BRIGHTON - In his youth, Vietnam War veteran Charles Elliston recalls, "I was a conservative. I used to think war protesters were nut cases - agents of the enemy."
Today, former Chief Warrant Officer Elliston, 55, is an outspoken anti-war activist who proudly wears his Army uniform to give himself credibility.
The uniform is immaculate, as are his Vietnam combat ribbons, his Purple Heart, and the silver wings with wreath and star that identify him as a senior Army aviator.
Elliston also wears pins on his uniform. One reads "NO perpetual war for perpetual peace." Another reads: "Vietnam Veterans Against the War."
Fourteen months ago he attended his first anti-war rally in Denver, in full uniform. Another vet handed him a "No Blood for Oil" sign and one reading "Bush Lied. Our Soldiers Died. End of Story.
Although he is increasingly strident in his opposition to war, Elliston is quick to say "this isn't about me, or my wound or my story. It's about the message. I only wear the uniform because I think military service gives me some additional credibility to speak about war and its consequences.
"Without the uniform, I'm just another guy with an opinion. With the uniform I'm a former warrior with an opinion. I think that makes a difference."
Elliston arrived in Vietnam on April Fools' Day 1970 and was flown home precisely three weeks later, after his jaw was ripped apart and his teeth torn out by an enemy machine-gun bullet. He was hit on his seventh day of combat flying, in the co-pilot's seat of a Bell UH-1 series Iroquois, better known as a "Huey," which eventually became the most widely used military helicopter in the world.
The chopper was third in line to deliver reinforcements to a besieged special-forces team. The landing zone had been carved out of the jungle and, unknown to them, was now ringed by the 57th North Vietnamese Rifle Regiment. Two days earlier they had delivered 400 reinforcements to the same landing zone and met no hostile fire.
The first chopper got in and out safely, but the second one was shot down in a ball of fire, its wreckage blocking the landing zone.
"We were on a final approach when (the second helicopter) went down. They say 'never fly over enemy guns,' but we had no choice," Elliston said.
Hostile fire that hit his chopper killed one crew member and wounded him and another.
By then, after less than a month "in country," Elliston said, "I had a vague understanding that it makes no difference to the peasants who wins a war. Their lives improve when the fighting stops."
After his jaw was wired shut at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Aurora, he read about the shootings at Kent State University, where a contingent of Ohio National Guardsmen opened fire on May 4, 1970, killing four students and wounding nine others.
"I was overwhelmed with the fact I was wounded in combat fighting to preserve democracy while troops (at home) were firing on student protesters who considered Vietnam an illegal, immoral war," he says.
His rehabilitation at Fitzsimons lasted about two years.
"I lost virtually all my teeth, but I learned to talk with my jaws wired shut. I feared there would be years of speech therapy," he said. However, he soon knew he wouldn't need that, after he learned how to say "chrysanthemum."
"It took another 30 years of studying," he said, before he concluded "we will have to answer someday for what we did" in Vietnam.
"What is relevant is that I am trying, although I'm not convinced I am having any impact," he said.
"We as a nation must stop thinking of ourselves as exceptional and worthy of special privileges above other nations and peoples. We must stop glorifying war. We must stop praising institutional murder."
Elliston, a commercial airline pilot who regularly flies to Asia, the Middle East and South America, said he often speaks out at rallies in this country, and on the Internet, in opposition to war. He is listed on the roster of Vietnam Veterans Against the War.
"Only when our nation behaves honorably and honestly with all other nations, giving respect as we wish to be respected, seeking only peace and justice for all nations and peoples, will we be worthy of the rigors our military veterans have endured in our name," he said. "I wish I was convinced that most, if not all, wars declared and undeclared were not based on false pretenses, as was the case in Vietnam and now Iraq."
Speaking at a "Support our Troops" peace rally in Colorado Springs earlier this year, he said: "I have come here today to honor our men and women in uniform and to work to prevent them from being sent into harm's way unnecessarily.
"Truly supporting our troops would mean ensuring that they are guaranteed ample, high-quality medical care," he said, adding: "We must not conveniently dismiss the psychological trauma many of them have suffered, and will suffer, as a result of their experience with the horror of war."
He shared the anti-war platform that day with retired Air Force Brig. Gen. Owen Lentz, a 30-year veteran who wore three hats during the 1991 Persian Gulf War as director of intelligence for the U.S. Space Command; the North American American Aerospace Defense Command, or NORAD; and the Air Force Space Command.
"He is as much of a patriot as I consider myself," Lentz said of Elliston. "I find it hurtful to the entire national dialogue that people in opposition to war are considered unpatriotic by some. Dialogue is important."
Stuart Chase, a Boulder mental-health worker who spent 20 months in Vietnam with the Marines, said he met Elliston at an anti-war rally in Denver.
"He was very impressive in his Army officer's uniform, and he wore peace buttons on his lapels and carried a big American flag," Chase recalled. He introduced Elliston to other groups "working for peace and justice."
Elliston said he is alarmed by familiar-sounding pronouncements from the Bush White House. "This is the same pattern of lies disseminated by the White House during Vietnam, 'Things are really going well."'
The Vietnam War, "like most military adventures, was cloaked in altruistic pretenses of disposing of dictators, of liberating oppressed peoples, of empowering democratic rule and of increasing our own nationally security.
"So far, those lofty goals have seldom been the result," Elliston said, noting that "once again our nation is engaged in an undeclared war."
As the 62nd anniversary of the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor looms Sunday, Elliston noted that some historians concluded that Democratic President Franklin D. Roosevelt anticipated an attack but "felt it was necessary to have a catastrophic attack like that to mobilize the American public to get into World War II."
"There are also implications that Republican President Bush knows more about 9/11," he said, noting that the White House has been "very secretive" and has refused to release documents, just as FDR did after Dec. 7, 1941.
Copyright 2003 Denver Post
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