Veteran at Harvard Opposes War

"I don't like to argue with anybody about war in general unless he's personally killed somebody," Ernest P. Sachs '72 says in the current Harvard Bulletin. "And I don't mean shooting him with a machine-gun from a hundred yards away. I mean slashing his throat while he's hanging on you, and looking down at the knife and seeing how watery his blood is."

Sachs-one of the 68 Harvard undergraduates who has served in the military-is an active member of Vietnam Veterans against the War (VVW), which will sponsor a "camp-in" of Vietnam veterans in Washington, April 19 to 23. Gen. David M. Shoup, former commandant of the Marine Corps, will join in the demonstration. At least 7000 veterans will participate, Sachs predicted.

Early last February, the VVW hosted the Winter Soldier hearings in Detroit. At those hearings, about 600 veterans described atrocities they had witnessed or committed in Vietnam.

"Out witnesses covered the whole stretch of time from 1964 to the present," Sachs said. "What happened at My Lai was really mild compared to most of the testimony at the hearings."

According to Sachs, the VVW chose Detroit for the hearings after the State Department refused visas to five South Vietnamese army deserters who wanted to testify. The VVW invited the five men to Toronto and arranged a closed-circuit TV wire-up between the two cities.

Then, two days before the hearings, Sachs said, the Canadian government refused to allow the five men to enter the country.

"The Canadian government said it wouldn't let them in because they wanted expressly to address an American audience," Sachs said.

So though the five South Vietnamese never came, the hearings-virtually ignored by the press-proceeded in Detroit.

The term "winter soldier" is based on a statement by Tom Paine: "Beware of the summer soldiers and fair-weather patriots who will desert their country in its time of need,"

The Detroit hearings were the VVW's first political action. The group-which claims 50,000 Vietnam veterans as members and, Sachs said, "is getting 80 new memberships a week"-plans another hearing in May, probably in Washington.

"We're showing Middle Americans that their sons are pissed-off," Sachs, wearing a red-white-and-blue bandana around his forehead and a peace medallion around his neck, said yesterday.

At the April camp-in, veterans will set up tents "just like a bivouac," Sachs said, adding, "We plan an orderly, legal civil disobedience, although we haven't worked out the details yet."

Other antiwar groups are planning Washington demonstrations for the weekends of April 24 and May 1. The VVW has not coordinated its actions with these groups, Sachs said, but noted, "We're trying to kick it all off with a lot of veterans bitching."

Sachs left Harvard in 1964 to join the Marines. He became a captain and, during his 1966-67 term in Vietnam, he won several decorations. After returning in 1969, Sachs said, "I finally started remembering things and admitting to myself things I'd seen happen and things I'd done. When I talked to young Marines and heard them talking about indiscriminate killing like dousing cigarettes, I realized I had thought that way too."

Commenting on his Bulletin quote-which came out of an interview with six Harvard military veterans-Sachs said, "The key word there is 'argue.' I'd discuss the war with anybody. But I'll be damned if I'm going to argue about the morality of killing with some Midwestern housewife."

Sachs called the trial of First Lieut. William L. Calley Jr. "scapegoating," saying, "He may be some kind of homicidal pervert-I don't know-but if he is, the Army picked him to take all the blame. There are a whole jot of people who have done the same shit Calley did and thought it was the best thing for their country."

The armed forces breed brutality, Sachs said. He described the final indoctrination of all Marine troops the day before they go to Vietnam.

"All the Marines line up and a gunnery sergeant gives them a lecture," Sachs said. "All the time he's talking, he's fondling a rabbit in his hands. Then at the end of the talk, he takes the rabbit, breaks its neck, slits it stem to stern, and throws the bloody mess at the troops, shouting, 'Get ready, grunts. That's what's coming in Nam.' "