Which is what I took issue with in the first place. Then I sort of hijacked the thread, unfortunately.
Back to topic. I saw a lot of anger when I returned, but it was directed at the government that got us into that regrettable mess. Most of the soldiers who went to Nam were from low to middle class backgrounds and were drafted against their wills. Most people understood this. I saw protests, but they were directed at the larger entity. I was questioned on one occasion about my role in the war, but the person was not being abusive. It has been repeatedly demonstrated that the spitting is urban legend (“first hand” accounts have been proven to be cases of someone relating something he read or was told) and that the majority of grievances against Fonda are without merit (this from the prisoners who were there). Don’t know what else to say about it.
Oh no, I totally understand what you’re saying and what the wiki article linked to in the other thread is saying. And yea, I might try to call my mom some time this week and see if I can work the conversation back to that story, but I won’t press it, no way. It’s her story, whether it’s 100% factual or not, I obviously don’t know. Let her have her memories, good and bad, skewed or not. And besides, it guarantees me I’ll never get a surprise visit.
Knowing my parents, and now living and knowing about this area, which is still very alive with hippie culture, and considering the time of their return, yea, I’d say it’s absolutely, completely possible. But her story wasn’t someone walking up to her and ‘spitting in her face’ it was more just yelling and insults and spitting on the ground. I can absolutely see this happening.
I have asked my good friend and neighbor to tell me his take on this. He was a helicopter door-gunner, shot down and held as a POW in Hanoi. I have seen his metals display box and some in-service pictures. He does not talk about it too much and I hope he will give me some personal insights.
Slight hijack, but I’ll ask since I don’t want to start a new thread (which would the Good Times to the Hanoi Jane thread’s All in the Family), but what is the correct ettiquite for a Vietnam Vet who insists that they were spit on?
When I go with my dad to his American Legion post (see rant below; again not worth its own thread), we always meet guys who insist they were spit on. I always nod in comisseration, and dont’ try to dispute them (nor later to my dad, since it’s a liberal media denial).
I get the impression that guys who’ve been in combat don’t talk about it, while guys who were spared actual combat, but served in support duties might have surviviors guilt, or, unlike actual combat vets, simply want to bluster. As we know, all men lie when they reminisce. So the unofficial campaign ribbon of the Vietnam War is a gob of hippie spit?
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So much for that. If anyone’s interested in my American Legion Rant, here goes: My dad fixed planes in Alaska during the Korean War, and is thus eligible for membership in the American Legion. My brother drove a blue school bus on an Air Force base in New Jersey during Desert Storm, so he’s eligible. As for me, when I was on one of Ronald Reagan’s 600 (leaky) ships we’d see Marines in the chowlines who’d been seriously fucked up while “training” onshore in the Philippines. They weren’t allowed to tell us what had happened. Now, to hell with me, but can you believe that they are not elligilbe for membership in the American Legion?
I had a friend who’d been in the National Guard this same time, and was sent to the border of Nicaragua for “training” (actually, skirmishes with Sandinistas). He is not elligible for membership in the American Legion. None of the sailors or Marines who crawled out alive from the barracks in Beruit in 1983 are elligible for membership in the American Legion. The guys killed on the USS Iowa by incompetent admirals (who then picked one of their victims and carved “killer queer” on his tombstone) wouldn’t have been eilligible. Membersip is exclusive to veterans of a recognized conflict (as opposed to the quasi-wars of the 1980’s). Ain’t that a gob of spit?
Jess and psycat90 both give credence through their accounts to the localized nature of the mistreatment of returning military personnel. My uncle was a student at Berkeley in the late sixties, and was involved in quite a bit of protest activity on campus, and then off campus on Telegraph Avenue. He says that at the time of the Chicago Democratic Convention, students, beatniks and Black Power supporters were involved in daily confrontations with the police. He summed it up pretty succinctly recently as a time of his life he “wasn’t too proud about”.
Incidentally, I asked if he came into contact with the military and he said that action was limited to trying to disrupt troops traveling on trains in the environs.
My father claims it happened to him after his third tour, and while I believed it as a child, I’ve since noticed his tendency to embellish past events so as to bring on the drama. It’s horrible to say but I really don’t believe it. More likely he got off the plane, saw a cranky hippy and later imagined the whole thing, or attached it to other stories he’d been told.
It’s not that I have any love for Hanoi Jane et al., but I rather doubt that more than a couple isolated incidents of the spitting thing ever occurred, if that.
This meme is typically represented as something which happened totally unprovoked to returning GI’s stepping off of planes. The mental picture is that mobs of hippies were standing around at airports just waiting to jeer at and spit on the soldiers coming home. I would think if that was the case, there would be some kind of documentation of it somewhere but there doesn’t seem to be a single verifiable case of soldiers being spit on.
As for insults, while I’m sure that plenty were insulted here and there by random assholes, I wonder how many times those insults occurred within a context of a greater altercation. In other words, are some of these memories based on encounters where the soldier may have become involved in an argument (or even STARTED one) in which words became heated, insults exchanged, and then that encounter distilled down to "a hippy called me a baby-killer when I got back from Nam).
I’m sure that some completely unprovoked incidents probably happened but I’m also sure that the civilian wasn’t always the one who started it. There was a pretty big argument going on at that time, and a lot of friction. The vast majority of those in the anti-war movement did not hate soldiers, despite the conservative rhetoric of both then and now. Most of them knew somebody who had enlisted or been drafted and not a few of them had lost relatives or friends over there.
Incidentally, it’s also not true that Jane Fonda was universally despised by soldiers in Vietnam. She had a lot of supporters in the military and there was a lot of anti-war sentiment among the troops themselves.
I was in the Air Force during Viet Nam. I was not spat upon, but, I was told my business wasn’t welcome in at least two shops in Montgomery AL in 1965.
Maybe it was regional, but, we were vilified.
It isn’t faulty memory. If you weren’t alive, you have little right to question our integrity, or veracity.
I never saw any spitting or attacking incidents, but heard or read of them frequently duing the late 60’s. Most of the people I knew were more curious than angrfy about returning soldiers. I was lucky enough to be deferred myhself, so I never experienced that kind of rancor firsthand. My attitude toward the troops today is one of complete sympathy. They are doing a tough job in a place they’d rather not be, sent by a government who are misusing them for reasons never truthfully defined. Since Viet Nam has it ever been different?
Interesting you should mention that. I had a similar experience, also in Toronto, of a “folk memory” that turned out to be incorrect.
I now live in a neighbourhood called the Kingsway, which was built as a “planned community” in the '20s - '40s. Part of this planning was that anyone who built there had to sign a “restrictive covenant”, which specified what they could or could not do with their house. It was mandatory.
Now, when my mom grew up in Toronto, she said that “everyone knew” that one of the terms of this famous covenant was that it had a “No Jews” clause. Thus, she found it funny/ironic that I ended up living there.
Well, I was kind of intrigued, so I did a bit of research. Found out that the “covenant”, while restricting uses in all kinds of ways, made zero mention of Jews.
On the other hand, there was in fact during that time a lot of anti-Jewish prejudice - much of the “not one of us” type which now seems almost unbearably quaint, and involving beach facilities. My grandfather was a (relatively) famous long-distance swimmer at that time, and he was not allowed to participate in swim competitions because he was Jewish. One day, to make a point, he attended such a meet, waited until everyone else started, then jumped in himself and swam after the competitors - and he won. It made the newspapers, and in fact we have a copy of the newspaper with the following headline:
I might be nitpicking but as I said you don’t have to be a combat vet to be in the American Legion. From your link it shows they have periods of eligibility. If you were in during those times you can join regardless of if you were in the conflicts. As you posted:
That’s not true. As to if those that fall between those cracks should be in? It’s their club and their rules. I’m eligible but never joined and don’t plan to.
So you have no problem with this organization that waves the flag and pretends to support servicemembers and veterans and, gives them a venue to tell how they were spit on?
And, because you personally aren’t interested though elligible, membership policy is a non-issue for everyone? Would that include Robert Dean Stethem: singled out from among the passengers onboard TWA flight 847 because he was an American serviceman, was beaten, murdered and dumped on the tarmac of Beirut airport? Although he was buried in Arlington and had a ship named after him, Stethem would have been ineligible for membership in the American Legion because it was 1985 and he was among those who “fall between the cracks”
Why don’t they let anyone who served honorably, in combat or out, become members? Because “it’s their club and their rules?” But their club waves my flag, that’s why.
I don’t agree with you, Loach, and I’m not hijacking this thread anymore. I don’t expect to persuade you, but maybe some of the people who looked here out of curiosity about spitting will have learned something new about one of America’s self-proclaimed patriotic organizations.
Didn’t someone wrote a book debunking the “protesters spat on returning Vietnam vets” myth? The author tracked down vets, asked them about their experiences upon returning, but couldn’t find one person who said “Yes, I was spat upon on X date at Y location.”
I’m inclined to believe it’s a myth, mostly of use for rabble-rousers who like to denegrade anti-war folks and encourage mindless jingoism.
Which would make a nice emo band name. (Full sentence name, inclusion of “boy” now mandatory for pop-punk bands, allusion to Jimmy Eat World in the first word.)
I’m not going to argue its status as a myth. However, you can’t assume everyone who propagates the myth is trying to make anti-war folks look bad. In the story I told, it was my English teacher in HS who claimed that he used to do it. I don’t know who he was trying to make look bad, but it wasn’t himself, and it wasn’t other anti-war types. He was quite pleased with himself over his rebellious, anti-establishment ways.
You misunderstand, it’s not that “I don’t have a problem”, I just don’t care. You do and that’s fine. I was just nitpicking because you said members had to be “veterans of a recognized conflict” which is not true. They limit membership to those who were in the military during the times of those conflicts not only the combat veterans. The federal government also limits certain benefits for veterans in those periods of time. You’re pissed off because there were some people who were involved in some black ops or some such during periods between wars that can’t join. They are also not eligible for the National Defense Service Medal of which I have two despite never hearing a shot heard in anger. They are also not eligible for membership in the VFW. They also don’t get veterans preference in many states including mine (I spent 4 years of active duty in which both Just Cause and Desert Storm happened but I was not considered a veteran because my unit didn’t happen to go). If the AL wishes to limit their membership it’s up to them, they are a private organization. I don’t join because they have nothing I want.
