“The pilot’s voice cut in over his headphones: “We’re taking on fire,” Heussner recalls. Heussner asked if they could fly over again to get the needed photograph. They did.
Heussner, now a member of the Madison Chapter of Veterans for Peace, encouraged folks on his Facebook page to get out and protest at the state Capitol on Saturday, as part of the nationwide Hands Off! mobilization.
The grassroots effort protested what organizers described as a broad attempt by the Trump administration and its billionaire allies to dismantle essential public programs, including those that serve U.S. military veterans.
Heussner said he joined the military during the Vietnam era “because I love my country. Well, I still love my country. They say, ‘if you don’t like it, leave it.’ Well, my case is, ‘you don’t like it, fix it.’”
The Daily Union reached out Friday to the office of U.S. Congressman Scott Fitzgerald, whose district includes Fort Atkinson, requesting comment on recent firings within the U.S. Veterans Administration and anticipated changes to the department’s budget.
The request also sought the senator’s position on U.S. military aid to Israel, amid the ongoing conflict in Gaza. Fitzgerald’s office did not immediately respond.
Changing the narrative
Heussner was born in 1945 and grew up on a small Illinois farm before attending high school in Jefferson. He got his first camera through a cereal box promotion and joined the military in part to study photography. But what began as a technical pursuit quickly became a front-row seat to the trauma of war.
“I would get these rides sometimes that were hauling back wounded GIS. I can still remember this,” he said. One soldier, he recalls, “he looked like he had no life in his eyes. The life in his eyes, you know, wasn’t there anymore. He was just so worn out from what he’d been through.”
The more he read and listened, the more his views began to shift. Eventually, he found his way to Veterans for Peace. “I just decided we needed fewer wars,” he said.
Brad Geyer, a member of the Madison chapter of Veterans for Peace, also marched in Madison on Saturday.
When he joined the military, “I didn’t know anything,” he said, reflecting on his upbringing in Aztalan, Jefferson, and Lake Mills.
“I knew, like, the propaganda. I knew ‘freedom’ and ‘democracy.’ This is what the military is all about. And so I signed up when I was 16.”
Geyer is now the chapter contact for Madison Veterans for Peace, a national organization with 120 chapters worldwide, including in countries like Ireland, Japan, Vietnam, and the United Kingdom.
Veterans for Peace members also participate in frequent protests and education-based outreach. They have a table at the Dane County Farmers Market and collaborate with groups like World Beyond War, Code Pink, Jewish Voice for Peace, and Madison-Rafah Sister City Project. Since 2024, they’ve hosted monthly film screenings at Madison’s Sequoia Library and are expanding their reach to UW–Madison and Madison College to engage younger audiences, especially young veterans.
For Geyer, Veterans for Peace isn’t just an activist group; it’s a path of personal transformation.
“I was detached from what I was actually accomplishing,” he said. “The radar plane I worked on would go anywhere there’s war or war games, and I had a crew of people that decided who would live and who would die.”
His views began to shift through political involvement, books, documentaries, and participation in festivals like Fighting Bob Fest.
He supported Ralph Nader’s presidential campaign in 2000 and began eyeing U.S. foreign policy more critically, including the influence of the Powell Memo, the Heritage Foundation, and Buckley versus Vallejo.
“I don’t think what Trump is doing is really new. He’s exploiting the corruption and the corporate rule that we have had growing since 1971,” Geyer said. “The people have lost our power because it’s these rich people and the corporations they control are above the law now.”
When asked about the current Israel-Palestine conflict, Geyer didn’t mince words. “We are definitely against what Netanyahu and Israel are doing,” he said. “This is in violation of Geneva Conventions, obvious war crimes (and) even before that, apartheid, violating the UN Charter.”
Geyer’s message is shaped by years of service and reflection.
Veterans for Peace tries “to use our experiences to teach people about the true costs of war, because the corporate media and the politicians are not giving an accurate picture of it,” he said.
Personal mission
Roger Quinde, a member of the Milwaukee chapter of Veterans for Peace and longtime youth wrestling coach in Milwaukee, said Saturday’s demonstration was personal.
He said he was marching to demand a country that values people over profit, care over cuts, and peace over power.
“Any country that’s got savage inequality, and we’re going there if we’re not already there, you’re creating conditions for rebellion, for violence, for criminality,” Quindel said.
Quindel served in Vietnam in 1967 and 1968 in artillery communications.
“I believe that over a four-month stretch near the Cambodian border, there were only two days when no one died. Sometimes it was a lot of people dying,” he recalls.
At Hoc Mon, a South Vietnamese military compound near Saigon, two rockets struck.
“They killed nine people. I was the only one who survived.” He spent 81 days in a hospital in Japan, his weight dropping from 160 to 120 pounds.
Since then, Quindel has undergone 24 surgeries to remove more than 50 pieces of shrapnel from his body. One of those surgeries followed an incident when a private healthcare provider ignored paperwork stating he had metal in his skull and placed him inside an MRI machine.
“I thought I was having a panic attack, because everything hurt right away,” he recalls.
One chunk of metal was positioned from his right ear to the left part of his left eye. “The fact that it was right there hurt, but (doctors) didn’t pull out because it would have ripped my eye out of my face. But I was very fortunate.”
Quindel contrasts that with current care at the VA sharing that it is “obviously conscientious” about the fact that “veterans have (something) very few people would have, which is a head full of metal.”
He characterized recent VA staff cuts under the Trump administration “kind of a bizarre way of doing business. Saying, let’s just cut this, even (the existing program) is way more efficient.”
He added that you “need to know” the “reality of the people you’re dealing with. I appreciate the VA. They got it all together.”
Quindel was also critical of how the U.S. is prioritizing its resources.
“Society has to pay that cost,” said Quindel. “I would rather that we bring military spending down” and “increase spending that improves the lives of the people in this country.”
For decades, Quindel has coached wrestling and soccer in Milwaukee, using sports to teach discipline, accountability, and resilience. In neighborhoods where opportunity is scarce, simply showing up as a coach opens doors, he said.
Once, he recalled, a local drug dealer handed him money to buy snacks for the team, because even amid chaos, people recognize when someone’s trying to offer kids “hope and promise” for a better future.
That’s why he supports national service as a way to bridge divides.
“I wish I would make everyone in this country serve in some capacity, you know, serve the country and get some sense of the other,” said Quindel. “Even if we have different views, we have a lot in common.”
Quindel is critical of U.S. financial support for Israel’s military operations in Gaza, warning that continued funding will have long-term consequences. “You can’t just destroy the houses of hundreds of thousands of people and kill tens of thousands and think there’s not going to be long-term consequences.”
Drawing a comparison, he added, “They’re doing to the Palestinians what the Germans did to the Jews.” For Quindel, the result is clear: “You’re not going to find true peace.”
Troubled by support for Israel
Like Quindel, Heussner said he is troubled by U.S. financial aid for Israel’s military operations in Gaza, particularly the reports of forced displacement and starvation. “We supply them with all their weapons,” he said.
Heussner sees a parallel between what Israel is doing to the Palestinians and what the United States once did to Native Americans. He pointed to his shirt — an image of Indigenous Palestinians and Indigenous Americans dancing together.
“The starvation thing, it makes you think about the American Indian and all they suffered because of us,” he said, referencing the U.S. government’s policy that authorized military commanders to destroy buffalo herds, cutting off a critical food source for Native Americans. By 1884, buffalo had been decimated in the Black Hills.
U.S. Sen. Bernie Sanders, of Vermont, in a video shared on his YouTube on April 3, 2025, expressed concern over the current Israeli blocked of aid to Gaza.
“Over the last several weeks, Netanyahu has ordered a total blockade. And you know what that means? It means that over the last 30 days, there has been absolutely no humanitarian aid getting into Gaza, no food, no water, no medicine, no fuel,” Sanders said.
On Thursday, the Senate rejected the two resolutions from Sanders that would have blocked an $8.8 billion weapons sale to Israel. U.S. Sen. James Risch, of Idaho, spoke on the Senate floor in opposition to Sanders’ effort to block U.S. weapons sales to Israel.
“America will be safer for it,” Risch said. “To promote stability in the region and protect our national security, we need to continue to support Israel’s successful efforts.”
Heussner shared Veterans for Peace’s grounding principle: war should always be questioned. “The more that we can have this conversation of having less wars, that’s a good thing,” he said. “That is a fundamentally good thing.”
Standing together
Sari Hunt and her husband, Vance Hunt, a disabled United States veteran, stood side by side on Saturday non the steps of the state Capitol in Madison. Vance held a flag reading “Veterans Thank You,” while Sari carried a Palestinian flag.
Sari Hunt said her personal and family history gives her a unique perspective on current events.
“So, my family is Ukrainian. They came over in 1906 from the pogroms. I’m Jewish. My ex is Israeli Arab Palestinian. My children are Muslim. I have Israeli citizenship and lived there for about four years,” she said.
Vance, who lives with a traumatic brain injury and relies on VA healthcare, said the pending changes to veterans’ healthcare services is alarming.
Sari said while she acknowledged the pain of the Oct. 7, 2023, Hamas-led attack on Israel calling it “horrible” she said the current military response has crossed a line, calling the
“I understand the need for Israel to protect itself. I support that. But this is too far,” she said. “It’s wrong. There’s wrong on both sides. They’ve destroyed two million people’s lives, and now they want to expel them from their home? That’s unconscionable.”
Sari said she speaks often with her former stepdaughter, a Palestinian woman living in Israel whose family remained within the borders during the 1948 Nakba.
“They got Israeli citizenship, but they are Palestinians because that’s what they were before that. That’s their homeland,” she said.
Hunt’s stepdaughter wears a hijab and tells Hunt she feels restricted in daily life because of it. “She can’t go anywhere,” Hunt said. “We raised them to make a choice, and they chose to be Islam Muslims.”
To her, the heart of the issue is clear. “They should have the right to go back. That’s their home.”