Ft. Bragg Stories Podcast

As a young man in the late 1960s, Hal Noyes faced the prospect of being drafted to fight in Vietnam. He was opposed to the war, but decided to enlist, hoping to avoid combat. By 1969, he found himself stationed at Fort Bragg, working in the s upply room in the John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center. He and a group of fellow soldiers decided to join G.I.’s United Against the War in Vietnam and began publishing Bragg Briefs, which became one of the longest running G.I. anti-war newspapers of the Vietnam era. Noyes recalled it was both frightening and exhilarating to protest the war as an enlisted soldier. The activists handed out the paper at the PX and the Enlisted Men’s Club. When Army brass got word, Bragg Briefs was banned, but Noyes and his friends persisted, sneaking the publication into barracks and handing it out on Hay St. “We were trying to reach both other soldiers and the public at large to try to convince them the war was wrong,” he said. Noyes said many low-ranking soldiers