Woodrow Wilson News & Publications

WW NEWSLETTER EXTRA: Fall 2008

VIETNAM GI GAVE SOLDIERS A VOICE

Jeff Sharlet WF '67

Jeff Sharlet WF '67, linguist, U.S. Army Security Agency, 1963-1964.

“Dedicated to Jeff Sharlet, founder of Vietnam GI, the first GI underground paper,  reads a screen at the end of Sir! No Sir!, an award-winning documentary film on the antiwar movement among active-duty soldiers during the Vietnam War.

The movement owed a considerable debt to Jeff Sharlet WF  as the creator of Vietnam GI (VGI). The film documents the importance of the more than 300 such newspapers for which VGI paved the way, produced and distributed on both domestic and overseas bases by military personnel and veterans.

Jeff Sharlet did not live to see the end of the Vietnam conflict, dying of cancer in 1969 at the age of 27. His older brother, Robert Sharlet, professor of political science at Union College, is now preparing a book about Jeff. Bob’s son, Jeff’s namesake and a journalist himself, is co-author.

AN ALTERNATE ROUTE

When a family financial crisis interrupted Jeff’s undergraduate studies, he enlisted in an Army intelligence unit. Expecting to study Russian and be posted in Europe, he was instead bumped to the Vietnamese course.

The year was 1962.

“Unbeknownst to anybody but the Pentagon, they were building up reserves of Vietnamese linguists,  says Bob. “Most of us didn’t know where Vietnam was in 1962. [Jeff] said to one of the regular Army sergeants, ‘Sarge, what would happen if you flunked out of Vietnamese?  And the sarge said, ‘Son, no one flunks out of Vietnamese.’