Nine for Peace

On July 15th 1968, nine members of four branches of the US military (Army, Navy, Marries and Air Force) entered Howard Presbyterian Church in San Francisco and publicly announced their resignation from the armed forces. The men were united through their contact with The War Resisters League in Haight-Ashbury, which helped AWOL military personnel resist serving in the war. Many war resisters escaped to Canada or hid on communes and within hippie collectives. These nine men sought sanctuary in the church.

Each of the men chained themselves to a priest or minister, and surrounded by friends and anti-war allies they held a 48-hour service, which ended at St. Andrew's United Presbyterian Church in Marin City with the arrest of all nine men by military police.

The media was present for the arrests, and published images of police cutting their chains and arresting them during a communion service. The media images helped spread the idea that the opposition to the war reached beyond the hippie counter culture. Eight of the men were sentenced to between four and six years of hard labor in prison. One of them, Keith Mather, was imprisoned in the Presidio stockade in San Francisco, where he joined the "Presidio 27". Rather than risk a lifetime in prison for mutiny he escaped to Canada. Eventually he reentered the United States and served five months in jail before being official discharge from the Army in 1985.

This was a single example from the tens of thousands of servicemen who deserted the military during the Vietnam War. These nine men did so in a spectacular manner, using their desertion as a way to bring attention to the war.