Biography
Private David A. Samas was an Italian-Lithuanian-American U.S. Army soldier stationed at Fort Hood, Texas in 1966. With James Johnson Jr. and Dennis Mora — the Fort Hood Three — he announced public refusal of orders to Vietnam at a New York press conference on June 30, 1966. He was court-martialed at Fort Dix in late September 1966 and sentenced to five years at hard labor; in July 1967 his sentence was reduced to three years on review. He was released in 1968.
The custody dates, corrected from contemporary sources: all three of the Fort Hood Three were arrested and confined by military authorities in New York on July 7, 1966 — not late September, which was merely when the early-September courts-martial were behind them — and remained confined through trial and imprisonment. The Militant, in a report datelined October 16, 1968, gave his release as set for October 27, 1968 — two years, three months, and twenty days after his confinement began, the longest of the three.
