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THE PACIFIST
May 5, 2007

The Pacifist
A True Story
By Elainna Crowell

" We'd just about finished our patrol, when ordered to another sector. A firefight was starting up and some of the boys were in trouble. We took a couple of gooks prisoner a few hours back but a couple of days before we lost some boys in an ambush.It didn't seem enough to just execute them. The gooks had a wild pig when we took em, so we shot em, cut their heads off, set up three stakes by the trail and jammed their heads on either side of the pigs." Chuck's voice rang soft and clear in the dark silences of the Street Ministry Staff pad. A few of us coughed uncomfortably, unwilling to praise or condemn or even comment on his disclosure. Bound together by our ignorance of the war and our antipathy to it, we had sheltered draft dodgers, marched in anti-war protests, been tear-gassed and accused of everything from cowardice to treason. None of us knew much more about Vietnam except what the broadcasters and the government told us. But images of burnt out villages, napalmed children and body counts haunted us, and not one of us could quite grasp the reasons for the war nor understand what our country hoped to achieve. Chuck was one of the rare ones. Unlike the Street Ministry Staff, and its contingent of peacenics, he had actually volunteered to go. A country boy from the rich farmlands of southern Illinois, Chuck was a believer in all things American as well as an excellent marksman. He came into the Ministry's Hostel about six months before, just out of the hospital, recuperating from a bullet wound in the chest. Some young idiot had been playing around with a 22 rifle and aimed it at Chuck. Chuck said, "You don't dare pull the trigger". the kid did. The staff decided to adopt him and his sweet guitar playing, strong voice and quiet authority soon won over the Ministry's sponsors. Chuck became a co-director of the hostel and a part-time drug counsellor for its transient clientele. However, the very qualities which made him acceptable to our counter-culture, anti-war advocates and street people, would not inspire much confidence in police, politicians, or Middle America. His tangled long hair, scraggly beard, patched blue jeans, tie dyed T-shirt and sandals made him a target for camera crews filming anti-war protests. Perhaps the only identification he carried, a copy of his discharge papers from the military prison at Leavenworth would account for police suspicion, or why The FBI investigated our outreach program. Maybe they didn't like his appearance or resented his silent contempt. However, Chuck posed no danger to the minions of political authority. Unlike the conspiracy buffs who delighted in dreaming up ways to overthrow or wreak havoc on the establishment, swamped bomb-making recipes, and bragged about their lethal effectiveness, Chuck was a pacifist. Pacifism was more honoured in name than deed, in the anti-war, anti-establishment street culture of San Francisco during the 1970s. We admired the freedom riders, Martin Luther King, the advocates of non-violence, equal rights, and marijuana. Ghandi was our patron saint, and LSD our path to Enlightenment. Nevertheless, none of us had faced either end of an M16, breathed the acrid fumes of a flame-thrower, napalm or gun powder or knew what it was REALLY LIKE in Vietnam before Chuck. His story was a simple one. He volunteered, was specially trained as a sniper and had one of the highest kill counts of his unit. Then, about 8 months into his tour of duty, he had a black out. When he came out of it, he found himself in a tree with about 20 dead water buffalo scattered around it. He looked at his rifle, realised he had shot all of them, and hadn't the slightest idea why. "I felt like I had been crazy for a long, long time," He said, "So I went to the CO, turned in my rifle and told him I wasn't going to shot it again." The CO decided a little R&R was in order, and sent him to Japan on leave. But when Chuck's leave was done, he refused to touch his gun again. They sent him to a retraining camp, he decided he didn't like it, so he left. He was caught, tried, convicted and sent to the Military Penitentiary at Leavenworth. "I knew all I had to do to get out was go back and be a good little killer," He said, "But I wasn't about to go crazy again.". In the eclectic circle of The Street Ministry, its clients, sponsors and groupies, we were inclined to accept everyone at face value, albeit with a strong dash of scepticism. All of us had our own story, but no one knew how manufactured or embellished that story was. Our mission grew out of a seminary student's third year out reach project. His initial plan was to teach the gospel to street people; he ended up with six homeless souls on his apartment floor. Attracting the attention of his superiors (not to mention that of his landlord!) Michael convinced the Ecumenical Association of Southern Marin Co. to open a hostel on church property. From its humble beginnings, the Street Ministry grew to include: a mini-employment centre at one church, a free medical clinic at another, a newsletter, a meal program, and of course the hostel. The staff was made up of volunteers, mostly drawn from the transient population and a peculiar bunch of people we were.. Outside of Chuck, there was Frank a reform Jew from New York. He had a black belt in Karate and often put on free exhibitions at the hostel when a particularly rough & roudy group showed up. There was Gabriel, fervent believer in the spiritual efficacy of brown rice and a macrobiotic diet, who abandoned university two months prior to graduation and refused to wear glasses because they weakened the eyes. We had Fred, an ardent vegetarian, who wore a,"Jesus is my brother" patch on his coat sleeve and Jim, an oversized Canadian who would eat just about anything and whose repertoire of adjectives and adverbs was limited to, "Nice" or Not Nice". These were just some of the more conventional characters who wandered through the sanctuary of the Street Ministry, rendered service and moved on once again. We were a restless lot, infused with the enthusiasm and cynicism of the flower-power generation: naive advocates of self-realisation, free love, and political anarchy. We did not realise there was a price to pay for the stand we take or that hot house flowers do not thrive on city streets. This came home one evening, when Chuck returned from a local saloon covered with blood. One eye was swollen shut, his ribs were bruised and his breath came in short shuttering gasps. After he was discharged from the emergency ward of the local hospital at 3:00 A.M, we heard his story. Chuck rarely spoke about Viet Nam, his time in prison, exactly why he became a pacifist or even what it meant to him. However, he enjoyed playing pool, an occasional beer and that evening he ignored the unwritten rule governing the patriotic patrons of a working class saloon. All of us knew there were certain places where longhaired hippies were not welcome, but Chuck was disinclined to accommodate redneck prejudices and besides, "it had a damn good pool table and cheap beer!" While he generally went with Fred or another member of the staff, this particular evening he went on his own. Ignoring the customary glares and the muttering about "damned hippie scum", he played a solitary game of pool, drank two beers and left. Two or three patrons followed him and proceeded to kick the shit out of him. He may have lost consciousness, he really wasn't sure, but, he added triumphantly, "Those bastards couldn't get a raise out of me, they couldn't make me lift a finger!" Leaving us to debate the issues of pacifism, self-defence and righteous retribution, Chuck turned on his side, gingerly wrapped his arms around his bride to be and fell asleep.
Visibility: Everyone
Posted: Saturday May 5, 2007, 1:00 am
Tags: peace hippies viet nam [add/edit tags]

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Elainna Crowell
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female, age 68, single, 3 children
Victoria, Canada
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