flashbacks of war. It was these screams,
and finding herself – a 25-year-old navy nurse – part of an “unconscionable
military machine” that fixed men up only to send them straight back into bloody
battle, that drove her to one of the great acts of anti-Vietnam war defiance.
In 1968, Schnall hired
a small plane with a pilot friend and showered 20,000 flyers over five army
bases in San Franscisco, including the docked warship the USS Ranger, urging GIs to
join an anti-war demonstration two days later. “I knew that the
airforce was dropping flyers on the Vietnamese urging them to get away from the
bombing and the spraying of agent orange, and I thought, ‘if the United States
can do that there, why can’t we do that here?” said Schnall. Her anti-war
statement, like so many that came after it, did not come without sacrifice. She
was court martialled and sentenced to six months hard labour – though in the
end never served her sentence.
Schnall is just one of
the dozen of veterans who are visiting Vietnam for the opening of an exhibition
that honours the almost-forgotten yet pivotal role that active duty servicemen
men and women played in the anti-war movement. Schnall is one of many
who feature in the exhibition, held at the War Remnants museum in Vietnam’s capital
Ho Chi Minh City. A picture of her leading the GI anti-war march days before
she was court martialled will hang in pride of place, alongside newsletters,
posters and handwritten letters and photographs, most of which have never been
exhibited..
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