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Operation RAW: Vietnam Veterans Against the War Protest

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    The Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW) is a national veterans' organization that was founded in New York City in 1967 to provide a voice for the growing number of Vietnam veterans that disagreed with the war, as well as to advocate for the rights and needs of veterans today. 
Operation RAW (Rapid American Withdrawal) was the VVAW's first national action. Held in the spring of 1970, members of VVAW marched from Trenton, New Jersey, down to Valley Forge, Pennsylvania. During the three-day-march there were reenactments of search-and-destroy missions, aiming to showcase how Vietnamese people were treated by American soldiers. 

"I was doing something in town and I learned about a protest march that was going on. So I went down and got a flier. It talked about Operation RAW. It was a march from Trenton to the Valley Forge.

So, it was a bunch of Vietnam veterans [that] were going to march from Trenton to Valley Forge. And they would stop at various shopping centers along the way armed with tiny little plastic M16's. 

And members of the Philadelphia Theater of some sort would, guerrilla theater of some sort, would come out and pretend to be villagers. We would go in -- actually I was not in that. I was driving an MGB GT and I was following the march, driving, and sleeping in that thing. But keeping up with it. 

That was the thing -- [they went] into the shopping center. Take the villagers, tie them up, shoot them, that kind of thing. It was just to bring attention to what we were doing [in Vietnam]." 

The Vietnam Veterans Against the War was a very different organization from it's start -- especially in terms of the veterans it represented. As the first organization of veterans who protested a war they had fought in -- a still ongoing war at that --  it was also different in how the organization and its members were received by others: the American public, government entities (like the Veterans Administration), and even other veterans organizations such as American Legion or Veterans of Foreign Wars (VFW). 

"I remember going through those VFW -- in front of the VFW facilities and people are, 'why didn't you go there, hippie?' [They] would not accept the fact that we were Vietnam veterans protesting the war. Would not accept it." 

This page has paths:

  1. Veterans Against War Jason Higgins
  2. Steve Sober's Story of Turning Against the War Jason Higgins

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