The stiff sentences given out at courts martial for the participants (known as the Presidio 27) drew international attention to the extent of sentiment against the war within the U.S. military, and the mutiny became "[p]erhaps the single best known event of the domestic GI movement".

First, there was the death of Richard Bunch, a prisoner in the stockade, who was killed by a guard on October 11 with a shotgun blast to the back while walking away from a work detail.

Further heightening the tension, conditions in the stockade were overcrowded, with up to 140 prisoners housed in a space intended for 88, and there were charges of mistreatment by guards.

"[2][3]: p.74 [4]: p.54 & 58 The protest was set into motion, however, by a group of four AWOL soldiers who turned themselves in at the end of a large anti-war march in San Francisco on October 12 near where the Presidio is located.

[5] The military had made attempts to prevent service members from participating in the march, ordering up mandatory formations and special maneuvers which would keep men on base.

On Christmas Eve in 1968, Mather and Pawlowski, "facing long jail terms for their leadership roles" and hoping to undermine the case against the other protesters by removing the "star defendants" from the trial, took advantage of the holiday distractions, jumped out a window and "jogged off the post".

[7][8] Two months later, Blake made a dramatic escape from a prison hospital, sawing through his window bars for two weeks at night with a smuggled hacksaw blade, and then squeezing naked through the hole.

[3] As the first defendants were sentenced to 15, 14, and 16 years at hard labor, national attention was focused on the severity of punishment for a non-violent protest.

[1] At the time of his release from the Army disciplinary barracks at Ft. Riley, Mather's lawyer Howard DeNike described his client as America's "last prisoner of conscience from the Vietnam War.