Doug Rawlings Papers

Doug Rawlings is an award-winning poet, teacher, and peace activist. He served with the US Army 7th Battalion, 15th Field Artillery regiment in Vietnam, 1969-70.  

Rawlings was born on December 8th, 1946, in Rochester, New York.  In 1968, he graduated with a degree in economics from John Carroll University. While he was accepted into the Peace Corps after graduation, Rawlings opted instead to attend graduate school at Ohio State University. He was later drafted into the US Army, and on January 9th, 1969, he began basic training at Fort Dix, New Jersey, and then went on to complete advanced individual artillery training at Fort Sill, Oklahoma.  In the spring of 1969, he was deployed to Vietnam. As a soldier in the 7th Battalion, 15th Field Artillery regiment, Rawlings served in the central highlands of Vietnam from 1969-1970.

Rawlings returned to the US in August of 1970 and began writing political poetry and participating in anti-war activism around Boston, Massachusetts.  Later, he and his wife moved to a farmstead in Chesterville, Maine, and Rawlings began teaching at the University of Maine, Farmington.  In 1985, Rawlings co-founded the organization, Veterans For Peace. Now mostly retired from teaching, Rawlings serves as the president of the Maine chapter of the Veterans For Peace.

Rawlings published works include: Cầu Tre (Bamboo Bridge), A Baker’s Dozen, In the Shadow of the Annamese Mountains, A G.I. in America, and Orion Rising.  He was an editor of the Letters to the Wall book series and served as an editor for Peace and Planet News.

For additional biographical information about Rawlings, please see:

http://kellscraft.com/DougRawlings/DougRawlingsPoetryPage.html

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=81S3YWg6nl8

Courage to Resist podcast: https://couragetoresist.org/podcast-doug-rawlings/

Down East magazine: https://downeast.com/features/doug-rawlings-veterans-for-peace-cofounder/

The Chris Hedges Report podcast: https://chrishedges.substack.com/p/the-chris-hedges-report-podcast-with-08e#details

The Department of Special Collections preserves the literary archive of Rawlings writings about the Vietnam War. His papers are part of the larger Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War collection. For research assistance with the Doug Rawlings papers, please contact Dr. Heather Willever-Farr, Special Collections Librarian (willeverfarr@lasalle.edu).

Please use the below link to explore the finding aid for the Doug Rawlings Papers. 

The Imaginative Representations of the Vietnam War Collection is the largest collection of literary and creative works on the Vietnam War in the world; comprising over 20,000 books of fiction and poetry together with more than 1,000 non-print items. Housed in the Department of Special Collections in the Connelly Library, the Vietnam War Collection serves as a growing repository of works concerned with the experience of the Vietnam War. In addition to the extensive holdings of published literature and feature films, the Collection also houses a number of archival collections, literary manuscripts, and original works of art.   

Pictured above: "Burn." The "Nam vol. 1, no. 75 (Dec. 1992). Marvel Comics Group : Cover.