What I would specifically like to know is
I believe that soldiers see value in denigrating the enemy, and that this often takes the form of an ethnic slur. What happens when the war ends, you get home, and you see someone of the same background as your enemy? How long til you stopped using the slur(s) you used during the war?
I was wondering about this just the other day. My dad served in the first Iraq war and was in the military during the Vietnam era; if I can get an answer out of him I’ll let you know, but getting him to talk about war is like pulling teeth. I’m 20 years old and it took me until a couple of days ago to get him to even acknowledge that he qualified for combat pay.
FWIW I have known two people that fought in Vietnam.
One is my dad. He was on an aircraft carrier (Midway), and thus had very little contact with the enemy per se. He still doesn’t like to talk about it, since people he knew either didn’t come back or landed badly on the carrier.
The other is my ex-almost-father-in-law. Marine Combat infantry in Vietnam also. His hate is directed toward the US gov’t. I don’t think I ever heard him utter a racial slur (but he lives in a small town in W. Massachusetts so it’s hard to tell). He never mentioned what he called the VC while fighting.
(At least I help bump the thread.)
I’d consider you lucky. I’ve heard everything that happened to my dad in the Korean War about a million times. OTOH, he hardly ever brings up the one job he had that didn’t work out too well.
Thank you for your response. I get your point about trying to explain it. And I’m guessing that having the enemy and your allies be of the same ethnic group makes for a stressful time.
This isn’t all about my father, but he is my closest point of reference on these things. It’s becoming clear to me that different generations handle things differently. Oddly enough, my father almost never refers to the North Koreans as anything but North Koreans (he was in the artillery), but they had a houseboy whom they called “Joe Gook.” And he routinely refers to Japanese as “Japs.”
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but they had a houseboy whom they called “Joe Gook.”
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We had a(n Iraqi) translator nicknamed Muj Larry. Larry (along with david, roger, et. al.) were, of course, cover terms so no one knew their real Iraqi names, for fear of their families being targetted.
I was in Vietnam and I never really hated anyone, well, maybe my draft board. And probably Nixon.
The most common name for “the enemy” was V.C. or Charlie (usually with an explitive attached). It was interesting to note that the term “gook” was usually reserved for people seen on an everyday basis rather than the opposing forces. Some did use it for the enemy but as I remember not much. And really gook was not that common a term for people I was around.
To the best of my knowledge, I have never come across any V.C. or north Vietnamese, but I still have a lot of respect for the Vietnamese I ran into from day to day in Vietnam. I still respect people of Vietnamese extraction I see around town these days.
Nixon, on the other hand, him, I still use slurs to discribe.
I’ve known Iraqi engineers, Afghani engineers, Qatari engineer, and plenty of good, hardworking folks that just want to ply a trade and make an honest day’s dollar (relatively). Not all workers are spies, but there are some–so you take precautions. But, there are still hardworking people, working at building something (besides shooting at something) that just want a good job. This is why I will go back–there is always good, solid, construction that needs to be done. And I will happily help, where I can.
My fiancee hates the idea of me going overseas again, but I see it as inevitable–and with my knowlege, I’ll go to help. I have brothers in the trade. I’m going to do what I can to help 'em.
Tripler
You asked, I answered.
2)What IntelSoldier said.
3)See Above.
*Ditto
**Sometimes when they refuse to talk it just means they were a REMF and are trying to seem all mysterious…
Tried to add this to my previous post but was too late.
ETA: I should also point out that few if any of the guys that I served with hated the Iraqi soldiers. The common sentiment was “Poor Bastards”. On one occasion we went without food for a couple of days because we had given our rations to some prisoners who had been shooting at us (half heartedly)an hour earlier. When they surrendered they were so malnourished we could not let them starve.
The crappy part was while we (front line combat soldiers) had given them food water smokes and treated them well, the rat bastard REMF MP’s we turned them over to were pretty abusive and harrasing. :rolleyes:
REMF
Registered Emetic MoFo?
Help a girl out.
Rear echelon mother fuckers, people in the behind-the-scenes operation of the war like “desk jockeys” who are not in combat.
Rear Eschalon Mother F*cker, Guy who stays far behind the fron lines and as far from actual combat as possible. Usually identified by Ranger tab sewed on wrong sleeve or the guy who wears Expert badge for multiple weapons on class ‘A’.
I never applied it to regular hard working folks behind the lines. There are many important jobs that require people to serve in non-combat positions. I always considered them every bit the soldier if they did there job and did it well. It is the billy badasses that drove me nuts. The jerks who like to act tough to the prisoners we took as described above. The guys who never did shit but tell stories about when they were “in country”.
A buddy of mine when asked, will respond, “I was a cook.” Seems easier.
I pretend I actually did stuff. And when people go, “really?” I say, “No. I didn’t do a damn thing but fly around the country and collect tax free money.”
Oh, and to answer the OP from a secondhand account, he would on occasion refer to the Iraqis as Haji, but just in passing, and rarely. If it was someone who was trying to kill him or blow him up that day, it’d be a general term like asshole, or bastard.
Good times, good times.
Do they have to be foreign?
My grandmother the Carlista used to pray for the Anarchist who’d put a bullet through Gramps’ thigh, sending him home for a couple months - my Dad was born 9 months later. So, Dad owed his life to a guy from The Other Side who had perfect aim (enough to send Gramps back home but not so much to cause permanent damage).
There’s a monument in a village of Castilla to “el cojonazos” (big balls). This guy (or perhaps more than one) was the hurled-hand-grenade version of a sniper; the monument was raised by his surviving opponents. When they raised, it was a tad of a scandal because of the nickname - but well, it’s the only name they knew for him!
Prompted by Palestinian suicide bombers, my Republican, church-burning, priest-killing grandfather (i.e., not the one mentioned before) told us about how when he was in the Frente del Ebro, in tanks, sometimes they’d see a red beret run for it… and that meant the fucker had just crawled under one of the tanks and left a “present” (a handful of grenades, preferably under one of the tracks). In his words: “they had confession just before battle and believed that if they died fighting us Reds they’d go straight to Heaven - but that doesn’t mean they wanted to die! Gave them enough balls for a game of pool, 'sforsure.”
I hear more stories about hating the foreigners (specially the Germans, who were hated by both sides) than about hating “the other guys.” Hate for the other guys is more often directed to some ethereal entity (“the Reds”, “the Nationals”, “the International Conspiration”) than to the specific other-guy who was across the trenches from you.
I have no first-hand military experience, but WWII vet I knew just died recently.
He had served in the south Pacific and saw a lot of action. (I’ve heard his stories.) He never got over his hatred for the “Japs” (as he always called them). You’d see a dark look cross his face anytime someone of Asian descent was around.
He was an otherwise intelligent and warm-hearted guy. The scars were deep.