In 1971, antiwar activists Michael Uhl and Tod Ensign founded the Safe Return Committee in New York City, seeking amnesty for those who resisted the Vietnam War. While thousands of young Americans chose exile in Canada and Europe to avoid the draft, Safe Return worked on behalf of those who had come to oppose the war after entering the armed forces. Once in uniform, many ran afoul of a draconian system of military justice and institutionalized racism. They deserted in epidemic numbers, some to foreign exile. This book tells the story of the Committee's sponsored return of deserters and draft evaders, in a series of actions widely publicized to build public support for their acts of resistance.

The body of work assembled in this collection falls within the tradition of how wars are remembered, and written of, by their surviving veterans. The War I Survived Was Vietnam, and my writing about it, excepting a few poems, has been confined to the staples of non-fiction: memoir, reporting, criticism and commentary. Among the articles reproduced here, criticism is by far the dominant voice in which I have processed my post-war reflections. A good deal of this work also ventures into the exploratory realm of the American veteran identity, to include my personal struggle to outdistance the demons of PTSD. As print has evolved into digital media, my criticism has migrated increasingly to the blogosphere permitting the restrictive boundaries of the book review to blossom over the more far ranging horizons of the essay. Several of these works are of relevance to how the Vietnam experience is being archived by scholars for historical interpretation. Prior to my career in the writing life, I was a political activist advocating for the welfare of GIs and veterans, notably around the health effects of exposure during active service to deadly radiation and poisonous herbicides. Selected material on these topics has also been included in this collection.

In this vividly honest memoir, author Michael Uhl details his experiences in Vietnam as first lieutenant of a counterintelligence team attached to the 11th Infantry. Referencing his personal journal and wartime correspondence with friends and family, the author relives the most shocking events that he witnessed during his military service, including the abuse and torture of several Vietnamese civilians. In Part Two, the author outlines his years as an activist with the veterans? movement against the Vietnam War.