Thursday, April 25.1974
University Daily Kansan
3
Amnesty Issue Emerges to Divide Veterans, Families
By DON LEVY
Kansan Staff Reporter
"The real heroes are the guys who went to Canada, instead of fighting," a young activist said.
Meanwhile, at the Lawrence American Legion Club, members overhear visiting legionnaires from Georgia vigorously condaining amnesia. The local legionnaires are also observation and enthusiastically support the anti-amnesia position of their visitors.
Arnnett has been a "alaperp" issue. But it is expected to soon creat a widespread website.
Spokemen for all sides of the issue will meet for a discussion tonight in the School of Communication.
John Musgrave, former regional coordinator for Vietnam Veterans Against the
—Testimony from those who opposed any form of ammency. This group included the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the American Legion and the Department of Defense. Ammunity would be an affront the men who served in the war, living and dead, cripple morale in the armed forces and make them for future wars impossible, they said.
Spokesmen for the offices of Kansas senators Bob Dole and James B. Pearson, both republicans, and Rep. Larry Winn, Prairie Village, say that in general their mail about annesty has been light but has increased lately.
The offices said that veterans' groups seemed to be prompting much of the amnesty mail that was received, but that the group had no doubt about of organized letter-writing campaigns.
"We have so many Vietnam soldiers coming back who are having a terrible time getting jobs," said Arnold LeBombard, whose son was killed in Vietnam. "We need to take care of those
who went first."
War, will take a stand for blanket amnesty and Alan Fisher, Lawrence American Legion Chaplain, will oppose any form of amnesty. Cal Grant, associate professor of constitutional law, will propose a conditional amnesty.
The forum is an attempt by local amnesty supporters to attract greater attention to the issue. It also reflects the growing momentum of the nationwide push for amnesty. Today there are 11 bills in the House dealing with amnesty.
AMNESTY IS a gut issue. It reaches far more than the estimated 80,000 persons who would be affected by amnesty legislation. Veterans, the families of men who served or fled and many others—all have a very personal stake in the issue.
Congressmen and pro-amnesty groups expect the issue to gather steam this year because it is a Congressional election year. The Democrats are anarmed, amnesty but their ranks are shrimping.
According to a Gallup poll released this week, 58 per cent of 1,527 Americans interviewed said young men who fled the country to avoid the draft shouldn't be punished. A similar survey last year indicated that 67 per cent held that opinion.
In the latest survey 34 per cent of those questioned said they favored unconditional amnesty, compared with 29 per cent in the earlier survey.
Among those who wanted to see returning draft evaders punished, more than 80 per cent said that a period of service, such as in USAF or STA or the military, should be required.
Two congressional subcommittee hearings, one in each house, have failed to recommend any legislation. No action is being taken on these actions, according to subcommittee members.
TESTIMONY AT THE HEARINGS usually fell into three categories:
—Testimony from those who favored unconditional amnesty. This group included religious organizations and antiwar groups. Unconditional amnesty, they said, would heal the wounds of a divided country and stop "punishing men for being right."
-Testimony from those who favored a conditional amnesty. Conditional amnesty should include either a review board to consider each case individually, or a form of alternative service, such as the Peace Corps or VISTA, or both.
Both Kansas senators have condemned unconditional amnesty and have said they preferred a case-by-case approach and alternative service.
Amnesty is not without precedent in U.S. history. Supporters of the crown during the Revolutionary War weren't punished. After he led the military campaign to put down the rebels, Washington pardoned all the farmers who had participated in the Whisky Rebellion of 1794.
Arnold LeBombard, State Highway Commission maintenance foreman, said recently that he was against amnesty, but he did not. Arnold le Bombard, was killed in the war.
One of the most famous amnesties came after the Civil War when Lincoln and Congress forgave all the Confederate troops, except for a few leaders.
More recently, President Truman established an amnesty board after World War II to determine who should be allowed to go free for military crimes.
"We have so many Vietnam soldiers coming back who are having a terrible time getting jobs. We need to take care of those who went first." he said.
Lebombard said that the night he learned that his son had been killed he tried to call his daughter to tell her, but her line was busy.
"She was trying to call us and tell us that I was a grandfather," he said. "I guess that's not true."
JOHN MUSGRAVE, who will support unconditional amnesty at tonight's meeting, is quiet and soft-soken. He is slender, has long curly black hair which he wears in a ponytail and a beard. He wears a pair of Vietnam canvas combat boots.
Mussgrave serves as a "grunt," or in infantry man, in Delta Company, 1st Battalion, 9th Marine Regiment, 3rd Marine Division near the North Vietnamese border in 1967.
Wayne and "The Sands of Iwo Jima" "had a lot to do with my going into the war."
His Saturday matinee image of war soo disappeared in Vietnam. Musaure said.
disappeared in Vietnam, Musgrave said. "I found out that when someone got shot they didn't just grab a little red spot on their arm," he said. "I found this out the first time I was in our team. He was 18 and his legs had been broken, ball bearings from a bouncing-Betty mine."
THE MARINES RESPECTED men who went to jail rather than going to war, he sailed.
respected somebody with the guts to stand up and be heard. However, they bated men who avoided the military by joining the National Guard in a college deferment, an II-S classified unit.
Musgrave was wounded three times in
Victoria, once by a Chinese handkerchief.
The Marines respected men who went to jail rather than going to war, said John Musgrave, a Vietnam veteran. "We respected somebody with the guts to stand up for what they believed in,"he said.
Draft evasion isn't a new phenomenon either. The exact number of draft evaders in World War I has never been determined. Some estimates go as high as 300,000. In the United States, over 15,000 on draft evasion charges and about 15,000 did some form of alternative service.
Rep. Robert W. Kastenmier, R-Wisconsin, chairman of the House Judiciary subcommittee that held the House amnesty hearings, compiled these figures on the number of persons who would be directly affected by amnesty:
A total of 9,103 convicted draft violators, 216,000 "draft delinquents" who failed to register or report for induction, 32,000 deserters who haven't returned to their officers and officers who received less than honorable discharge from the military from 1963 to 1973.
Estimates of the number of persons living in exile in foreign countries such as Canada vary from about 3,000, by the Pentagon, to 100,000. by the War Resistants League.
once by shrapnel from a rocket and once from a machine gun.
"Now I can't take a single step without remembering the war," he said.
HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE, statistics and expert testimony may be the tools used by congressional subcommittees to make decisions about amnesty, but many local people are guided by their personal experiences.
Mussrave said that when he was in the hospitals he studied international law, the SEAATO treaty and the 1984 Geneva Accord would be the stage for U.S. involvement in Indonesia.
He began his studies to find information to support his stand that the war was justified, and he wrote a book on the subject.
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began to reverse his position as he absorbed more of the history of the conflict.
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Although the "grants" behaved honorably toward each other, the true heroes of the war were the draft evaders, he said.
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"We took the easy way. They didn't. They stood up for what they believed in." he said.
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Annesty would more properly be granted by the men who refused to participate in an immoral, genocidal, war to the rest of the nation, Musgrave said recently.
Alan Fisher is a former American Logist post commander. He fought in France and Germany in World War II. Today he is post Chaplain and personnel director and
Fisher is opposed to any form of amusement. "I think we should look toward the cowboy," he says.
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Fisher said that a claim of a sincere belief that participation in the war was immoral wasn't an adequate defense for desertion or draft evasion. Adequate channels existed for men to obtain conscientious objector status, he said.
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"It would be nice to have a war sometime where no one shows up for it, but the problem comes when only the enemies' forces show up.
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Amnesty wouldn't help to heal the divisions in the country, he said.
Today Boyd is a junior at the University of Kansas, majoring in Latin American Studies. He is against any form of amnesty. Boyd said recently that he wished to emphasize that his judgements were formed independently of the Air Force.
"It it doesn't take much imagination to envision what the world would be like if no one had bothered to oppose Ghengis Kahn or Adolph Hitler," he said.
Fisher said he couldn't accept the argument that the unique nature of the bird was a result of its adaptation.
In 1966 Air Force Maj. Charles Boyd was shot down over North Vietnam during an
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