I like it. ;j
That’s what I’ve always thought, too. My dad did two tours in 'Nam; at least one of them was as part of Army Special Forces of some kind. I can count the number of times that he’s talked about it on one hand (which is why I know nothing more specific than “Army Special Forces of some kind.”).
One time, I mentioned to a friend that my dad had served in Vietnam. My friend then insulted my dad. Now, I’m not saying that I don’t have issues with my dad, but those issues have nothing to do with him serving in Vietnam. Pacifist liberal that I am, I snapped really, really hard at my friend for that one. My dad believed that defending one’s country was the honorable thing to do; with those beliefs, the right thing to do would have been to serve. Getting out of it would have made him a coward. On this, I have nothing but respect for him.
I find this puzzling. As I posted above, I made a false start in college, in a state and at a school where I simply didn’t fit in.
Then in 1966 I transferred to Auburn University, Alabama, about 60 miles from Montgomery.
The students, faculty and staff at Auburn were very supportive of returning military people, and Montgomery has always been considered an Air Force town.
Are you sure that your rejection at these shops was due to your military affiliation?
Now, if you told me that you got caught up in a racial/civil rights situation in Montgomery and were refused service in 1965 I wouldn’t be at all surprised, but an anti-Air Force sentiment there is something I’ve never personally witnessed.
Very true. It is entirely possible that my uncle constructed the spitting part of his story over time. I do believe the verbal insult part, though – he was badly shaken at being called a baby-killer and I can remember him saying something like, “I’ll never forget her voice shouting that at me.” Of course, she may not have been shouting it at him directly. He was walking with a group of other soldiers and this girl and her crew may have been shouting generalized insults rather than specific ones and Teddy just intercepted that particular slur and took it as his own. Hard to say.
Since there is no hard evidence (pictures), I’m willing to stipulate that these things weren’t so wide spread as some would have you believe – certainly I don’t think it’s true that ‘everyone’ was spitting on ‘all our soldiers’ during the Vietnam era. And you do hear it stated that way fairly often – ‘everyone’ and ‘all our soldiers.’
I’m also willing to stipulate that, as *Diogenes the Cynic said, at least some of these isolated incidents began with the soldier insulting the hippy and the hippy firing back. My uncle certainly had a nasty temper and many bad habits (he drank himself to death at 43, remember). But this particular incident, I think was unprovoked. As I said, he was badly shaken by it in a way that he wouldn’t have been by a mutual shouting match.
Hell, I was called a “murderer” right here in good ol’ Central Pennsylvania by some lady because I made the mistake of wearing my flight suit when I was taking care of some business over lunch.
I will concede that the “spitting on soldiers” thing has become a stereotype/cliche and is vastly overstated, but I’m not prepared to say that it never happened, and it could be that that simply became the catch-all for the abuse that Vietnam vets did get, a blanket term, if you will.
There’s a big difference between spitting on and someone and spitting at them, or towards them. Seems more than likely, given the propensity for people as angry and outraged as some of the anti-war protesters were to spit to vent their feelings, that there were instances of spitting towards military personnel, or onto the ground as a sign of contempt. Spitting in the face of soldiers would have been both more difficult - getting that close into someone’s personal space would put the target on guard - as well as being very dangerous, given the likely reaction from the military man.
Anti-war activist, emeritus checking in. I didn’t see any saliva, but I saw a shoving match and a punch thrown at the Philadelphia airport. I don’t know who started it – I was walking past the gate and only saw part of the incident, but what I did see played out quite a bit like the debunked “myth” (minus the fluids, as I’ve said).
Anti-war folk weren’t all pacifists and we weren’t all nice. Like any other group, some of us were assholes. I can’t believe that in all the rancor of that time, with all the confrontations, frustration and polarity of opinion, no one spat.
As others have mentioned, what seems especially odd about the usual story is that it never ends with “And then the Vietanm vet used his Green Beret training to rip off the hippie’s head and turn it into a cuspidor.”
People do strange things, and did especially strange things in the Sixties, but I know I’d hesitate to spit on a guy who’d just spent a year in combat.
That’s probably the best summary of the whole issue right there. I spent 4 years in the Air Force 66-70 and never saw or heard any hostility toward me. There’s always an asshole somewhere. :wally One day he might be the guy in uniform, one day he might be the long haired hippie.
It certainly wasn’t the widespread problem that some make it out to be.
For those who are interested, i just came across a claim by a Vietnam Veteran that he was spat upon.
I was watching the documentary movie, Maya Lin: A Strong Clear Vision, a fantastic film that won the Oscar for Best Documentary Feature in 1995. It’s about the woman who designed the Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial that sits on the Mall in Washington, D.C.
The movie is not only about her career in general, but about the incredible controversy over her design in the months leading up to the monument’s opening. There was some strong opposition to the design, with some feeling that it dishonored the veterans and was not patriotic enough.
In the movie, at about the 18-minute mark, there is footage of a 1982 meeting of the US Commission of Fine Arts, which was overseeing the design and building of the memorial. Starting at 18:15, we see a speech to the Commission by a Vietnam Veteran named Tom Carhart, who strongly opposed Lin’s design. He starts by saying:
He goes on say that he was “stunned” by Lin’s design, describing it as “the most insulting and demeaning memorial to our Vietnam experience that was possible.”
I make no comment about the veracity, or otherwise, of his claim about spitting. I just offer it as the testimony of one Veteran in a situation where making the claim gave him a certain authority and a certain hook for the attention of his audience.
I guess it would depend on how one defines “the spitting thing.” Lembke (along with Beamish in a parallel “study”) went through a lot of news reports and found that there were no instances of massive protests with war opponents lining up to spit on returning vets as they debarked from planes on the tarmac.
Their “studies” fail when it is pointed out that few occasions of an individual confrontation in which one person spit on another would actually make the news. There have been several posters, over the years, (none currently active), who have mentioned receiving various forms of abuse (including being spit upon, struck with “peace” signs, and other events) upon returning from Vietnam.
I also know several persons IRL who have stories of various forms of abuse (only one involved spitting).
I think that Lembke and Beamish (and not so much Coy) did a useful service in showing that a claim that “every returning veteran was abused” was a gross exaggeration. When their works are then used to pretend that no abuse ever occurred, (or that their failure to document any charges against spitters somehow “proves” that no one was spit upon), then their works have the unfortunate effect of creating a false image of the period that is every bit as pernicious as the image that portrays every vet as reviled.
In response to Rube E. Tewesday, I would note that I have heard at least three stories from vets that did, indeed, culminate with an abusive person being dragged into a an alley and beat up for their impertinence. (And I knew some pretty dumb war protestors, so I am not inclined to think that the stories are impossible.)
When I say “debunked,” I mean that the book debunks the popular conception that spitting on returning vets was anything like a trend or a widespread occurrence. Of course, no one can say that it NEVER happened and the book does not contend that there was no abuse at all but it does much to refute the idea that war protestors were collectively or systematically organizing themselves to harrass returning veterans and claims that Nixonian conservatives both exaggerated the amount of abuse and attempted to generalize the actions of a fringe minority into a smear against the anti-war movement as a whole. Another thing the book points out is that at least some of the abuse directed at Vietnam veterans came from (a small minority of) war supporters and even veterans of WWII and Korea who viewed them as “losers.”
There is also much discussion in the book about the image (perpetuated partially by Hollywood) of Vietnam vets as unstable and violent, prone to “flashbacks,” etc. — an image which the book does contend was encouraged by the Nixon administration as a strategy to discredit those veterans who were critical of the war.
I think it’s probably fair to say that Lembke is decidedly anti-Nixon and defensive of the anti-war movement but it’s also defensive of veterans and (I think) journalistically responsible. His book is much more than just a simplistic attempt to debunk the spitting meme. It’s more about attempts by those in power to discredit the anti-war movement.
Lembke is himself a Vietnam vet, by the way.
I think I would have to see a cite for the latter part of your claim; I’ve never heard of contemporary (to the war) war supporters using the “John Rambo” image to discredit war opponents.
The “John Rambo” image was, as my recollection serves me, an extreme exaggerration of the real phenomenon of PTSD, e.g. shell shock, which affected many veterans, and which only after Vitnam finally got the attention it deserved as a significant health issue.