[1] Her political activities, which led to the military trial, may have garnered some of the most provocative news coverage during the early days of the U.S. antiwar movement against that war.

[4] Schnall heard about an upcoming GI and Veterans March for Peace scheduled to take place in San Francisco on October 12, 1968, and decided to get involved.

She recalled seeing on the news that B-52 bombers were “dropping leaflets on the Vietnamese urging them to defect.” She thought, “if the United States can do that in Vietnam, then why can’t I do it here?”[7] Together with her husband; James Rondo, a Vietnam war veteran; and the pilot, William E. Gray, they loaded up a small plane with leaflets and “bombed” the military installations in the Bay Area with tens of thousands of flyers announcing the demonstration.

[8] When Schnall reported for duty the evening before the planned demonstration she was handed a newly issued regulation, ALNAV 53, that explicitly prohibited members of the Navy from attending “partisan political” events in uniform.

This new regulation reflected growing concern within the military’s upper ranks that GI resistance to the war was becoming a problem, and they were particularly worried about GIs protesting in uniform.

She arrived at the march rendezvous point in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park and found her husband and a group of corpsmen from the Naval hospital.

On October 14, 27 prisoners staged a sit-down protest which became known as the Presidio mutiny, one of the largest early instances of internal military resistance to the Vietnam War.

[14] Two days after the demonstration, both Schnall and Locks were charged with violating the Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ) and were set to receive general courts-martial.

On November 14, 1968, Schnall faced a formal hearing at the Treasure Island Naval Base where she was officially charged with disobeying a direct order not to wear her uniform and conduct unbecoming an officer.

[4] The military court found her guilty after twenty minutes of deliberation and sentenced her to six months of hard labor, forfeiture of all pay and dismissal from the Navy.

[18] Locks, one of the principal organizers of the October 12 demonstration, was separately court-martialed and sentenced to a year at hard labor, forfeiture of all pay, reduction in rank to airman basic and a bad conduct discharge.

[22] After retiring from hospital work she traveled to Vietnam where she saw children who had been born with terrible deformities and birth defects caused by the U.S. chemical Agent Orange.

[24] In August, 2016 she presented a paper on the Health Effects on American Service Members who served in Vietnam at an international conference on Agent Orange/dioxin in Hanoi.