(The following article appeared in the March 2 issue of the Militant, a revolutionary socialist newsweekly published in New York.]
TEHRAN-When a group of airmen at the Doshan Tappeh air base here decided February 9 to stand up to the shah's tanks and bullets, their cries for help were heeded immediately by the surrounding population.
But few of the thousands of people who marched to the base in solidarity that night realized that they were witnessing the beginning of the Tehran insurrection.
Nor did the courageous young airmen themselves know that the Battle of Doshan Tappeh would culminate in the overthrow of the hated Pahlavi monarchy.
Three days after the insurrection, one of those airmen told the story of that battle to the Militant and the French Trotskyist newspaper Rouge.
Asking that we not use his name, he explained, "I want the facts of what happened here to get to the United States. We want the American people to understand we are not against them. We are against the American government."
He began by telling us about the radicalization in the air force over the past year. The deepening hatred of the shah and his U.S. military advisers began to find open expression among the homafars of the air force. These are young technicians and engineers. Their rank is roughly equivalent to sergeant in the United States.
Created by the shah thirteen years ago, the homafar branch of the air force has always borne the brunt of the officers' scorn and brutal discipline.
The radicalization of the homafars thus developed in part as a struggle for democratic rights.
About one year ago, the homafars began carrying out strikes to protest military discipline and the shah. An example is what happened at the air base in Boushehr in the southern part of Iran:
"It was from this base that planes flew over surrounding countries to display the shah's support for other regimes,'
the homafar told us. "One day a general slapped one of the homafars. The rest of the men went on strike for a week in
• to repair the response. They refused planes, grounding all flights for a week."
Then the protest moved to hunger strikes:
"Homafars, like everyone else, could no longer live under the shah's repression. We had to take action. So we would go on hunger strikes. The word would be spread through leaflets, and everyone would refuse to eat."
The generals tried to hide these strikes from the public. Sometimes they scheduled the work day to exclude meals so there could be no strike. They were deathly afraid other soldiers and the population as a whole would be inspired further by the homafars' protests.
As the marches against the shah grew to millions last fall, the homafars felt they too must publicly show their opposition to the shah. So they began to organize their own demonstrations against the monarchy.
"Homafars held marches off the base, all over the country. We condemned the shah-and later Bakhtiar-and supported Ayatollah Khomeini. Then everyone got to know that homafars were on the side of the people."
These marches had to be built in an underground fashion on the bases. The homafars also needed support from the civilian population:
"A leaflet would appear on the base giving the time and place of the march. The homafars would gather in uniform in one spot, and civilian backers would meet at another. Then we would join forces for the demonstration."
The presence of civilians protected many of the airmen from victimization. Nevertheless, some of the homafars lost their lives.
"Military intelligence caught some people giving out leaflets. Others who had marched were identified by the generals. There were arrests.
"Shortly before the shah was forced to leave the country, he had 157 homafars executed at Tehran's Jamshidieh Air Base. Another 40 were shot later."
The Jamshidieh massacre was only reported in the bourgeois press after the shah was gone. Bakhtiar denied the shootings had ever taken place.
The event that led up to the Battle of Doshan Tappeh was the February 8 demonstration of more than 1 million in Tehran.
A contingent of 1,000 airmen and other military personnel in uniform joined the march called by Khomeini to support his newly appointed prime minister, Mehdi Bazargan. The homafars went to the demonstration as a group:
"In the morning, we put our uniforms in paper bags and went to the majlis [parliament building]. Behind the majlis was a house near
Khomeini's headquarters.