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Supporting Materials for Sir! No Sir!
More GIs In Anti-War Ranks
Ft. Sill Okla: Nine members of the Army's 2nd Battalion at Ft. Sill are being investigated by the FBI. They attended the court-martial June 1 of a fellow soldier, Pvt. Andrew Stapp, and recently signed telegrams of support to Capt. Howard Levy and Pfc. Paul B. Ilg.
Ilg, also stationed at Ft. Sill, had been scheduled for court-martial June 12 because he accused his battery commander of lying at Stapp's court-martial. The Ilg trial was postponed to June 26 at the request of attorney David Rein. who also was Btapp's counsel.
Stapp, found guilty of refusing to obey an order to open his footlocker and surrender anti-war literature, was sentenced to 45 days at hard labor, reduction in pay grade and forfeiture of almost a month's pay.
Levy, whose court-marital at Ft. Jackson, S.C. ended June 3. was sentenced to three years at hard labor. The young dermatologist had refused to train Special Forces aid men, members of the Green Berets.
In addition to FBI Investigation of the nine soldiers, six men of this same battallion have had their security clearance lifted for "fraternizing with a known cmmunist" - supposedly Stapp. Stapp was among six signers from Ft. Sill of a telegram of support to Levy.
Another signer, Sp/5 Paul J. Gaedtke, has been called to fill out a "data for the accused" form-a prerequisite in the steps before a court-martial.
Gaedtke has refused to fulfill his prescribed duties since Stapp's court-martial because of his disgust at the whole trial procedure. He considers his refusal to take part In the Army apparatus as the maximum expression of his disaffiliation from U.S. imperialist acts In Vietnam.
In an interview with this writer Gaedtke defended the rights of GIs to dissent and to have a say about their own welfare. "Men like me have no way out of being cannon fodder while West Pointers and ROTC men have, to a greater or lesser degree based on their class background, the power to manipulate their assignments.
"Any man with the most limited human instincts tries to find a way out of Vietnam. The only way open to me and men of my class Is disaffiliation. When I signed up, I believed we were fighting an enemy, but as I became aware of the genocide and the aggression and the war crimes being conducted by the U.S., I sought further information. I read everything I could about the war and began to formulate my own opinion. I saw that we were completely wrong.
"The understanding of this war made me much more class-conscious. My only alternative was to break In any manner with the US. imperialist Army apparatus."
Gaedtke comes from a family of military officers and joined the Army 18 months ago for a six-year enlistment.
The Bond, vol. 1, no. 2