Court-martial of Susan Schnall

The court-martial of Susan Schnall, a lieutenant (junior grade) U.S. Navy nurse stationed at the Oakland Naval Hospital in Oakland, California, took place in early 1969 during the Vietnam War. Her political activities, which led to the military trial, may have garnered some of the most provocative news coverage during the early days of the U.S. antiwar movement against that war. In October 1968, the San Francisco Chronicle called her the “Peace Leaflet Bomber” for raining tens of thousands of antiwar leaflets from a small airplane over several San Francisco Bay Area military installations and the deck of an aircraft carrier. The day after this “bombing” run, she marched in her officer’s uniform at the front of a large antiwar demonstration, knowing it was against military regulations. While the Navy was court-martialing her for "conduct unbecoming an officer", she was publicly telling the press, "As far as I'm concerned, it's conduct unbecoming to officers to send men to die in Vietnam."

Background Enlistment and experiences Susan Schnall was born on March 9, 1943, in Quantico, Virginia, to Harold and Anne LeVine. Her father, a first lieutenant in the U.S. Marine Corps, was killed during the Battle of Guam in 1944 when she was 14 months old. She attended Stanford University’s five-year nursing program and signed up to be a Navy nurse when the military promised to pay her last two years of education. Even at that point she “was against all war, all violence” and explained this to the military recruiter. But she did want “to alleviate suffering by caring for wounded troops” and was convinced to proceed when the recruiter said nurses take care of all human beings, “whether they’re the enemy or not.” While at Stanford in 1967, she met and married Peter Schnall who was in medical school.

In the Navy she was assigned to the Oakland Naval Hospital where her work brought her face to face with the horrors of the war. “I can still remember the nighttime screams of pain and fear” she recalled years later. More, she felt the whole purpose of military medicine “is to take wounded guys out of the battlefield and put them back in again as quickly as possible.” This put her in a difficult position because the military is known for its strict discipline and harsh punishments for disobedience. But Schnall told Redbook magazine, which ran a long story on her in November 1969, that by the summer of 1968 she had “lost her fear of the military”. “It simply vanished I don’t know why”. At that point she felt she had real freedom and she could take full responsibility for her actions. She felt this was a violation of their constitutional right to circulate information about the march. She recalled seeing on the news that B-52 bombers were “dropping leaflets on the Vietnamese urging them to defect.” She thought, “if the United States can do that in Vietnam, then why can’t I do it here?”

Together with her husband; James Rondo, a Vietnam war veteran; and the pilot, William E. Gray, they loaded up a small plane with leaflets and “bombed” the military installations in the Bay Area with tens of thousands of flyers announcing the demonstration.

Marching in uniform

When Schnall reported for duty the evening before the planned demonstration she was handed a newly issued regulation, ALNAV 53, that explicitly prohibited members of the Navy from attending “partisan political” events in uniform. Violators would be punishable under the Uniform Code of Military Justice. This new regulation reflected growing concern within the military’s upper ranks that GI resistance to the war was becoming a problem, and they were particularly worried about GIs protesting in uniform. During the weeks prior to the march, GIs became bolder in their resistance. At a late September press conference, three active duty GIs, U.S. Air Force Airmen First Class Michael Locks and John Bright, and Second Lieutenant Hugh Smith appeared in their Air Force uniforms promoting the march. The Ally, a GI underground newspaper covering the press conference noted, “If they can openly organize and publicize this march, so can you. March with them....” She marched arm-in-arm with retired Brigadier General Hugh B. Hester and Locks also in his uniform. Airman Michael Locks, Lieutenant Susan Schnall and Brigadier General Hugh B. Hester

Growing GI resistance The military had already witnessed increasing GI resistance to the war within their ranks. Prior resistance had been individual, like Army Captain Howard Levy's refusal to train Green Berets, or sporadic group actions like the Fort Hood Three, who collectively refused orders to combat, and the Fort Hood 43, who refused orders to deploy to the 1968 Democratic National Convention in Chicago for riot-control duties. The October demonstration in San Francisco contained a larger contingent of active duty GIs than ever before in an anti-Vietnam war demonstration, and several of them marched, spoke and gave press conferences in uniform.

Court-martial Charges

Two days after the demonstration, both Schnall and Locks were charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and were set to receive general courts-martial. On November 14, 1968, Schnall faced a formal hearing at the Treasure Island Naval Base where she was officially charged with disobeying a direct order not to wear her uniform and conduct unbecoming an officer. The San Francisco Chronicle ran a smiling photo of her with the caption “She is charged with leaflet bombing”. She was officially charged with marching in the GIs and Vets March for Peace in her uniform and dropping leaflets “with design to promote disloyalty and disaffection among members of the armed forces of the United States.” If convicted on both charges, she faced up to four years in military prison.

Verdict At the court-martial in late January 1969, the military presented evidence of Schnall’s political activity, which no one disputed, while Schnall testified in her own defense arguing that the order barring her from participating in a “partisan political” demonstration was a violation of her right to free speech. She said she was an officer and a member of the military, and felt it was “proper and dignified” to wear the uniform while exercising her right to say she was against the war. Locks, one of the principal organizers of the October 12 demonstration, was separately court-martialed and sentenced to a year at hard labor, forfeiture of all pay, reduction in rank to airman basic and a bad conduct discharge.

Aftermath Reaction Schnall later told Redbook that she finally felt good about herself as Lieutenant Schnall. “It represented not what is going on in Vietnam, but my own stand for peace, for an end to all wars.” She described the march and speech she gave as “my coming out as a human being.” Due to an obscure Navy policy that any woman sentenced to less than a year in prison cannot be confined, Schnall served out her sentence as a nurse at the Oakland Naval Hospital.

Continued activism While still working at the Navy hospital, Schnall continued to organize against the war, helping to create an antiwar GI coffeehouse and writing for local GI underground newspapers. Once out of the Navy, she moved to New York City where she worked in the intensive care unit at Lincoln Hospital in the South Bronx while also working with the Medical Committee for Human Rights and a group called Medical Aid for Indochina that raised money for medical supplies that went to North Vietnam and the National Liberation Front. For many years she was the executive administrator of Quality/Risk/Care Management, Regulatory Affairs, and Medical Records at a number of public hospitals in New York City, retiring from Bellevue Hospital Center in 2006. She was an Assistant Adjunct Professor, New York University, School of Professional Studies, Healthcare Management for over 20 years. After retiring from hospital work she traveled to Vietnam where she saw children who had been born with terrible deformities and birth defects caused by the U.S. chemical Agent Orange. She began working with an organization called Vietnam Agent Orange Relief and Responsibility Campaign and is now on their Board.

Schnall is currently the President of the Board of Directors of the Veterans for Peace organization. In August, 2016 she presented a paper on the Health Effects on American Service Members who served in Vietnam at an international conference on Agent Orange/dioxin in Hanoi. In April, 2015 she was awarded an Honorary Doctor of Humanities by Ohio Wesleyan University. When asked in a 2019 interview to reflect on her life she said she hoped she had been able to educate and inform people “that you can take a step against the reigning authority or the reigning government, and you can say, ‘I disagree with you, and I’m going to do something about it.’ That you not only will survive, but you’ll survive with your moral conscience intact.”