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.
Leaflet “bombing”
Schnall heard about an upcoming GI and Veterans March for Peace scheduled to take place in San Francisco on October 12, 1968, and decided to get involved. With other organizers, she put up demonstration posters around the hospital base, which she said “were quickly torn down” and base personnel were “forbidden to receive or circulate information”. 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. This was one of only two instances when the anti-Vietnam war movement is known to have taken to the air. The other was during the efforts to stop the from sailing to Vietnam in 1971 when recently retired navy flight instructor Lieutenant John Huyler flew a CONSTELLATION STAY HOME FOR PEACE banner numerous times over the city of San Diego.
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.