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CAPTURED (My Vietnam Story)

On July 10, 1970, I was one of a group of 14 volunteers deployed on a night mission into enemy territory, with plans to destroy materiel essential to combat readiness. We targeted five separate locations, in small teams of two or three for each place. Some of us had been on similar missions before. One of them, just a few months before, in February, had been a great and morale boosting success, widely reported at home. The rest of us had had training, but no field experience.

It did not go well. Eight of us were captured, while one team aborted and returned. Only one team successfully carried out its mission. An informer had infiltrated at least one of our planning sessions. 

I was one of those taken prisoner. I was nineteen years old.

We were generally well treated while in captivity, but there was some agitation for us to be executed. We were kept separate from each other.

Two of us were released unexpectedly, after fourteen months, but the rest were prisoners for twenty months.

*****

Black and white photo of Vietnam War protestor group, Minnesota 8.

Six of the Minnesota 8 then: (from left) Pete Simmons, Bill Tilton, Frank Kroncke, Mike Therriault (with book), are Chuck Turchick, Mike Therriault (with book), Don Olson, and Chuck Turchick (front). Missing: Cliff Ulen and Brad Beneke.

Black and white photo of Vietnam War protestor group, Minnesota 8.

Seven of the Minnesota 8 then: Front row (from left) are Chuck Turchick, Mike Therriault (with book), Brad Beneke (head turned) and Don Olson. Back row (from left): Pete Simmons, Bill Tilton and Frank Kroncke. Missing: Cliff Ulen.

I imagine that this tale seems like a familiar sort of account of American soldiers fighting in Vietnam, captured in combat, and then held there as POWs. 

But no. This is, instead, a short story of American citizens--and there were many of us--who acted to impede our government as it rained death and destruction on the civilian population of Vietnam, and sent our young sons there to do and die.

The enemy territory was an array of five county Selective Service offices (draft boards) in rural Minnesota. They were located in Alexandria, Faribault, Little Falls, Wabasha, and Winona. Our mission was to remove and destroy the 1-A files in each office, the records for every young man in each county who was subject to being forced into the Army or the Marine Corp. Without those files, there would be no induction orders.

And remember that although we had to register for the draft at age eighteen, and then face the possibility of conscription, if we were under twenty one years old, we couldn't even vote.

Black and white photo of Vietnam War protestor group.

A point of clarification here: In 1970, it was abundantly clear to every draft-age young man in the United States who had not already decided to enlist in one of the branches of the military--or who had not slipped into the (somewhat) safe Reserves--that the Selective Service System was his personal enemy. Not Ho Chi Minh, not the Viet Cong, not North Vietnam. Our local draft boards were out for blood--ours--and we all knew it. And remember that although we had to register for the draft at age eighteen, and then face the possibility of conscription, if we were under twenty one years old, we couldn't even vote.

Some of us decided that resistance would be our personal response. Thousands across the country refused induction, and over 3500 of those were imprisoned. Others of us--there were hundreds--resolved to take on the war machine more directly. It was a machine too, a conveyor belt sending us off to kill and die for a cause that nobody had adequately explained or justified.

Black and white photo of Vietnam War protestor group.

On a weekend in late February, 1970, the central offices of the Selective Service System of the State of Minnesota, plus the draft boards of Minneapolis and St. Paul, were raided. Thousands of 1-A files were destroyed. It was the largest raid of this kind that had ever taken place in the United States. I clearly recall standing before a large University of Minnesota lecture hall on the Monday morning after those raids, and announcing to the hundred or more students there what had happened. They cheered the news.

It seems remarkable now, not that someone would write such a letter, but that a major newspaper would publish it.

Back to July 10-11, 1970. Those of us who were arrested by the FBI were labeled the "Minnesota Eight," and were initially charged with Sabotage of the National Defense. One man, writing to the Minneapolis Tribune, said that he wanted us to be hanged:

Public Hanging Favored

Many people have seen fit to go to the aid of the eight charged with raids on draft offices. The eight perhaps meant no harm; they only want recognition. I'd like to see them get the recognition they deserve during the Aquatennial -- a public hanging of all eight.

David Dahlberg
St. Louis Park, MN

It seems remarkable now, not that someone would write such a letter, but that a major newspaper would publish it. That letter soon prompted a poem, in response, from John Berryman, Pulitzer Prize winner, who then lived in St. Paul:

(just the opening lines here; read full poem below)

"The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers"

Here's one who wants them hanged. A poor sick mind,
signing itself & saying where it's from:
St. Louis Park: Out of the woodwork vermin come.

(Published in "Letters to the Editor,"
Minneapolis Tribune, Tuesday, July 21, 1970)

Black and white photo of large Vietnam War protestor group.

The story of our trials, convictions and imprisonment is not so interesting, in itself. But our actions then were--along with those of so many others--emblematic of the widespread resistance, across the country, to that misbegotten, never declared war. During the years 1969, 1970 and 1971, more than half of of all Federal criminal prosecutions in Minnesota were for refusing induction into the Armed Forces. Nationally, nearly 9000 were convicted, and twenty times as many were initially charged, but never tried. A rising rebellion.

It was us, the American people, who after so many years, lies, and deaths, decided that we, as a nation, would no longer be held captive by phony official patriotism and belligerence.

It is worth remembering, I think, that it was returning Vietnam veterans, joined (not spat upon) by the American peace movement, that galvanized our country into the opposition to that war that finally brought it to an end. It wasn't Nixon, or Kissinger, or Congress, or the generals (those so all-knowing and powerful). It was us, the American people, who after so many years, lies, and deaths, decided that we, as a nation, would no longer be held captive by phony official patriotism and belligerence.

There was, I like to think, for just long enough, the idea that so long as we killed and maimed the people of a small, poor country, which had done us no harm, and forced our children to do it for us, we were all Prisoners Of War.

Peter Simmons, December, 2017

Biographical Details

Primary Location During Vietnam: United States Vietnam location marker

Story Subject: Activist

Affiliate Organization: The Minnesota 8


Images in this story are from Peace Crimes Backstage: The Minnesota 8, a production of Twin Cities PBS.

Watch the documentary.

The Minnesota 8 and the Letter-Writers
by John Berryman

Here's one who wants them hanged. A poor, sick mind,
signing itself and saying where it's from:
St. Louis Park: Out of the woodwork vermin come.
To crises rise our worst, and (some) our best
to dare illegal deeds in an unpopular cause
defying prison because they feel they ought, because
the sanity & honour seem endangered,
or seem convulsed, of their own country, and
a flaccid people can't be got to understand
its state without some violence undertaken,
by somebody without a thing to gain,
to shock it into resisting - one program pain
or treatment back to health of the body politic:
to stop napalming pint-sized yellow men
& their slant-eyed children, and ground arms & come home again
O the Signers broke the law, and deserved hanging,
by the weird light of the sage of St. Louis Park,
you probably admires them. These bear their rare mark.

Paragraph break.


John Berryman was the University of Minnesota Regent's professor of humanities, author of "The Dream Saga," winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Bollingen Award and National Book Award. Published in "Letters to the Editor," Minneapolis Tribune, Tuesday, July 21, 1970.

Story Themes: Activist, Anti-war Movement, Antiwar Movement, Draft, Jail Time, John Berryman, Minnesota 8, News Coverage, Peter Simmons, Poetry, Read, St Louis Park, Star Tribune

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