Terry Whitmore was born on March 6, 1947 and grew up in Memphis, Tennessee. He graduated from high school and then enlisted in the Marines in fall of 1966. Whitmore believed that he would have been drafted anyway, and voluntarily enlisting meant he might get to stay home for one more Christmas.
After enlisting, Whitmore was sent overseas to fight in the Vietnam War. Though he was initially promised a non-combat role on a ship, this offer did not hold. By December 1966, he was a lance corporal and was wounded in action near Con Thien. He believed that some of the North Vietnamese combatants intentionally spared his life, instead shooting the White troops he was with. He was injured by gunfire and shrapnel, and was sent to Japan to recover. While hospitalized in Japan, he was able to watch news broadcasts from the US after the Assassination of Martin Luther King Jr.. Initially, he was told he would not have to return to Vietnam. The orders were changed, though, and he was scheduled to leave Japan for Vietnam. With the help of an anti-war group, he instead traveled across the USSR to Sweden, where he sought asylum. As of 1968, he was one of eighty US troops who deserted to Sweden, along with thirteen other Black troops. In Sweden, he worked as a script writer for the Swedish Film Institute.
Personal life
Whitmore was married before enlisting; his first child, a daughter, was born while he was overseas. Whitmore became engaged to a Swedish woman while in Sweden. While in Sweden, he joined a basketball team founded by American deserters of the Vietnam War, the Stockholm Stars. In 1977, after President Jimmy Carter signed an executive order granting amnesty to draft evaders of the Vietnam War era, Whitmore returned to the US to meet his daughter for the first time, who was being raised by his mother. He had two sons while in Sweden.
Works and appearances
Whitmore was one of the few Black Vietnam War veterans to write a memoir about his experience: Memphis-Nam-Sweden: The Autobiography of a Black American Exile, published in 1971. He was also the subject of the 1969 documentary Terry Whitmore, for Example, and appeared in the 2005 documentary Sir! No Sir!.
