In the summer of 1966, Howard Petrick was drafted into the U.S. Army. He had already been influenced by the growing movement against the U.S. war in Vietnam and had been drawn to socialist politics.

When Petrick arrived for basic training, dissent was brewing in the military about the war, especially among Black GIs, many of whom felt strongly that their fight was at home in the Civil Rights movement. The military brass took note, trying to isolate and discipline those soldiers who opposed U.S. involvement in the war. Petrick was among those singled out.

How Petrick and others fought to defend their right to free speech while in uniform is instructive for those today who may find themselves in a similar position. As the U.S. government ramps up its imperialist interventions overseas and its use of the military at home to criminalize immigrant workers and quell dissent, questions are being raised about the constitutionality of Washington’s deployments in U.S. cities as well as Venezuela and elsewhere in the Caribbean. Groups of veterans and active-duty service members such as About Face: Veterans Against the War are actively reaching out to educate today’s troops that putting on the uniform does not mean an end to their constitutional rights.

We publish below a recent interview with Howard Petrick that first appeared in the print magazine and online journal Against the Current (ATC) in its January-February 2026 edition. Headlines, subheadings, graphics, and editor’s notes are from the original.

A special thanks to interviewer Dianne Feeley and to the editorial board of ATC for their permission to republish.

— World-Outlook editors

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An Antiwar GI’s Story: An interview with Howard Petrick

Dianne Feeley for ATC: How did you first get interested in politics?

Howard Petrick: I grew up in Erie, PA, but left after high school for Minneapolis where I worked on the railroad. I was in Chicago the summer of 1965 when Martin Luther King held anti-discrimination meetings and demonstrations. When I moved back to Minneapolis that fall, I contacted the Socialist Labor Party.

I’d read an article in Esquire magazine about the free speech movement in Berkeley. I knew I was against the war in Vietnam; I decided to go to their office. They told me to read Daniel DeLeon, that these were not socialist but petty bourgeois movements led by young people who didn’t know anything. I thought, well that’s me. I wanted to do something and not sit around and read books about it.

I heard there were anti-war committee meetings taking place at the University of Minnesota and I started going to them. I decided by then I didn’t want to work for the railroads anymore. I was just bouncing around from job to job. I had a job sanding down hockey sticks and another putting handles on screwdrivers. I was drifting along.

It never occurred to me that I could join anything; I just went to the anti-war meetings. When they planned a rally, I said I’ll help.

The rally was at Seventh and Hennepin in downtown Minneapolis. We were trying to inform people about the war in Vietnam. There were probably 25 of us standing on a street corner with a step ladder. Someone would go up a few steps on the ladder and start talking.

Finding Socialism

As the rally was winding down, Larry Siegel asked me if I wanted to come up to the Young Socialist Alliance (YSA) office right across the street. They were having a social event. I talked to people who were involved in the anti-war movement and it all sounded good to me.

They said Farrell Dobbs, who was a leader in the Socialist Workers Party and led the 1934 truck driver strike, was going to be speaking the next Friday. I went to that forum; it convinced me that I should be involved with these people. They had a nice library there and on the days I wasn’t working I’d go down and sit and read in their library.

One day I went up to Ray Dunne, another participant in the 1934 strikes, and asked if he could tell me a little more about them. He said he could talk to me for weeks but urged me to read the bound volumes of The Organizer. I read them from beginning to end. It was like reading a novel that you couldn’t put down.

ATC: You were really thirsty to learn!

HP: Yeah, I think I was. I felt I owed it to Ray because I asked him a question and he gave me an answer. If I wanted to talk to him again, I’d have to have a specific question.

ATC: When did you get a draft notice?

HP: I left home when I was 17. At that time, you were supposed to update your address with the draft board but I didn’t. Once when I went home and saw some of my old high school friends, they said every time people went to the draft board, they called out my name. I thought, well no sense telling them where I am now.

But one day I answered my door and it was the FBI. They handed me a subpoena to show up at the draft board in Minneapolis. That was for a physical.

By that time, I had joined the YSA. They said the board probably wouldn’t draft me and advised me not to be overly cooperative. When I was handed papers to fill out at the draft board, I wrote my name at the top, then turned them in. I wouldn’t give them any more information.

They said okay and sent me home. Then they did an investigation on me. In July 1966 they called me for induction. By that time, I was a member of both the Socialist Workers Party (SWP) and the YSA. Everybody said I didn’t have to worry because the FBI knew I was a member.

I went to the office not expecting to be drafted but, sure enough, they drafted me. They asked if I was going to refuse induction; I told them no, I was just refusing to fill out the forms.

For the induction procedure, they call everybody’s name and you would just stand up and take the oath of allegiance. They asked me if I would take the oath and I told them no. That day they called everybody’s name and announced that if you don’t want to take the oath of allegiance, don’t stand up. So I sat there while everybody else got up and took the oath of allegiance. And that was it.

We were sent to Fort Leonard Wood, Missouri, near St. Louis. They had been having a heat wave that killed 125 people in St. Louis if I remember right. When we got there at 4 AM it was 92 degrees. We were assigned to a barracks but just laid around for a week.

Some of the guys asked me why I was being treated differently. Was my dad a senator or something? I said no, I’m against the war in Vietnam and I wouldn’t fill out my papers.

They asked why was I against the war. I told them I didn’t think we should go halfway around the world and try to kill farmers because they don’t agree with us politically. Some of them would say they’re for the war and they thought we should be fighting communism. I said, “People have the right to believe whatever they want, don’t they? Why should we tell them what their government should be?”

When we finally got into basic training, Mullen, a guy in my platoon from Michigan, told me he had been a school teacher. He got fired for not having the students recite the Pledge of Allegiance. And then he got drafted.

He and I started talking to some other guys about the war and pretty soon we had a group that would get together nights and talk. We decided to send a petition to president Lyndon Johnson and ask him why we might be sent to Vietnam when a war hadn’t been declared.

We hung the petition up on the bulletin board; about 20 guys signed. But before we could take it down and send it off to Johnson, one of the officers took it and we never got it back.

There was a class in basic training on “Know Your Enemy, the Viet Cong.” The captain who was leading the class was telling us what he had been told.

Mullen and I would take turns raising our hands and asking questions. The captain said, “You can’t tell communists from regular people.” I said that if elections had been held in Vietnam when they were supposed to have been, Ho Chi Minh would have won the election by about 80%. If they were so worried about democracy, why didn’t they let them have the election? The captain said that’s “communist propaganda.” I said, “No, that’s what President Eisenhower said.”

And then Mullen got up and asked a question. The captain was so rattled by us asking a couple of questions that he dismissed the class early and said we’ll deal with these questions next week.

A lot of guys started coming by our room asking us, “How’d you find out all that stuff about Vietnam?” Soon we had a pretty good-sized group of guys who were anti-war. I was getting a lot of stuff sent from the anti-war committee in Minneapolis. And guys were taking it and reading it.

We also had a Black drill sergeant who had just come back from Vietnam. He saw me reading The Autobiography of Malcolm X. He asked why I was reading that. I told him that Malcolm X was a pretty interesting guy and I wanted to know more about his life and why he thought what he did.

He knew I was against the war and said, “I wish you guys wouldn’t be quite so vocal in the classes you’re having. You’re just raising a lot of trouble.” He told me that “it doesn’t make it easy on me because I’m supposed to discipline you guys.” He added, “I just came back from Vietnam and I’ve got to admit things are pretty messed up over there.” He was as lenient with us as he could be.

We carried on regular discussions about the war and were pretty open about it. There were guys who were pro-war but they never had any reasons for their views.

At Fort Hood

ATC: After basic training, where were you sent? What did you do?

HP: By the end of the summer, I was sent to Fort Hood, Texas, 60 miles north of Austin. At that time there were 40,000 GIs at Fort Hood; it was one of the country’s biggest bases. All they did was train infantry and armored battalions to go to Vietnam.

I was to become a field wireman, the guys who ran wires between companies. The job was to run radio connections in the jungle. Since the life expectancy on that job was about a week, I did not cherish the assignment.

While we were still at the reception center, a sergeant came out and said, “We need a dozen volunteers.” Of course, nobody volunteered. Then he said “Okay, you first 12 guys in the front row, you’re all going to be cooks.” And I was one of them. That turned out to be really a great thing if you wanted to get to know everybody and try to organize people.

At Fort Hood the guys were mostly from New Jersey and California — totally different from the guys I was with in basic training who were mostly farm kids from the Midwest. This group were getting marijuana in the mail from their girlfriends.

We were into the Jefferson Airplane and Janice Joplin, and that whole music thing. A lot of them were against the war. They’d say, “Yeah, man, I’m against the war, fuck this war, I don’t want to go fight.”

Within a couple of weeks, seven or eight of us were meeting and talking about how we could get more people talking against the war. We would go into the barracks — big bays with 50 people in a bay — and we’d stand up on a footlocker and start talking about the war.

We would try to get someone who was for the war to debate with us. We found that was the easiest way to bring up all the discrepancies of why we were fighting in Vietnam. There weren’t a lot of guys who would get up and speak for the war. But when there were, we wouldn’t try to destroy them; we would just try to reason. Having this open debate was how we could get many people to listen. It worked really well.

Then we started reaching out to the other companies in our battalion. And we were able to do that. We treated everybody like they were against the war. After all, the Fort Hood Three case had happened right before I got there.

[On June 30, 1966 Private First Class James Johnson, Private David A. Samas, and Private Dennis Mora, stationed at Fort Hood, refused their deployment to Vietnam and were subsequently court martialed. At their courts martial, each argued the war was illegal and immoral and cited the Nuremberg Code. Their case was widely followed in the press. —ed.]

A couple of chaplains built a meeting place for everybody. They posted signs around the base announcing a coffee house for GIs with an open mic. You were invited to do what you wanted to do — stand-up comedy, songs, poetry. They had tables and chairs and a soda machine. It wasn’t something you could do every night but at most once a week, or maybe twice a month.

ATC: What was the atmosphere like? Was it pretty much an anti-war hangout?

HP: For us it was. Guys would bring their guitars and sing folk songs. It was a place to meet people. We did it in sort of a more organized way. Those of us who were already against the war used it to talk with people from around the base. It wasn’t a real big place, probably 50 people on a good night. There would be two or three guys from this company and two or three from another.

Then I think they just realized that we were using it to our advantage. They didn’t want it to be a political thing. They just wanted to get guys together. So, they shut it down.

The Movement

ATC: Did you go into Austin?

HP: There was a huge SDS down at the University of Texas, several hundred members. There was also a much smaller Committee to End the War. I got in touch with them and they said I should come down and speak at an anti-war meeting. I spoke in uniform at a pretty good-sized public meeting, probably 75-100 people.

A lot of the students were interested in anti-war GIs; it was a novel thing to them. They said, “We run into guys from Fort Hood all the time down here, looking for something to do.” I said they should start talking to them about the war.

We had demonstrations down there that were led by GIs. A lot of GIs at Fort Hood were politically active and wanted to do stuff. They would have these celebrations down there at Pease Park and 15-20 GIs would show up.

ATC: Were there GI coffee houses in the Austin area that you might go to?

HP: None existed at that time. I got out in March of ‘68 and was just hearing about coffee houses. Eventually they did have one down in Austin. It was called The Strut. [Actually the GI coffee house was called the Oleo Strut and it was in Killeen, not Austin. –ed.]

I actually thought it was one of the worst because instead of making it about the war, they organized guys to boycott the jewelry stores. Guys would buy stuff to send to their girlfriends; they thought these stores were charging too much money. And so that’s what they started organizing the GIs around.

When this coffee house started, it sort of pulled them away from their being anti-war into other political stuff — around the elections and stuff like that. I just thought you’re missing the whole idea.

Interrogation

ATC: Did you get in trouble because of speaking in uniform?

HP: No, not then. But in the spring of 1967, I attended the YSA convention in Detroit and got back to Fort Hood on April 1. I went to the barracks to drop my stuff off and a roommate told me that the day after I left, they had a big shake down inspection and took all the anti-war and socialist literature away from everybody who had it.

Then they quarantined about 20 guys, interrogated them and offered them all undesirable discharges. They all took them. By the time I got back, the guys I had been working with were gone.

After I heard that story, I went to sign in with the battalion authorities. They called military intelligence, who came down with a Jeep and a couple of MPs. They took me up to their headquarters saying they wanted to ask me some questions. I told them I wasn’t going to answer any unless I had a lawyer. They said that had been arranged. The JAG officer, a lawyer, was waiting for me.

He told me that they were thinking about arresting me for creating “disaffection” and possibly treason. He said, “They want to arrest you and that’s why I’m here. But I don’t think they have evidence of anything that you’ve done that’s illegal.”

He said the answer to their questions would determine whether or not I would be arrested. All he could tell me was that he’d sit with me at the hearing. If I wanted to talk with him about how to answer a question, we would stop and I could consult with him.

We went back out and the captain said they’d like to ask me some questions. I asked how many and he replied 72, and depending on how I’d answer, maybe more.

I said, “I’m not going to answer any. I’ve been traveling all day and I’m really tired.” They said they thought I should, that it’s to my benefit to answer. I said no and then they went into the captain’s office and shut the door.

They called someone, who I assume was at the Pentagon or in military intelligence. All I could hear is the one side of the conversation, “well, no, he won’t,” and “he won’t answer.”

Then the captain came back and had the clerk type up a statement. The statement said “I refuse to answer any questions.” He wanted me to sign it. I said, “No, I’m not answering any questions and I’m not signing anything. I haven’t done anything wrong.”

About one o’clock in the morning, after another call to intelligence, they let me go back to my barracks, where I was under “barrack’s arrest.” When the lawyer drove me back, he said that they really didn’t have anything that they could charge me with, and that’s the problem they’re having. He advised me to get a haircut, not walk on the grass, make sure I always salute NCOs when I go by. Just keep my nose clean.

Then I called Larry Seigel, who had been my roommate in Minneapolis, and told him what was happening. He said, “We’ll see what we can do here, and I’ll get back to you.” He called back in a few days and said he talked to the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee. The Rabinowitz and Boudin law office had been looking for a case about civil rights in the Army, and they would take the case pro bono.

The YSA would help start what became the Committee to Defend the Rights of Pfc. Howard Petrick. A couple of weeks later Carolyn Lund and Lou Jones [from the YSA national office] came down and interviewed me. They put together a pamphlet for my defense.

ATC: How long were you confined to your barrack?

HP: Until they found out that Leonard Boudin was my lawyer, which was four or five days. Then my lawyer and I went to MI headquarters where they said I didn’t have to answer questions and I was off barrack’s arrest. That was it.

ATC: After you got off barrack’s arrest and your 20 closest friends were gone, what was the mood in your barracks and at work?

HP: My company got notification that they were going to go to Vietnam. But I was transferred to another company. They had asked me if I would go to Vietnam if I was ordered. I said, “Of course, why not? All the other guys are going, why can’t I go?”

I think they thought I was going to refuse and they were going to get me on that. The next day, I was transferred into a company of guys that were mostly coming back from Vietnam. I think once that happened, they’d decided I was going to be discharged, but they wanted to give me an undesirable discharge. I refused; I wanted an honorable discharge because I hadn’t done anything wrong.

Later that fall I spoke at an anti-war convention in Chicago. Given that [U.S. Army general] Westmoreland had come back from Vietnam and spoken before the New York City Press Club and Congress in his uniform, I decided to speak in my uniform. Why shouldn’t I be able to speak at an anti-war conference in my uniform?

An interview with me made national news. That created a stir in all of Fort Hood. Everybody in my battalion knew about the interview because it was played on the rock and roll station we listened to in the mess hall. And then it was on the national news, which I think was Huntley & Brinkley. Guys from all over the base started coming by the barracks asking for me.

I realized I had the upper hand at that point. My lawyer said, “They don’t have anything on you so you can do what you want as long as what you’re doing is legal. You can talk about the war anywhere you want.” I asked, “in uniform”? He said, “There’s no regulation that you can’t. So, yeah.”

ATC: Were people scared of you while you were under arrest?

HP: I was transferred from the company mess hall, where there were three or four cooks, to a battalion mess hall, which had like nine or 10 of us on a shift. Instead of feeding 150, we fed up to 2500-2900 people. When I first got there, all the other cooks were standoffish.

One night I asked one of the cooks on my shift, Ernie Shank, a Black guy from Philadelphia, if he’d like to go into town and see a movie with me. At first he said no, but then he said, “Yeah, fuck him, I’ll go with you.” On the bus ride there I asked why the guys were hesitant to talk to me.

Before I had arrived, a guy from Intelligence came to the mess hall and announced that, “A cook is coming here who’s a communist, so you guys don’t want to get to know him too well. He’s going to get you in a bunch of trouble.”

Shank explained, “We were expecting some big thug of a guy who’d beat the shit out of us if we didn’t do what you told us to do. But, hell, you’re just a nice guy and a really good cook so everybody’s sort of saying well he seems okay to me.

“They’re all afraid to talk to you. They don’t want to get in trouble. I just figured, fuck it, if you’re a good cook, I’ll hang out with you because you make it all the easier for me. I’ll tell the guys you’re okay, not that they listen to me.”

His recommendation broke through the barrier in two or three days. Guys treated me like one of the regulars. Of course, there were a couple guys, like one from Oklahoma who was a real anti-communist and another from West Virginia. Sometimes they’d give me a bunch of shit but it never turned into anything.

Another guy busted into my room one afternoon as I was lying on my cot reading; he wanted to fight me because I was a pacifist. I said, “I don’t know where you heard that but I’m not a pacifist. If you want to fuck with me then expect I’m going to give you some shit back.” I told him I’m against the war in Vietnam, and that seemed to be okay with him.

Once the Tet Offensive happened [the beginning of 1968 —ed.], a lot of stuff started happening. That happened right before I got out.

GIs coming back from Vietnam were bringing back duffel bags of marijuana. They were bringing back heroin. The company clerk in my company sold drugs openly. Everybody knew him and you could buy heroin, marijuana, LSD, amphetamines. It would have been hard for the officers not to know that.

I knew one guy that never said anything other than “Wow.” He was totally stoned. He was just ruined, really ruined.

My lawyer kept telling me that I was going to get an undesirable discharge, and I wouldn’t have the option of turning it down. What happened is that I think the paperwork was sent to the Fourth Army at St. San Antonio. It got lost in a file there.

But on March 15, 1968, I came back from Austin, and when I signed in the first sergeant told me I was getting discharged. Normally a discharge takes two weeks, but he told me to get my equipment and a driver would take me around to get my medical stuff. I did it all in about three hours. I was to be off the base by 5pm.

By the time I was discharged there were over 300 newspapers that GIs published on bases all over the world. I did a tour to gather support in appealing my undesirable discharge. I spoke at the April 27, 1968, international demonstration against the war on the Boston Commons to 15,000. Even though I was barred from all military property, I was able to go onto bases. My discharge accused me of fomenting “disloyalty and disaffection.” [Originally Petrick said he received a dishonorable discharge but it was really an undesirable one, as his lawyer informed him it would be. –ed.]

Just a few months later, a company from Fort Hood was called up to go to Chicago for the 1968 Democratic Party convention. The whole group of Black GIs refused. It was a big deal at the time that these Black GIs refused orders to go and be used as cops. [One hundred and sixty Black GIs sat down on the base, protesting the direct order. Eventually 43, including several who had returned from Vietnam, were court-martialed —ed.]

January-February 2026, ATC 240

Postscript by World-Outlook

For more information on GI resistance to the U.S. war in Vietnam see the following published by Against the Current last year on the 50th anniversary of the defeat of U.S. imperialism in its war on Vietnam: The Soldier’s Revolt, Part I & The Soldier’s Revolt, Part II.

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