The war was also refused from inside the ranks. The Fort Hood Three went to Leavenworth in 1966 for refusing Vietnam orders; Captain Howard Levy was court-martialed in 1967 for refusing to train Green Beret medics; and after the Presidio 27 sat down and sang "We Shall Overcome" over the guard-shooting of a fellow stockade prisoner in 1968, the Army charged them with mutiny — seeking, initially, terms up to sixteen years for singing. Black GIs bore the heaviest hand: the Fort Hood 43, who refused Chicago riot duty in 1968, and men like Billy Dean Smith, held for a fragging he was acquitted of.

With coffeehouses ringing the bases, over 200 underground GI papers, and desertion at historic highs, the movement in uniform — punished through stockades from the Presidio to Long Binh Jail — did as much as any civilian campaign to make the war unsustainable.