Terry Whitmore

Terry Marvell Whitmore (March 6, 1947 – 2007) was an African American Marine who deserted during the Vietnam War.

Early life

Terry Whitmore was born on March 6, 1947[1] and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from high school and then enlisted in the Marines in fall of 1966.[2] Whitmore believed that he would have been drafted anyway, and voluntarily enlisting meant he might get to stay home for one more Christmas.[3]

Military service and desertion

After enlisting, Whitmore was sent overseas to fight in the Vietnam War. Though he was initially promised a non-combat role on a ship, this offer did not hold.[3] By December 1966, he was a lance corporal and was wounded in action near Con Thien. He believed that some of the North Vietnamese combatants intentionally spared his life, instead shooting the White troops he was with. He was injured by gunfire and shrapnel,[4] and was sent to Japan to recover. While hospitalized in Japan, he was able to watch news broadcasts from the US after the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr..[4] Initially, he was told he would not have to return to Vietnam. The orders were changed, though, and he was scheduled to leave Japan for Vietnam.[3] With the help of an anti-war group, he instead traveled across the USSR to Sweden, where he sought asylum.[2]

As of 1968, he was one of eighty US troops who deserted to Sweden, along with thirteen other Black troops.[3] In Sweden, he worked as a script writer for the Swedish Film Institute.[5]

Personal life

Whitmore was married before enlisting;[6] his first child, a daughter, was born while he was overseas.[7] Whitmore became engaged to a Swedish woman while in Sweden.[3] While in Sweden, he joined a basketball team founded by American deserters of the Vietnam War, the Stockholm Stars.[8] In 1977, after President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order granting amnesty to draft evaders of the Vietnam War era, Whitmore returned to the US to meet his daughter for the first time, who was being raised by his mother.[9] He had two sons while in Sweden.[10]

Works and appearances

Whitmore was one of the few Black Vietnam War veterans to write a memoir about his experience: Memphis-Nam-Sweden: The Autobiography of a Black American Exile, published in 1971.[11] He was also the subject of the 1969 documentary Terry Whitmore, for Example,[2] and appeared in the 2005 documentary Sir! No Sir!.[4]

Later life and death

Whitmore returned to Memphis in 2001, and died in 2007.[1]

Awards and honors

In 1967, he was awarded the Purple Heart by President Lyndon B. Johnson.[4] He was also awarded the Bronze Star Medal.[12]

See also

References
  1. "Terry Whitmore". The Swedish Film Database. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  2. Greenspun, Roger (15 November 1969). "Screen: Deserter's Story: Terry Whitmore, for Example' Opens". The New York Times. Retrieved 18 June 2020.
  3. Nilson, Ulf (1968). "Deserters: Fourteen Black Ex-GIs". Ebony. p. 121.
  4. O'Connor, Anne-Marie (17 June 2005). "Disillusioned by what they saw". The Los Angeles Times. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  5. United Press International (30 September 1974). "Draft Dodgers Criticize Ford's Plan". Playground Daily News. Fort Walton Beach, Florida. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
  6. "Sweden gives asylum to 10 US Deserters". Chicago Tribune. 29 June 1968.
  7. Whitmore, Terry (1997). Memphis, Nam, Sweden: The Story of a Black Deserter. University Press of Mississippi. p. 134.
  8. Kyhle, Henrik (20 January 1974). "War Deserters Become Swedish Cage Freaks". The Tennesseean.
  9. Westheider, James E. (2008). The African American Experience in Vietnam: Brothers in Arms. Rowman & Littlefield. p. 112.
  10. Romin, Johan (2008). "Desertören och vietnamkriget" [The Deserter and the Vietnam War] (PDF). Prisma (in Swedish).
  11. Loeb, J. (1997). "MIA: African American Autobiography of the Vietnam War". African American Review. 31 (1): 105–123. doi:10.2307/3042186.
  12. "Issue of amnesty fails to arouse U.S. exiles". The Herald-News. Passaic, New Jersey. 3 March 1973. Retrieved 19 June 2020.
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