talking in particular about Senator Hartke, I am talking about Senator McGovern, I am talking about what is laughingly referred to as a priest, Congressman Drinan, who have made statements much to the effect that the American fighting man is something less than a man.

Senator KENNEDY. I was interested in one of your final observations about getting the Americans home now. In speaking as one who has expressed those views about the war for a number of years not as long as I perhaps should have-but I suppose that what concerns all of us is that we do not lose another American life over there.

Mr. KELLEY. I think that should be of prime consideration.

Senator KENNEDY. I know you have lost and you have suffered grievously. As I have the highest regard and respect for the position you have expressed here, I would hope sincerely that you believe that many of us in the Senate who have spoken about the war are equally concerned about insuring that there are not other fathers such as yourself who are going to have to lose sons.

Mr. KELLEY. The reason I am surprised, Senator Kennedy, is within the Constitution with regard to Congress, they, of course, can and do raise money to support an army. This can go on for a period of 2 years. At the end of those 2 years, they then have to acquiesce. As it were.

Senator KENNEDY. That is right.

Mr. KELLEY. This has been going on for quite some time.

Senator KENNEDY. I think that is a fair observation. You can say, well, if the Congress was so opposed to it, it should have cut off the military appropriation, and there are a number of people who share that view as swell.

Mr. KELLEY. That is right.

Senator KENNEDY. Well, as I say, Mr. Kelley, I want to thank you. very much. You are a forceful spokesman for a viewpoint. I know it is very sincerely held. You have given us very helpful and useful information. I want to thank you very much for coming. Mr. KELLEY. Thank you for your consideration, sir. Senator KENNEDY. Is Mrs. Valerie Kushner present?

(No response.)

Senator KENNEDY. Mr. Everett Brown Carson?

STATEMENT OF EVERETT BROWN CARSON, FIRST LIEUTENANT, MARINE CORPS, RETIRED

Lieutenant CARSON. Senator Kennedy, I would like to thank you for this opportunity to come today to speak on behalf of-well, on my own behalf but in behalf of the men who served in Vietnam.

I would just like to present my remarks with a brief response to the gentleman who just spoke and to his comment that the service of Americans in Vietnam was courageous and honorable. Certainly in a manner of speaking, that service was courageous and honorable, however misdirected. I would only like to add to that that we feel no pride-at least I feel no pride-in the part that I took in that war, and that however courageous or honorable that service may

the killing, who have committed the crime which indeed requires amnesty. It is not those men who refused to condone the destruction of the Indochinese peoples. It is our leaders who sold us this war. and we, the people, who bought it.

If there is any good to come from this tragic episode, it is that we may have the humility to admit that we were wrong, as we have partially already done, and to welcome home those men who dared to say with their lives what we oftentimes even fear to speak: "No more war. I will not kill my fellow man."

Senator KENNEDY. Let me ask you; you served, as you pointed out, as an infantry platoon leader with the Marine Corps in Vietnam and Laos from October 1968 to February 1969, and you were wounded. How do you react to the fact that while you were over there sludging around in Southeast Asia, and suffering in an Army hospital, that there were these other people that had gone over to Canada or Sweden and were escaping the risk you had assumed and which your close friends, had assumed? How do you react? Are you not bothered by that, that they ought to be able to effectively get away with some kind of amnesty?

Lieutenant CARSON. I think, undeniably, each of us realized much sooner than others what the war in Vietnam was all about. I grew up with much the same kind of homelife that David Harris did. I come from a conservative background and was led to believe in the kind of slogan which I guess is best represented by "My country. right or wrong."

Senator KENNEDY. Where were you from?
Lieutenant CARSON. I grew up in Virginia.
Senator KENNEDY. What community?

Lieutenant CARSON. Lexington.

Senator KENNEDY. How big a community?

Lieutenant CARSON. About 7,000 people.

Senator KENNEDY. You went to school there?

Lieutenant CARSON. Yes.

Senator KENNEDY. High school there?

Lieutenant CARSON. I went to high school in Alexandria, at a place called Episcopal High School, a boarding school.

Senator KENNEDY. Then did you get some college training? Lieutenant CARSON. I was in college for about a year and a half and was frankly very confused by the issue. When I dropped out. the only course of action, really, which my background and my current conviction allowed me to take was to go into the military service.

But I was in Vietnam, I guess, only about 2 days before I rode through the village, the resettlement village of Cam Lo, on my way out to join the unit to which I had been assigned. I realized then and there to some extent what the war had done to the Indochinese people.

I testified last spring before your own committee on refugees to the conditions in that village and I do not think they need restatement; they were horrible.

Senator KENNEDY. I am more interested in you as a spokesman as someone who served in the armed forces and received medals-the

bronze star and the Navy achievement medal and the Vietnam service ribbon, the purple heart and a couple of others. I am interested in what your attitude is about those who did not serve in the armed forces, and has been argued here by some, that took the easy way out. Do you not think that you got the short end? While you were over there suffering, losing your buddies, other people were leaving the country. Do you not resent that? Do you think that the Congress and the President ought to take a policy of leniency for them or mercy toward them? Are you not bothered by that?

Lieutenant CARSON. I think that for these young men to have refused to impose the kinds of conditions upon the Indochinese people that I as a participant in the Vietnam war imposed was a high moral conviction, which I certainly can't condemn. I do not think that any of us who have seen both the suffering in Indochina and the suffering here at home as a result of the war would wish any more suffering, either on the people who have exiled themselves from this country or upon their families.

I do not think that there is a single family who, we with deep thought, would deny the reuniting of other families whose sons have gone to Canada or gone to jail or gone to Sweden.

I left many friends in Vietnam and I regret that. I would do absolutely anything to get those people back. But I also left friends here, and there are others in this country who feel the way I do, that to punish someone for high moral convictions when we realize that what we did was a mistake and is really a violation of morality, in itself would be a crime. I do not think that many of us who served in Vietnam would wish any more suffering on this already incredibly divided Nation of ours, and that to reduce the debate and the discussions of amnesty to one of bitterness and vindictiveness and to deny the reuniting of the Nation as a whole would be only to extend the suffering that we have seen in Vietnam and the suffering that we see in the ghettos and everywhere here at home.

I think it is extremely difficult for a Vietnam veteran who has gone and then come home and who once believed in what he was fighting for to have that belief devastated when he sees what it is doing. They are devastated.

Senator KENNEDY. There are people who say that those who left are law violators, law breakers and cowards. How do you react to that?

Lieutenant CARSON. I would react by saying that the law that was violated was one that never should have been made and that the policy in the Southeast Asia, as I think most of us are more than ready to admit right now, is also a policy which never should have. been made; and that for a person to refuse complicity in that crime against humanity is an admirable feat for many to have accomplished and certainly not a feat which he should be punished for. Senator KENNEDY. You are a student now at Bowdoin College? Lieutenant CARSON. Yes.

Senator KENNEDY. How much longer do you have to go?
Lieutenant CARSON. I graduate in June.

Senator KENNEDY. Do you have any idea what you are going to do after graduation?

Lieutenant CARSON. I would like to teach in high school.

I have perhaps one incident which happened to me about 3 weeks ago that I would like to add. I went with the American delegation to the Paris World Assembly for the Peace and Independence of the Peoples in Indochina and I met there the people of South Vietnam, the people of North Vietnam, the people of Cambodia and Laos, whom I never had an opportunity to meet while I was in Indochina, obviously.

During one conversation with a gentleman from North Vietnam. he sensed my uneasiness at the fact that I was a veteran, at the fact that I had been there and participated in the destruction of his country, and he stopped me right in the middle of a sentence, and he said, "I realize that you are uneasy talking to me, coming from the kind of perspective that you do. But I consider that since you feel the way you do now, you have always be my friend, that your past history is not important." I think this is the kind of sentiment which has been overlooked by all of us here in America, that for the most part, the Indochinese people are not fighting a war out of hate, they are fighting a war merely because they want their own country.

I think that the people, the young men who left this country, saw their own country coming apart at the seams and could not participate in that dissention and that is why they left, because they loved their country and because they did not want to contribute to its destruction.

Senator KENNEDY. Thank you very much, Mr. Carson. We appreciate your presence here.

We had scheduled Mr. and Mrs. Robert Ransom, who are also two Gold Star Parents, who were going to testify. They have taken a different position from Mr. Martin Kelley. I guess Mr. Ransom is ill today so he is unable to be here. If he files a statement we will print it in our record.

Senator KENNEDY. Our next witness is Mr. James R. Kerns.

Mr. Kerns represents the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace. He was educated at the University of Washington, completed 2 years in the schools of art and science, served with the U.S. Army Special Forces from 1966 to 1969, served as a volunteer in Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces as an adviser to the Vietnamese.

He has been associated with the Boy Scouts Special Forces, the American Legion, Disabled American Veterans, American Ordnance Association, Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, U.S. Army Reserve, and a number of other activities.

We appreciate your presence here.

STATEMENT OF JAMES R. KERNS, VIETNAM VETERANS FOR

A JUST PEACE

Mr. KERNS. Thank you, Mr. Chairman, members of the committee, fellow veterans, ladies and gentleman.

First of all, I was going to give a brief history of myself, but Senator Kennedy has already done that. I would like to say to the committee that I appreciate having this opportunity to testify and that our organization, the Vietnam Veterans for a Just Peace, some

8,000 veterans in this area, the Southwest arca, and that we are not pro-war, we are pro-people. Being pro-people, we have compassion for the suffering of the Vietnamese and we are for a truly lasting and just peace in Indochina; one that is worth what it cost this country.

I might add, too, Mr. Chairman, that we are for peace in this country as well because it seems that the repercussions of this war are going to go on for a long time to come.

As you said, I personally served in the Republic of Vietnam with the 5th Special Forces group and as a reservist, my introduction to war was fairly abrupt. Four days after I put on a uniform, I was in Bien Hoa, Republic of Vietnam.

A month after that, I was on patrol in the Mekong Delta. And in my capacity as advisor to the Vietnamese irregular forces, I learned to identify with my Vietnamese and I learned to share their failures as well as their successes.

But, really, Mr. Chairman, we are shocked and we are dismayed that you are holding these hearings now while Americans continue to fight and die in the mud of Vietnam. It is an irony that some of the politicians who primed us for this war with showing answers about commitments to freedom and the right of self-determination of the 17 million people in Indochina are now championing the cause of those who thumbed their nose at them 6 years ago. We feel that this discussion of amnesty at this time encourages desertion and even worse, makes the efforts of those who continue to risk their lives subject to ridicule.

Senator KENNEDY. Let me ask you just at that point. I have had the opportunity to visit a number of schools and campuses in my own State of Massachusetts. I would say during the Christmas break probably eight or nine colleges and 30 high schools. I do not think there is one school that I went to that I was not asked about amnesty by any of the young people. I would just say, and certainly others might have a differing viewpoint, but I would say that young people are more interested in this issue, as well as those related to the end of the war, than perhaps any others. Do you find it different? And I am just wondering if that is the case and if they are interested in a public issue, should public figures try to inform themselves more responsibly about such an issue, or just say that is a terrible thing to discuss or even think about and therefore, we will not either inform ourselves or educate ourselves about it or try to listen to different viewpoints like Mr. Kelley's?

Mr. KERNS. Well, Mr. Chairman, I am certainly not opposed to freedom of speech and discussing the issues. And I think as long as these issues and discussions of these are kept within the framework or the knowledge that we are at war and that there are people who are dying and that we do have the national interest that comes before other interests, I think this is well and good.

And we, too, have been to different high schools and different universities. One thing I have to take issue with you on, Senator Kennedy, is that I find now on campuses that people care less. I find that generally, when we have our teach-ins or seminars, students want to get back to class, much different from when I returned a year and a half ago.