Oliver Hirsch

​​        After going back and forth for months about what was going on in Vietnam, and arguing about what to do about the whole thing, a friend and I decided one day that that was it:  we were not going.  Confronting the military outright wasn’t my first thought about how to go about staying out of the war, so I cooked up a story and told my CO that the level of violence I was surrounded by in the military had gotten me to the point where I could commit an act of violence to anyone (and the implication included him) without any compunction.  I knew they were going to try and talk me out of it, so I wanted to have one thing to say, and I said it over and over again.  As I had hoped, I ended up at the nut ward at the Presidio. And when the four-inch door slammed shut behind me, I figured, I’ve done something that has changed my future –there’s no turning back.  

​        After a few weeks, my Marine psychiatrist told me I was going back to active duty.  So the next morning I conned a guard into letting me go outside where a friend from the locked ward upstairs threw me my shoes.  In a minute I was off the base in my pajamas — this was San Francisco in 1968, and nobody gave me a second look.  I went directly to the War Resisters League in Haight-Ashbury; they farmed me out to a hippie commune where I could take time to figure out what the hell I was going to do.  After a few weeks, a friend came by to tell me there were eight AWOL GIs who had taken sanctuary in a church in Haight-Ashbury, and that they were going to make as big a stink as they could.  Along with the eight soldiers, there were many people from the religious and resistance community who wanted to stand with the GIs.  The plan that emerged was for members of the support community to chain themselves to the AWOL soldiers who were publicly resigning from the military.  I asked if they were encouraging other GIs to join.  They said, “sure!”  And that was it: we were the “Nine for Peace.”  

​​        I recall it as a very busy and intense time.  The press came immediately, and in large numbers, and we were international news overnight.  The reaction of the military and the powers-that-be was pretty humorous, and we loved every minute of it.  What we did really blind-sided them.  There were no illusions about whether or not we were going to jail; but I think there was a real spirit of “whatever it took.” 

​​        There were various services and programs, and planning sessions amongst the nine of us to hammer out what our stand was going to be.  On the second day a stewardess came to the church and told us she had overheard a couple of her passengers talking about blowing the protest away.  After some discussion, it was decided that the entire sanctuary was to be moved to a church in Marin City.  

​        The next morning — three days after the sanctuary began — we were busted.  I remember seeing the lines of police cars and vans as they gathered at the off-ramp off Highway 101, sort of in a military formation.  Then they all pulled out and around to the front of the church.  When they came in they had to break up a full-fledged church communion service as the cameras rolled.  They waded into the crowd and grimly cut our chains and handcuffed us.

​​        I was taken to the stockade at Hamilton Air Force Base and  given a brochure by the sergeant in charge that gave me my choices for the kind of training I wanted when I got to Leavenworth — there was no question but that I was going to Leavenworth.  So I was floored when they came up to me in the prison yard and told me they had accepted my resignation “for the good of the service,” and that they were going to throw me out, rather than go ahead with my court-martial.  Within a matter of hours, I went from facing years in prison, like my fellow Nine for Peace brothers, to standing on the side of the highway in civilian clothes — free as a man can be in this country.