13. What is World Veterans Against War?
WORLD VETERANS AGAINST WAR [WVAW] was birthed some 57+ years ago, in a place high and close enough to the coast of Vietnam’s South China Sea to the east to be able to watch the fishing boats’ and other “non-combatant” ships’ lights at night, traversing the mystery ~ with an occasional live-fire brouhaha or two between contestant proprietors or three out there over that crystalline, stark blackness ~ of that sultry night ocean.
Specifically, it was on the morning following a nite in late summer, 1966, when, as a survivor of the carnage that results when a ground force of some 150± Viet Cong [unit designation unknown] ~ supported by .50 caliber machine gun and 75 mm recoilless-rocket fire, plus hand grenades and satchel charges by the bazillions ~ what happens when those VC attack and overrun a platoon of some 40± American infantry platoon paratroopers of the 1st Brigade of the101st Airborne Division….
More specifically, it was when, on that morning, as the Sun officiously but diffidently breached a dawn still mist-laden with the smoke
and stench of cordite and of burnt and burning blood, flesh, and viscera, and the residually echoing shouts, screams, sobs, and imprecations of those attacking and defending, and of those killing and dying, or left to die or to be killed….
And even more specifically on that morning, as a relatively intact survivor of that nite, helping to first find potential other survivors, and then to dis ~ entangle and then re-assemble body parts ~ carefully distinguishing the bad guys’ parts [typically in black pajamas] from the goods’ [typically in GI boonie-green]….
Most specifically, it was when, on that morning, just before being medevacked out of there when i wept on that young Airborne Infantry Battalion Chaplain’s shoulder, and challenged him to show me ~ or anybody else on this forsaken hilltop ~ anything, anywhere at all that was a manifestation of his, the Chaplain’s, God’s “Love, Compassion, Patience, and Forgiveness,” as present and presented here, this morning, on what was operationally known in the business as “Grenade Hill”….
It was then, and there, when all that that thoroughly shaken, but doctrinally-sanctimoniously self-assured, faithfully self-righteous, and thoroughly stupid son-of-a-buzzard cherry [his father was an Airborne full-bird Colonel Chaplain, and this was his first exposure to the true nature and reality of war, just like it was mine] could do and/or say was to brace me by my shoulders, thump me on my chest, and promise me:
They’re all in Heaven with Jesus, my son…. All in heaven…. well ehhhh [in response to my dumb-founded, incredulous stare]… the Americans are … or rather, uhhhh… the American Christians who have accepted Jesus as their Personal Savior are… ehhhh, well, these ones [gesturing to a line of poncho-covered, official US Government “Remains” that he had apparently just successfully processed for transition], They [with an almost not-quite-forced pathetically beatific smile and theatricallychoked sob]… They ‘re all in Heaven… with Jesus… ; trust me.. and Know.. . Now, Airborne All the Way, son…Now, get on the medevac … .
And smartly saluted me [a Private First Class], did an even smarter about-face, and tripped over one of his own ponchos.
Had i not lost my sidearm in the chaos of the nite before, i [sometimes used to] like to think that i might just would and could have just shot that Sky Pilot on the spot, even as he lay face down in that squirming sordid mix of rivuleting rain, Vietnam mud, and human blood, just to put him out of his misery and stupidity. But, on reflection [at least most of the time], i’m glad i didn’t, and got medevacked out instead.
In any event, it was then and there ~ without even bothering to think to ask the Chaplain what happens to those who were, if American, neither Christian nor, if Christian, not Jesus-as-Savior-accepting [let alone the non-American Vietnamese Buddhists, Catholics, or Confucianists, or the Montagnard Animists, or the Marxist/Leninist/Ho-ist materially dialectic Infidels, or etc, dead and/or dying from that nite] ~ it was then and there that Veterans Against War was seeded. And, on the medevac flite back to Tuy Hoa, and then further to the rear, ultimately lo Nha Trang, was finally delivered unto an fertile ovum.
Veterans Against War first subsequently significantly thereafter manifested at a military funeral in Van Nuys, California, in very early 1970, four months and a day before four young Americans were to be killed by hostile “friendly” [or was it “friendly” hostile] fire… whatever, in a place called Kent, Ohio. [See “The Beginning of the Search for The Answer to this Question” at page 12 above.]
It was thirty-one years later, on the streets of New Orleans within days of September 11, 2001, that VAW abruptly and somewhat surreptitiously manifested by having temporarily morphed itself into V2A2V [Vietnam Veterans Against Another Vietnam], and mounted a concerted concerned citizens’ information campaign against the pending, proposed, planned, and programmed so-called “Global” so-called “War On” so-called “Terrorism.” [See Question 7, “When 9/11 happens once again, America, What will You do?” at page 26 above.]
Finally, it was during those heady days after 9/11 and before the USA PATRIOT Act, or the “liberation in the name of retribution” of Afghanistan, that VAW/V2A2V was first informally described as:
…not an organization; at least not yet. Rather, it is an extended ad-hoc hyper-community comprised of every Child, Woman, and Man on this Planet who has ever been directly or indirectly affected by War ~ anywhere, anytime, in any Way whatsoever
~ and who is prepared to do whatever is possible and necessary for them to ensure that something like that never, ever happens again to themselves, to their loved ones and families, friends and neighbors, colleagues, cohorts, and compeers. Or to anybody else, anywhere, in any way. Any Body. Any Where. Any Way. Ever.
VAW shifted base camp to Sitka, Alaska and established Sitka Platoon, in late summer of 2012. And became World Veterans Against War in the fall of 2023.