Sir! No Sir!: The Story of the GI Movement to End the War in Vietnam

by David Zeiger
June 19, 2005
Displaced FilmsShow more

Sir! NO! SIR! tells an almost entirely forgotten story of the military men and women who forced the U.S. government to end the Vietnam War

This feature-length documentary focuses on the efforts by troops in the U.S. military during the Vietnam War to oppose the war effort by peaceful demonstration and subversion. It speaks mainly to veterans, but serves as a ready reminder to civilians that soldiers may oppose war as stridently as any civilian, and at greater personal peril.

During the Vietnam War, the Pentagon documented 503,926 “incidents of desertion.”

Sir No Sir! tells for the first time on film the story of the 1960s GI movement against the war in Vietnam. The film explores the profound impact that the movement had on the war, and investigates the way in which the GI Movement has been erased from public memory.

In the 1960s an anti-war movement emerged that altered the course of history. This movement didn't take place on college campuses, but in barracks and on aircraft carriers. It flourished in army stockades, navy brigs and in the dingy towns that surround military bases. It penetrated elite military colleges like West Point. And it spread throughout the battlefields of Vietnam. It was a movement no one expected, least of all those in it. Hundreds went to prison and thousands into exile. And by 1971 it had, in the words of one colonel, infested the entire armed services. Yet today few people know about the GI Movement against the war in Vietnam.

The Collapse of the Armed Forces
Col. Robert D. Heinl, Jr.
June 7, 1971
North American Newspaper Alliance
Armed Forces Journal
https://ia601505.us.archive.org/24/items/1971-06-07-the-collapse-of-the-armed-forces-heninl_202208/1971-06-07-The%20Collapse%20of%20the%20Armed%20Forces-Heninl.pdf