On this day in 1971, Operation Dewey Canyon III was initiated by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, who dubbed the planned protests "a limited incursion into the country of Congress", mocking similar rhetoric from the U.S. government.

The protest began with more than 1,100 veterans led by Gold Star Mothers (mothers of soldiers killed in war) marching to the Arlington Cemetery gate, just beneath the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier. Reverend Jackson H. Day, who had a few days earlier resigned his military chaplainship, conducted a memorial service for their fellows.

Over the next four days, fifty soldiers attempted to turn themselves in as war criminals at the Pentagon, police defied orders to arrest protesters camping on the National Mall, and more than 800 soldiers threw their medals, ribbons, discharge papers, and other war mementos on the steps of the U.S. Capitol as a symbolic rejection of the war.