My Rendezvous with Jane Fonda
Jane Fonda arrived at the barricaded gate of Fort Hood, Texas with a small cadre of long-haired ex-GIs fresh from a breakfast rally at the Oleo Strut. Barbarella was just beginning to make her mark as a Vietnam War protester in May of 1970.
I abandoned my cluttered desk at the Armored Sentinel to check out the scene. I was a skinny, bespectacled nerd who was coming off an infantry tour in Nam. The vagaries of the Jungle War had transformed me from a grunt into a combat photojournalist. I was anxiously awaiting discharge in June while writing for the base newspaper.
Fonda had not yet become “Hanoi Jane.” This would come later as a result of her viral photo sitting at the controls of a North Vietnamese anti-aircraft gun in Hanoi. Today, she was leading soldiers that she met at the Oleo Strut, a local coffee house which was an unlikely bastion for the anti-war movement in the staunchly conservative CenTex. The Strut featured a shadow menu of mind-altering substances, and activists printed a counterculture newspaper there. Future film maker, David Zeiger, was a teenage employee. Much later, he chronicled the GI anti-war movement in the decorated documentary film, Sir, No Sir.
Military Police were everywhere at the gate. A few soldiers like me arrived from work dressed in fatigues. As the protesters were turned away at the barricade, things turned serious inside the wire.
MP’s began wrestling with GI’s. Handcuffs were applied, and some of us were whisked away in trucks to MP Headquarters. We were interrogated in turn, and then we were dispatched to face our individual commanding officers.
The full bird colonel in charge of the Armored Sentinel was perplexed to see me. He quickly focused on the Combat Infantry Badge sewed on my fatigue shirt. “Disgraceful,” he barked. “Why is a combat veteran like you consorting with those anti-war communists?”
My time in the Green Machine was running short. I wondered if the stockade loomed in my immediate future. Time spent there would not count toward discharge. My escape from the Army might be pushed way down the road. I had to pull something out of my butt right now!
“Sir,” I intoned in my best military voice. “If you had a body like Jane Fonda, I would go to the gate to see you!” The silence was both deafening and pregnant.
“Crawford,” the stern colonel finally snapped as he shifted to look out a nearby window. “When I turn back around, don’t be here!”
I bolted for the door like a scalded dog, and Jane Fonda soon headed to Hanoi to consort with the enemy. Today, her acting continues to be productive even as she is still vilified on various military websites.
And what of the Oleo Strut where Fonda flirted with the fledgling Texas anti-war movement? The smoky coffee house is etched in history as a seminal hotbed of activism for the committed ex-GIs who first brought the sordid events of the Nam home to the American public. This history is not acknowledged on any current military websites.
Bill Crawford is still a writer and photographer. He lives in Winston Salem, NC. He recently began writing about the war after a 45 year silence. His work includes both fiction and memoirs.
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