Your Military Left: San Antonio’s Underground GI Newspaper

Between 1967 and 1971, American GIs stationed on military bases across the world, wrote, produced, published and distributed over 130 newspapers.[1] These newspapers, edited and written anonymously and often distributed clandestinely, offer a unique window on the activities and thoughts of many servicemen who opposed the US intervention in Southeast Asia and found the situation in Vietnam intolerable.

Often using generic military commands as titles (Your Military Left, About Face!, All Ready on the Left, Fall in at Ease, As You Were), the papers not only deliberately subverted traditional military ethos, but also alerted potential readers to the contents and sentiments expressed within the pages. The reader’s interests dictated the papers’ contents and, not surprisingly, GI publications often solicited written and financial contributions from their readers and subscribers.[2]

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