Once Again On Armistice Day Reflections- I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate As An Anti-War Veteran-With Frank Jackman In Mind

Once Again On Armistice Day Reflections- I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate As An Anti-War Veteran-With Frank Jackman In Mind

By Fritz Taylor

Frank Jackman was still incensed by the treatment he had received from a fellow anti-war veteran. I knew Frank’s story, knew the details behind what was making him furious since I had grown up with him down in Carver, down in cranberry bog country. Moreover I had known him as one of the guys who tried to help me out when I came back to the “real” world from ‘Nam, Vietnam during that war and had a horrible time readjusting (and still suffer a little. Known that Frank despite our very different approaches to our inductions into the U.S. Army had come out to California to try and find me when I had left Carver one night with the idea of never going back, never going back to the faultless wife, and faultless kids, when my head was full of too much drink, too much dope, too much cousin. Had found me out with what would later be called “brothers under the bridge,” guys that tried to create and alternative life under the bridges, along the railroad tracks and out in the arroyos and brought me back after a while. F.T.]         

This is Frank’s take as told to me on what bothered him enough to yell out to me one night the words mentioned in the first line:   

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran,” Frank Jackman kept thinking to himself as he tossed and turned in the middle of night after he had looked at an e-mail from his old nemesis Norman Gordon. (Frank would also use that sentiment as the headline title of an e-mail that he would sent to the members of the Executive Committee of his local Veterans for Peace chapter, VFP, the Smedley Butler Brigade responding to Norm’s “charges.”) What had happened was that good old curmudgeon and guy who would rain on anybody’s parade but his own Norm Gordon had been up to his old tricks trying cause dissension in the ranks of the local organization. It would not have been the first time the two had locked horns over some organizational matter. The last time had been over whether the local chapter should carry as a matter of course the American flag in any public functions they attended. They both agreed on the matter that the chapter should not but Frank had been furious that Norm had not attended the meeting where the issue was discussed and had left him to carry the burden of the argument alone while Norm had attended to some private business of his own. (Their position lost and would have anyway if Norm had shown up but that was just one more example of his stirring the waters up and then leaving everybody high and dry).        

This time the issue was personal, was about Frank’s status as an anti-war veteran, about whether he was in fact a veteran which was how acrimonious Norm could be when he got his fangs up. Frank had joined the local chapter of Veterans for Peace six or seven years before, recruited by Paul Sullivan the chapter coordinator, after having worked with the organization off and on for a number of years previous to that time. The crucial event had been his participant in an Armistice Day parade and program where he had proudly carried the black and white dove-emblemed VFP banner for the first time (Armistice Day also known as, officially known as Veterans Day, but the original intent had been to designate the day as a day of peace after the end of the huge bloodbath that was World War I). Frank’s position about joining organizations after a lifetime of belonging to many socialist and peace organizations, large and small, ad hoc and permanent, sometimes active, sometimes as a “paper” member was that he would not join a group these days unless he planned to be active. That decision had been solidified by his carrying that Armistice Day VFP flag that year.

What Frank had joined, and what he thought he had joined was the Boston chapter, the Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9 of VFP and he had paid his chapter dues accordingly (and would in subsequent years as well). (The chapter named after the famous much decorated Marine Corps general who once he got “religion” on the war issue famously said “war is a racket”-and said much more as well look it up in Wikipedia for the full text.)  His understanding and the understanding codified in the by-laws of the chapter was that you could be a member of the local chapter without being a member of the national organization. Since he was actively working with the local chapter and would have been a mere paper member of the national organization all through his membership he had never joined, never thought to join the national organization.

Enter Norm and his late night e-mail. In that e-mail Norm had mentioned that somehow he had found out that Frank was not a member of the national organization and by his lights not a member of VFP having not paid dues or submitted a DD214 ( military discharge papers which are the signal that you have in some way, shape or form completed your active duty) as required to be a member of the national organization (how and why Norm got that information from somebody at headquarters in Saint Louis he would never answer despite Frank’s repeated questions).

In additional and this is the point on which Frank blew his stack Norm questioned whether Frank had ever been in the military since he had not produced a DD214 for the local as required by the local by-laws.  At the time of his recruitment, and he later asked Paul Sullivan about it and Paul was not sure whether back then proof of service was necessary for full membership, nobody had, including Paul, asked him for any documentation. Under ordinary circumstances challenging a member’s military service would not have been a “red flag,” hot button, seeing red issue by the local but only a few months previously there had been an ugly confrontation with people taking sides over what turned out to be bizarre case involving “stolen valor” (a term which signifies that somebody who may or may not have been in the military claims a lot of hot air combat bravery stuff like you would hear at an American Legion bar room). So Frank, who had been deeply embroiled in the controversy, was beside himself when even the hint of a challenge like that to his credentials came up, and it would not have had to be somebody as professionally antagonistic as Norm to have Frank seeing red.

Here is how Frank initially responded to Norm’s e-mail after a fitful night of tossing and turning over the issue:                      

“Frankly Norm you are by your accusations now the primary reason why I do not choose to join National and had been one reason ever since you were treasurer badgering me to join -or as you say the “real” VFP-I am a proud member of Smedley Butler Brigade, Chapter 9, VFP if that is not "real “VFP well I can live with that. By the way you should check the chapter by-laws like I did which do not require national membership for Smedley membership.

“The other reason I choose not to join, and had once been the primary reason was that I do not when I join an organization want to be a paper member-I would only be a paper member of National and obviously I am not a paper member of Smedley- I still want to know why you would be interested in why I am member of national or not and how you would have access to information about whether I was or not.

“More pressing though is your libelous remark about whether I was a veteran or not-I am right now putting in a request to the State Adjutant General's Office to get a copy of my discharge but I have other things on this accusation to say and will be sending out an e-mail about it if you can't wait to heard that I submitted my DD 214 to the Executive Committee. Later Frank Jackman “       

Norm’s answer to that e-mail, his not unusual sniveling answer was that Frank had mistaken his intent, he was just trying to get an active member of Smedley who moreover had attended various national events like the convention to join up with others in National. On the military service question he totally backed off saying he was sure that Frank had done military service. That sniveling made Frank more aware than ever that he had to tell people associated with the local chapter what his real military service was like and put some egg on Brother Gordon’s face.

Frank had not mentioned much about his actual military service in part because for a very public man, for man who believed in his role of as a street anti-war activist he was very, very private about his personal life, about things that had happened to him in the past. That challenge by Norm had got him to thinking about something that had been in the back of his mind for a while about being a little more forthcoming about that aspect of his past. As part of trying to settle himself down over the whole Norm flare-up he had sent an e-mail to his ex-wife with whom he was still on friendly terms and he still counted on to give him counsel when he had what he called “a fire in his head.”  Here’s what he had to say to Moira:

“Pea [pet name for Moira]-I want to tell you about this Norm character who called your house expecting that I was still living there. I already mentioned [in a previous e-mail] that he is some weird curmudgeon that wants to rain on everybody’s parade but his own. What he wanted to talk to me about and which he sent me an e-mail about last night when I had not called him was why I was not a member of VFP. This may sound odd but there are two parts to VFP-the National which has its own organizational structure and local Smedley which is part of and is subordinate to National. The point is that you can belong to Smedley without belonging to National and can run for local office as I have an idea to do this year without joining National. I have seen no reason except as a paper member to be a member of National. You know when I join something it is for real and not just for the resume. What’s a resume by the way? [Private joke between them because Frank has never assembled a resume having been in the right place at the right time on such matters as jobs and educational opportunities most of his working life.] Norm’s position is that because I am not a member of National I am not a member of VFP and therefore should not hold office which is what I want to do come the next election cycle, and he probably thinks I am not be a member of Smedley although our by-laws do not require it.      

“The more serious allegation though is that he questions whether I am a veteran at all (like in the Bill Fuller case with all his fake “stolen valor” stuff). What this all means is that I feel honor bound not to him since I don’t need a good conduct certificate from him or anybody to prove I earned my spurs as an anti-war Veteran who did stockade time for his beliefs but to Smedley to clear the air. That means I have to bring up my military history which I have only told you the details of recently and which I have kept a low profile on with Smedley. You know I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner high the hard way and I know you are proud of me for that.

“Funny though you know, or if you don’t know I will tell you, I am a very private public man if you get my drift and only tell about my personal life when I am up against the wall. This fall has been “outing” season for me. First having to talk about my cancer in public when I couldn’t put together that Peace Walk to Boston. Then I had to reveal to others the problems we were having in our marriage once I moved out and now this. I know you have my back on this-and maybe this will make me a better or more open person and you can be proud of me for that too.       

“Thank goodness though I am doing meditation because I really needed to do some after all that noise of this Norm thing -thanks for bringing me to see the virtue of that idea-kudos. 

“Please if Norm calls either hang up or just say I don’t live there anymore but don’t give him my cellphone number.”

Moira’s response was that she supported Frank in his efforts to clear his good name and that he should write a detailed explanation to the local Executive Board [whom he in any case as a precaution had CC’d  his various exchanges with Norm]of why he need not be challenged on his military service. Before that he had sent an e-mail telling the local leadership what he had already done and where he was heading:  

“Thanks to everybody for the support- I just put in a request for my DD214 with the State Adjutant General’s Office (that is the place in Massachusetts you can get a copy of your discharge for certain veterans from periods when you got a State bonus for military service).

I will be writing more about that in an e-mail (actually two e-mails) later  but for now since I am under a “cloud” about whether I am a veteran or not I want to know if the Committee thinks I should Emcee the Armistice Day program as I am expected too [Frank had volunteered to do that task as part of his stepped-up commitment to the local.] I will understand either way. I am more than willing to do it but will abide by your judgment. If I am not going to it I probably would not attend the parade/program so I have attached a copy of the Sam Adams Park permit [the place in downtown Boston where the program was to be presented] permit for somebody to print up and have when they set up. Remember the hassle last year. The cellphone number at the bottom 617-678-4114 is Laura Morris’ number in case of trouble- Later Frank”           

In the event the Committee had begged him to avoid dealing with Norm as a fruitless task for while they had already suffered many wounds. That evening he took up Moira’s suggestion and wrote a statement:     

“I Don’t Need A Good Conduct Certificate That I Am An Anti-War Veteran  

“I don’t need a good conduct certificate from Norm, National VFP, Smedley VFP, the gods, history, or anybody else to carry high the banner of VFP as an anti-war veteran. This issue has come up because of Norm’s erroneous insistence that I am not a member of VFP because I am not a member of National. I have addressed that elsewhere. What I find I need to defend myself against is his libelous insinuation that I am not a veteran. Comparing me by inference with the unfortunate Bill Fuller. I have today put in a request to the State Adjutant General’s Office, the place that has the DD214s for certain classes of Massachusetts veterans who received bonuses during various war periods.  I checked this morning and they still have mine (they moved from the State House to Milford). They have e-mailed me the request form which has to be returned by snail mail and they will return the DD214 by my requested e-mail delivery. That process shouldn’t take long and I will submit the document to the Ex Committee via e-mail when I get it.     

“But there is a faster way to check on my military service. Norm, since you seem to have plenty of time on your hands for checking stuff for no apparent purpose other than some private nefarious purpose of your own why don’t you go down to the Moakley Federal Courthouse in Boston or wherever they keep the older federal decisions in the next couple of day (who knows maybe you can find it on the Internet these day since it is a public record) and ask to see the decision in Private Francis J. Jackman (it may have been Joseph rather than the initial but the last time I looked, needed to look was in1976 so I am not sure of that) v. the Secretary of the Army (and others including the commanding general of Fort Devens and some underlings) around early February 1971 (I am not sure of the exact court order date but it was several days before my discharge). In that case old cranky Judge Francis Ford, no friend of G.I. resisters, ordered on a writ of habeas corpus my discharge from the Army for “arbitrarily and capriciously” denying my conscientious objector application. I was given a discharge under honorable conditions.

“By the way that discharge by the Army was directly from the Fort Devens stockade where I was serving a six month sentence from a Special Court-Martial for refusing to wear the Army uniform. That was the second of two Special Court-Martials where I received a stiff sentence (the first, also six months, was just after they turned down my C.O. application where I, in uniform, attended an anti-war rally at the Main Gate of Fort Devens during “duty hours”). So altogether between confinement to barracks, periods of house arrest, stockade time including time in solitary (for “my own protection’’) I did well over a year in confinement.  In a later e-mail I will detail the pertinent facts and my reasons for keeping this information “on the low,” but for now you can understand that I am not going to take any noise from anybody about my status as an anti-war veteran who has paid his dues and can carry the VFP banner high, very high.

“Although I don’t need witnesses to my anti-war Army good conduct Sally Rand from the Friends Meeting up in Cumberland, Maine who used to be at the Cambridge Meeting then was one of the organizers of the rally I attended in uniform in front of the fort. And of several rallies in my defense before that first court-martial. You can also ask Sev to ask his wife Lana if she remembers going to Fort Devens for some rallies for a G.I. resister. I know I got a letter of support from her while I was in the stockade.

“Like I said I will give details and my reasons later for not speaking about this matter but actually Norm and Nancy already know this story-they just don’t know they know it.  Last Spring I think at Edward’s Midnight Voices at Friends Meeting House I read a short piece which I titled Jack Callahan’s Fate-With Bob Dylan’s Masters Of War in Mind. I have been thinking about speaking about my military past for a while and now this situation has forced my hand. That piece was a slightly fictionalized, and slightly embellished, run through of my own situation from that time. Now you can understand better why the Chelsea Manning case is so close to my heart.           

“So the hell with anybody who has a problem with me not being a member of National, I have earned my right to carry the VFP banner without a lot of noise about it.”

A few days later Frank sent the Executive Committee the following to fill out the story:

“Pertinent facts and reasons for keeping low on my military career

“I am as I have recognized more clearly this fall a very private public person.  I have tried until recently to keep the two separate. But the need to go public, to be “outed” one way or another about my battle with cancer when I couldn’t put together the Peace Walk to Boston, my impeding divorce once I was no longer in Watertown and now a question about my military service have required me to be more open about the private side . As I stated in an earlier e-mail about my military status brought on by Norm’s e-mail inquiry about why I am not a member of National, and more importantly in impugning my status as a veteran not having produced a DD 214 for Smedley. A process which as far as I know was not required for local membership until we created the by-laws this year although there might have been some requirement that I had not been aware. I was certainly not asked for one when I joined. Now events have forced me to come forward on this issue as well. That questioning of my veteran status in light of the recent Bill Fuller “hot button” situation by Norm had as a matter of protecting myself and my anti-war reputation required me to speak out. Below are the pertinent facts and reasons for my previous silence.  

“I received my draft notice in the fall of 1968, took a physical which I passed and was called for induction in January, 1969. At that time I was fairly anti-Vietnam War but not enough to decide not to accept induction and either go to jail or Canada. My anti-war thought processes at that stage had not developed that far. While I thought vaguely about not going into the service nothing in my past headed me in that direction, including any support from family or friends for that kind of decision so that was off the radar. So I was inducted at the Boston Army Base and sent to Fort Gordon down in Augusta, Georgia for basic training. After about three, maybe four days down there I realized that I had made a horrible mistake. But I was down in Georgia far from home and so whatever thoughts I had about doing anything stayed with me until I was able to get home. At least that was my idea.

“Now in 1969 all the Army cared about for the most part was replacing the “cannon-fodder” loses on the battlefields in 1968 through Tet and other battles so having no other specialized skills I was assigned to Infantry AIT (11Bravo, “grunt”, “cannon-fodder”) at Fort McClellan in Alabama. The only possible assignment for me after that designation and training was in the bloody rice fields of Vietnam.   At AIT a few of us from around Boston talked about refusing to take machine gun training but nothing came of it once the company commander read us the riot act and threatened the stockade which I feared quite a bit then. I thus decided to wait until I got home to see what I was going to do once I actually did get those orders to report to Fort Lewis in Washington for transit to Vietnam.      

“Once I got back to Boston I went over to Cambridge to the Friends Meeting House where they were doing both draft refusal counselling and G.I. rights counselling as well. One counsellor advised me to file an application as a conscientious objector. He also “advised” me that servicemen who went AWOL were dropped from their assigned places after about thirty days in case I wanted avoid going to Fort Lewis and put the C.O. application at a fort closer to home which would turned out to be Fort Devens. I did not believe under the standards in effect then that I qualified as a C.O. since I was not a Quaker or one of the historic religious objectors to war. So I went to Fort Lewis.            

“During that period I was reading like crazy, anti-war stuff and Catholic resister stuff like with the Berrigans at Catonsville, some G.I. resistance stuff and began to form a more definitive idea about what I had to do. Although I did not in the end wind up going to Vietnam as an infantryman then I was beginning to form the idea of refusal to continue my military career. As part of that idea I did wind up going AWOL back to Boston for over thirty days (almost two months really). I then turned myself into the FBI (after they had called my family’s house looking for me) and they turned me over to the State Police in Concord who turned me over the MPs at Fort Devens. There I was placed in a Special Detachment Unit (for AWOLs and other assorted misfits) to serve my punishment and also to put in my C.O. application.

“In short order that C.O. application was “arbitrarily and capriciously” denied out of hand (words that would be used later to characterize the Army’s action) since I was stating my objection on general anti-war moral and ethical grounds not at that moment reason enough to be granted. (Some Supreme Court and lower federal court decisions would shortly thereafter broaden the scope of objection which would be germane in my case) and in early 1970 I was to be re-assigned to Fort Lewis this time again for transport to Vietnam as an infantryman. Before that happened my civilian attorney (provided through AFSC by the way) was able to get into federal court in Boston and get a temporary restraining order from a federal judge so that he could present a writ of habeas corpus that the Army had unjustly denied my application. That action would keep me at Fort Devens until my federal case was resolved. That granting of the TRO had also been a close thing because during my stay at Fort Devens I had begun to agitate against the war among my fellow soldiers and the very day that I got that TRO there was a general search around the base looking for me (I had been warned by a sympathetic clerk what was up and so was hiding on the base) to take me to Fort Lewis handcuffed and under guard for transport to Vietnam.

“Once I learned that fate was what the Army had wanted to do to me something snapped in me. My feelings of resistance grew exponentially. That was when I began to get the idea of greater resistance. I had during that short period of freedom headed to Cambridge (only forty miles away) to work with the Quakers who were planning to rally at Fort Devens to end the war (that is where I met Sally Rand from up in Maine who was then the organizer of the event). I told them I was willing to join them during “duty hours” in uniform to protest, to support the call bring the troops home. I did so and when I went back to the base after the rally I was immediately arrested by the MPs and placed in the “hole” (solitary) for a few weeks before my first Special Court-Martial where I drew my first six month sentence. During that time, and this is important, Sally and others would rally outside the base in solidarity with my action (and to make sure through publicity that I was safe since the MPs who manned the stockade were mostly Vietnam veterans).             

“When I finished that sentence (minus good time) I was released back to that Special Detachment Unit. But the stockade had hardened me in my resolve to resist. (Plus a lot of reading along that line helped.) A few days after I got out of the stockade the first time I showed up at morning call out on the base parade field in civilian clothes with a sign around  neck calling “Bring the troops home.” That brought Special Court-Marital number two also six months. Toward the end of that sentence the Inspector-General showed up in my cell one afternoon and told me that the Federal Court in Boston had granted my writ of habeas corpus and that I was to be released in a few day (the Army decided not to appeal). Otherwise today I might still be serving six month sentences-who knows.

“Now there is obviously nothing in the above narrative to be shy about, at least not in VFP.  Hell, somebody called military resisters the only real heroes one time I remember (and I have done so in the Chelsea Manning case). Moreover under the more liberal standards of the times I deserved that C.O. status and have no problem with having pursued that course. Sometime after that whole Army experience had been settled I got a little more sophisticated about imperialism and its inevitable wars and about how to effectively organize as best we can against it. Under the influence of left-wing socialist thought (and basically Bolshevik practice in World War I) I came to see that doing individual actions like mine that only got me put out of the struggle had been less than effective. The long and short of it was, and still is to some extent, is that I believed I should have gone to Vietnam and helped organize the resistance there. With the Army half in mutiny who knows what I could have done. That is why I have been very hesitant to acknowledge my full military “career.” And still probably would have been if the issue had not been forced. So like I said in an earlier e-mail I earned my anti-war spurs the hard way and I can proudly hold the VFP banner up high and nobody can take that away from me. Frank Jackman.”

Yeah, Frank doesn’t need any good conduct certificate-thanks for “your service,” your anti-war service that it took me a long time to get to  as you well know Brother.