Biography
Bill Branson, a Vietnam Veterans Against the War national collective member, was arrested with Bart Savage at a federal roadblock on March 13, 1973 while attempting to bring medical supplies to Wounded Knee. The contemporary Winter Soldier account describes actual detention in the Pine Ridge Bureau of Indian Affairs jail and the Rapid City county jail, followed by release on personal recognizance at the next Monday bond hearing, March 19, 1973.
Bill Branson, a Vietnam Veterans Against the War national collective member, was arrested with Bart Savage at a federal roadblock on March 13, 1973 while attempting to bring medical supplies to Wounded Knee. The contemporary Winter Soldier account describes actual detention in the Pine Ridge Bureau of Indian Affairs jail and the Rapid City county jail, followed by release on personal recognizance at the next Monday bond hearing, March 19, 1973.
The Veteran, Spring 2023, page 18 reproduces the original May 1973 Winter Soldier report. It individually names both men as arrested on March 13 and taken to the Pine Ridge jail. On Friday, March 16 they were transported to Rapid City and bail was set at $50,000 each. The report then explicitly includes both among those actually released at the following Monday hearing on recognizance, with a condition that they leave the area. The Friday date and Monday sequence resolve the release to March 19; this is an actual-release account rather than a projected end of sentence. The transfers were within the same detention, and the source does not establish a later conviction or prison sentence. The portrait comes from the submitted 1973 photograph published by APM Reports in Soldiers for Peace. Its own caption identifies Bill Branson on the right with fellow veteran Bart Savage; this supplies explicit textual identification for the individual portraits.
