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Lewes, James. Protest and Survive: Underground GI Newspapers during the Vietnam War. Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2003.243 pp. $67.95.
Late in the Vietnam War, when disillusionment had spread within the U.S. military as well as among civilians, an underground press of GI newspapers emerged at military bases and their communities. Writing in irreverently named papers, such as Attitude Check (Camp Pendleton, California) or Shakedown (Fort Dix, New Jersey), soldiers criticized and ridiculed military life and the war, and promoted anti-war demonstrations. Because of likely retaliation, the GI journalists largely were anonymous. The newspapers were circulated surreptitiously on military bases and more openly at anti-war coffeehouses in nearby communities.
In Protest and Survive, James Lewes has located and examined 130 of these newspapers, which were published between 1968 and 1970. In 720 articles, he found that in content, they often...