Michael Uhl

About the author

Michael Uhl is a freelance writer who grew up in Babylon, Long Island, New York. He graduated with a BS in Theoretical Linguists from Georgetown University, spending his junior year at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro. He holds a PhD in American Studies and Writing (Creative Non-fiction) from the Union Institute and University. A long term Vietnam veteran antiwar activist, Uhl trained at the Infantry Officers School, Fort Benning, Georgia and the elite Counter Intelligence School, Fort Holabird, Maryland. He served in Vietnam as a first lieutenant, where he led a combat intelligence team with the 11th Infantry Brigade. After Vietnam, Uhl entered a doctoral program in linguistics at New York University, and became immediately involved in the antiwar movement, joining the New York City based Citizens Commission of Inquiry on U.S. War Crimes in Vietnam (CCI) as a full-time organizer. He helped organize the National Veterans Inquiry and the Winter Soldier Investigation. In 1971 he toured Australia and New Zealand as a representative of the US antiwar movement. That same year he co-founded The Safe Return Amnesty Committee advocating for a universal amnesty on behalf of Vietnam era military resisters. Safe Return was a predecessor of Citizen Soldier, which he also co-founded, and, until 1982, served as co-director, working on a wide range of campaigns advocating for GI and veteran rights, and opposing systematic racism in the U.S. military. He is a Charter Member of Veterans for Peace founded in Maine, where he moved with his family in the mid-1980s. Publications Uhl has written three books on themes related to opposition to the Vietnam War and militarism. Vietnam Awakening, a coming of age and war/antiwar memoir (2007); The War I Survived Was Vietnam: Collected Writings of a Veteran and Antiwar Activist (2016); Safe Return: Inside the Amnesty Movement for Vietnam War Deserters, a political saga covering 1971-77 when Safe Return battled to win amnesty for Vietnam Era war resisters (forthcoming 2023) . He co-authored G.I. Guinea Pigs: How the Pentagon Exposed Our Troops to Dangers Greater Than War, the first book length treatment on the health effects of chemical herbicides (Agent Orange) on U.S. veterans of the Vietnam War. He is currently at work on Addio Sicilia, a personal history of olive farming with his wife in Sicily. Uhl has written scores of articles and book reviews for Geo Magazine, Forbes, House Beautiful, Travel & Leisure, The Nation, The Progressive, The Sunday Boston Globe, Radical America, The Old Westbury Review, In These Times, Peacework, Bangor Daily News, Portland Press Herald, Antiwar.com, among others. As a travel writer he authored Exploring Maine on Country Roads and Byways, and four Frommer's Guides, including Frommer's Brazil and Frommer's Chicago. Film With Richard Schmiechen, Uhl wrote and co-produced the short documentary film, Nick Mazucco: Biography of an Atomic Vet, on a grant from the Public Broadcasting Corporation. References The work of the CCI is the subject of Standard Operating Procedure: Notes of A Draft-age American, by James Simon Kunen. The work of the Safe Return Amnesty Committee, is the subject of The Amnesty of John David Herndon, by James Reston, Jr. Website: www.veteranscholar.com

Read full bio

Books

We couldn’t find anything matching these filters