An Interview with Louis Negre

Negre: Not at all, it’s been an obscure chapter in my life. I didn’t want to keep it private, but that’s just how it worked out.

SoP: You case was argued at the Supreme Court in December, 1970. Were you there?

Negre: No, I was already back from Vietnam. I was discharged in ’69, the year before the case got to the Supreme Court.

SoP: So the Court was deciding whether you should have to go to Vietnam after you had already returned?

Negre: Correct.

SoP: Were you forcibly deployed, against your will?

Negre: Absolutely, physically. There were more of them than me. This was after they denied my conscientious objection claim.

SoP: Let’s go back a bit. When did you enter the service?

Negre: I was drafted in 1967, reported for induction in order to be open to the military’s perspective. But it was terrible. It was like you’re there, you belong to them, you fight, you kill, you do their thing. During training, I contemplated going to Canada, but decided just to make my stand.

SoP: At any point in the process, did you speak with your chaplains?

Negre: You know, I spoke to a couple, but the ones I talked to were not really Catholic priests, well they were Catholic priests, but their concept was that if you’re in the military you do what the military says. Military first, Catholicism second.

SoP: What about any priests back home?

Negre: I met with a Jesuit priest at the University of San Francisco, and we talked at length. He had my write my feelings down. But other than that, there just was very little support.

SoP: Did you consider going AWOL?

Negre: Yes, but I didn’t want to break the law. I had nothing against serving the country. My objection was being told to go kill someone when those are not my beliefs.

SoP: When did your objection to Vietnam crsytallize?

Negre: I knew when I went to basic training at Ft. Lewis. You go out there with the bayonets, and the guns, and it was “kill, kill, kill,” that kind of indoctrination. Going back a bit, my father was in the underground resistance to the French involvement in Indonesia and brought us here so that I would not get drafted to serve there. So it was like, d?j? vu.

SoP: What happened when you arrived in Vietnam?

Negre: They wanted to put me in ammunitions. I said that if I have to directly contribute to this war, I simply will refuse. And they accommodated me fairly decently; I did not have to carry a weapon and I worked a supply job, a number counter.

SoP: While you were there, did you have any resentment toward the Church, or did it still play a vital role?

Negre: Being able to go to church over there, it just kept everything alive. And I got to go quite often.

SoP: The military, and the Supreme Court, said you were only opposed to Vietnam, not all war. Was that accurate?

Negre: I want to say that I am not a pacifist, but I did not oppose other wars at the time because I was not being asked to fight in other wars at the time. And I had no objection to going to Vietnam to help people or do this or that, but when you’re in combat, and killing someone because he’s on the other side of the fence, that is where I drew the line. And so for them to bring up “all wars,” I just don’t know, not being in those situations to make the call.

SoP: Any advice for young soldiers today?

Negre: When a person joins the service, he has to go with what he feels is right, not what he’s pressured, or even ordered, to do. But the military is not set up for that, they’re geared for one thing: for you to be a machine, and to execute their order.