Jan 28 2007
Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam
This is an interesting story. However, I also want to preface the story with this comment:
I've been a reader of Daily Kos for years. I like and respect many of the progressive commentators who were pointing out the numerous fallacies and failings of the current administration back when doing so could earn you a trip to Guantanamo for being a subversive islamo-fascist radical. That being said, I also beleive that much of the verbiage used, and allowed, on the Daily Kos forums are far more incendiary than necessary. In this regard, I am much more like Martin Luther King than Malcolm X with respect to my views on large-scale morality and political dispute resolution.
Okay, preface completed.
Daily Kos recently addressed an issue of which I've been peripherally aware for several years - the issue of public treatment of Vietnam-era veterans. In a story about Chuck Hagel and John McCain's friendship and differing views on Iraq, Newsweek assets as fact that many Vietnam-era returning GIs were sometimes jeered and even spat upon in airports.
There's a small problem with that. Despite the widespread belief these days that troops returning from Vietnam were spat on, there's no empirical data to support the assertion. In his book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, the sociologist Jerry Lembcke looked for evidence of episodes of spitting, and as he wrote in a 2005 Boston Globe op-ed:
STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. It's hard to say where they come from. For a book I wrote in 1998 I looked back to the time when the spit was supposedly flying, the late 1960s and early 1970s. I found nothing. No news reports or even claims that someone was being spat on.
What I did find is that around 1980, scores of Vietnam-generation men were saying they were greeted by spitters when they came home from Vietnam. There is an element of urban legend in the stories in that their point of origin in time and place is obscure, and, yet, they have very similar details. The story told by the man who spat on Jane Fonda at a book signing in Kansas City recently is typical. Michael Smith said he came back through Los Angeles airport where ''people were lined up to spit on us."
Like many stories of the spat-upon veteran genre, Smith's lacks credulity. GIs landed at military airbases, not civilian airports, and protesters could not have gotten onto the bases and anywhere near deplaning troops. There may have been exceptions, of course, but in those cases how would protesters have known in advance that a plane was being diverted to a civilian site? And even then, returnees would have been immediately bused to nearby military installations and processed for reassignment or discharge.
Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming.
I've heard similar accounts on how vets were viewed with much of the same respect in the States we now provide returning Iraqi veterans. I was only a child at the time, but I've heard there were generally no hard feelings, and the guys were viewed as reluctant volunteers. As we all know, however, that sharply contrasts the general view that has been propagated by the media and in movies. The media always has had a flair for the dramatic.
Now Kos posts this story, itself somewhat incendiary, about how the mainstream media, this time by and through Newsweek, continues to "Perpetuate A Lie." Yes, there is obviously truth to the fact that Newsweek is engaging in some shaky journalism by relying on unsupported facts. However, I'm not sure I fully agree with how the story is reported, and how the argument is made, by Kos (through a forum commentator, "MissLaura").
The use of such incendiary criticism concerning Newsweek — who rightly should be faulted — takes away both the credibility and force of the underlying story; one which bears noting since it may be of some import on how the public chooses to allow the Bush Administration and the media to treat the current batch of veterans — as pawns or as people.
Semper Fi.
Your post has some excellent points. I am a 2 tour Vietnam Veteran who recently retired after 36 years of working in the Defense Industrial Complex on many of the weapons systems being used by our forces as we speak.
I can recall being rejected by my own family, suffering through PTSD and Depression and bein spat upon, but quite frankly I am more intersted in the following:
The Department of Defense, headquartered in the Pentagon, is one of the most massive organizations on the planet, with net annual operating costs of $635 billion, assets worth $1.3 trillion, liabilities of $1.9 trillion and more that 2.9 million military and civilian personnel as of fiscal year 2005.
It is difficult to convey the complexity of the way DOD works to someone who has not experienced it. This is a massive machine with so many departments and so much beaurocracy that no president, including Bush totally understands it.
Presidents, Congressmen, Cabinet Members and Appointees project a knowledgeable demeanor but they are spouting what they are told by career people who never go away and who train their replacements carefully. These are military and civil servants with enormous collective power, armed with the Federal Acquisition Regulation, Defense Industrial Security Manuals, compartmentalized classification structures and “Rice Bowls” which are never mixed.
Our society has slowly given this power structure its momentum which is constant and extraordinarily tough to bend. The cost to the average American is exhorbitant in terms of real dollars and bad decisions. Every major power structure member in the Pentagon’s many Washington Offices and Field locations in the US and Overseas has a counterpart in Defense Industry Corporate America. That collective body has undergone major consolidation in the last 10 years.
What used to be a broad base of competitive firms is now a few huge monoliths, such as Lockheed Martin, General Dynamics, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and Boeing.
Government oversight committees are carefully stroked. Sam Nunn and others who were around for years in military and policy oversight roles have been cajoled, given into on occasion but kept in the dark about the real status of things until it is too late to do anything but what the establishment wants. This still continues - with increasing high technology and potential for abuse.
Please examine the following link to testimony given by Franklin C. Spinney before Congress in 2002. It provides very specific information from a whistle blower who is still blowing his whistle (Look him up in your browser and you get lots of feedback) Frank spent the same amount of time as I did in the Military Industrial Complex (MIC) but in government quarters. His job in government was a similar role to mine in defense companies. Frank’s emphasis in this testimony is on the money the machine costs us. It is compelling and it is noteworthy that he was still a staff analyst at the Pentagon when he gave this speech. I still can’t figure out how he got his superior’s permission to say such blunt things. He was extremely highly respected and is now retired.
http://www.d-n-i.net/fcs/spinney_testimony_060402.htm
The brick wall I often refer to is the Pentagon’s own arrogance. It will implode by it’s own volition, go broke, or so drastically let down the American people that it will fall in shambles. Rest assured the day of the implosion is coming. The machine is out of control.
If you are interested in a view of the inside of the Pentagon procurement process from Vietnam to Iraq please check the posting on this blog entitled, “Odyssey of Armaments”
http://rosecoveredglasses.blogspot.com/2006/11/odyssey-of-armaments.ht ml
On the same subject, you may also be interested in the following sites from the “Project On Government Oversight”, observing it’s 25th Anniversary and “Defense In the National Interest”, insired by Franklin Spinney and contributed to by active/reserve, former, or retired military personnel.
http://pogo.org/
http://www.d-n-i.net/top_level/about_us.htm
I just saw today on the news about this soldier back from Iraq being accosted by antiwar demonstrators at a rally, they called him babykiller and wanted to beat the crap out of him. Funny how a lot of these antiwar protesters are so violent and aggressive.
[…] STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. … Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. … — more — […]
[…] STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. … Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. … — more — […]
[…] STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. … Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. … — more — […]
[…] are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. … Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. … — more — […]
[…] STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. … Lembcke goes on to cite a 1971 poll finding that more than 90% of Vietnam veterans said they had met a friendly homecoming. … — more — […]
“…I was a red-hot leftist (marxist) revolutionary back then, and I did spit on a couple of returning vets. From the safety of a crowd, behind a barricade and a police line.
I was an America-hating asshole and a coward. I’ve learned better, and I’ve learned to feel regret for my shameful actions then. Can’t say the same for the current crowd of shameless, cowardly, America-hating leftist jerks, though. (Hat tip: Glenn Reynolds).
-Bill Quick
Daily Pundit
http://dailypundit.com/?p=24230
Cached: http://209.85.165.104/search?q=cache:K4jZHS7l1yMJ:dailypundit.com/%3Fp %3D24230+Bill+Quick+I+was+an+America-hating+asshole+and+a+coward&hl=en &ct=clnk&cd=1&gl=us
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Rick Atkinson, Pulitzer Prize winner and former assistant managing editor at The Washington Post, writes in his book, “The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966,” of Captain Tom Carhart’s return from Vietnam, pp. 324-5:
“Still in uniform, he was strolling through the O’Hare terminal in search of a telephone when a group of hippie girls darted up and spat on him. The shock and pain could have been no more intense if they had slashed him with knives. Reeling with surprise and uncertain what to do, he did nothing. His assailants scampered off through the airport crush as Tom wiped the saliva from his face, now aflame with humiliation. That night he got into an argument about the war with his friends’ daughter, who was home from college. This is great, he told himself sardonically. I’m back less than twenty-four hours, I get spat on, then I get hassled by my countrymen over a cause for which I got myself shot twice. Welcome home, Johnny.”
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“Yes, I am a Vietnam veteran who was spat upon — literally and figuratively. By hippies? I don’t know. In the airport? Yes. San Francisco International Airport on October 11, 1971 at 3:15 p.m., and yes, I was still in uniform. To be exact, it was the same uniform that I wore during the last Fire Support Mission I was involved in, just 36 hours before landing in San Francisco Airport. No, I didn’t have mud, dirt, or gunpowder on my uniform. A very kind Vietnamese woman at the Transit Company washed and ironed it for me so that I could come home to the country I love looking nice. This was one hell of a lot more than I received upon arrival.
If I were the only one to be spat upon, the score would be : not spat upon, 1,999,999, spat upon, 1. Of course, I know this score to be wrong. Literally because I saw others spat upon, and figuratively because to spit on one Vietnam veteran is to spit on them all.
The person who spat on me was wearing a shirt that said ‘Welcome Home Baby-Killer.’ …
About that image of a burly Green Beret walking through the airport and being spat upon by a war protester — let’s also remember that most war protestors or hippies or whatever name you want to attach to them were also becoming very aware of their rights as U.S. citizens, and they knew that if this burly Green Beret did nothing they (protesters) had won, and if the burly Green Beret retaliated, they (protesters) still won. How could they lose?”
Robert E. McClelland; Massillon, Ohio, pp. 41-43
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I think the date was March 7, 1972. I was in the San Francisco airport. I had just showered and put a fresh uniform (Air Force) on for my first leg home. Walking out to my gate I passed a ‘hippie’ who spat upon me and continued walking in the opposite direction, without a word.
I made nothing of the incident for two reasons:
(1) I was happy to be going home after 367 days in Thailand, and didn’t want anything to screw it up, and
(2) Officers who get in public fights, while in uniform, are dealt with in a fairly severe fashion.”
Chris Ramel; Denver, Colorado, p. 37
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I am a retired Catholic chaplain who served the Air Force community for twenty years. I had two tours in Vietnam (Phan Rang and Bien Hoa). I left Bien Hoa on November 18, 1968, flew military contract aircraft to Philadelphia, and then on to New York for two weeks’ leave.
While I was leaving the JFK airport to catch a bus to the city, a lady (around 43 years old) told me that ‘I napalm babies’ and she spit on me. I didn’t take her for a ‘hippie’ though.
Needless to say she ruined my two weeks’ leave.”
Father Guy Morgan; Fort Collins, Colorado, p. 44
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I am a female veteran of the U.S. Air Force — 1967, 1968, 1969, and 1970. I was in Southeast Asia though not actually in Vietnam. I returned to the States in 1970 through Travis Air Force Base, and from there I visited a friend for a week and then flew back to the Midwest through O’Hare. I worked at a vegetable canning factory and at a local ski resort before returning to college at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, in the fall of 1971. This is where my spitting story takes place.
I had joined a veteran’s group called Vets for Peace. We were active in anti-war protest marches in Milwaukee, Madison, and Chicago. We usually marched with a group of veterans from Chicago called Vietnam Veterans Against the War. It was in Madison, on Veterans Day, 1971, as I was walking to the Capitol building from campus (all alone). I was wearing my Air Force overcoat and my Vets for Peace hat when a man about 19 or 20 years old looked me in the face and spit right into my face. He was a normal looking man, nothing to distinguish him from a thousand other people. But I will never forget what he did to me.”
Rose Marie McDonough; Green Bay, Wisconsin, pp. 43-44
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“Late at night in mid-August 1969, I was spat upon in the San Francisco airport by a man in his early twenties. I had just returned from my tour of duty in the Republic of Vietnam, processed through the mess at the Oakland Army Depot, and was waiting at the airport for an early morning flight to my Denver home. The man who spat on me ran up to me from my left rear, spat, and turned to face me. The spittle hit me on the left shoulder and on my few military decorations about my left breast pockets. He then shouted at me that I was a “mother-fucking murderer.” I was quite shocked and just stared at him, probably with a stupid look on my face.
The spitter then called me a “mother-fucking chicken-shit.” He was balling up his fists when he yelled this. A cop or security guard then showed up and grabbed the man from behind. I did not see where he came from, nor do I have any notion of how much time went by between the spitting and the cop’s arrival, though it could not have been too long. A pretty good struggle went on between them for a few seconds, and then two more cops showed up. All the time the man who spat on me was calling me (and, I suppose, the cops) names, indicating we lacked bravery.
Having talked to other servicemen during the remainder of my service, I found two other young men who told me that they had similar experiences, one in an airport, the other in a bus station. I have no reason to doubt them. I also related my experience that same night to the man at the San Francisco airport who was running the USO center there. He confirmed what the police had told me: that a number of similar confrontations had occurred there recently.”
Douglas D. Detmer; Farmington, New Mexico, pp. 83-4
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“Yes, I was spat on. I returned from Vietnam in July of 1970 after a year in country with the 12th and 11th Marines. We flew into Norton Air Force Base in Southern California and, after processing, several of us took a cab to LAX. After saying our farewells, I went to the terminal in which I would catch my flight back to Illinois (I’m from Peoria).
While walking down the corridor, I encountered a young man, no older than myself I’m sure, who looked me in the eye and without hesitation, spit on my ribbons. I didn’t know what to do. I still don’t. For all these years, I’ve remembered that experience.”
Scott Brooks-Miller; Spokane, Washington, p. 18
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“From January of 1969 until February of 1970, I was stationed in the city of DaNang, as part of the U.S. Navy’s support unit there. In February I returned to the States, where I was separated from active duty at Long Beach, California. After processing, we were driving to the Los Angeles International Airport.
While walking down one of the concourses, I was stopped by a young lady wearing typical flower child attire - a long maxi-dress, with granny-type glasses. She stopped me and, seeing my campaign ribbons, asked if I had been to Vietnam. When I told her was just coming from there, she spat upon my uniform and ran off.
I had a military duffel bag slung over one shoulder, and I was carrying both a briefcase in the other hand. I immediately dropped both articles and proceeded to run after her. After running about twenty yards, I stopped, said a couple of choice curse words, and thought: Welcome home.”
Chester J. Leblanc; Lake Charles, Louisiana, p. 19
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“After a year of unbelievable hell in Vietnam, I was at the “repo depo” in Long Binh awaiting my flight out. The last thing I was told by the sergeant in charge as we boarded the aircraft was not to expect any welcome home committees when we got off the plane.
I arrived at Oakland Air Force Base [sic, more likely it was the military terminal of the Oakland airport] on April 14 (my mother’s birthday), 1970. I had sat near the front of the plane, and therefore was one of the first to get off. As I looked out toward the terminal, I noticed a large crowd, maybe 200 or so people, on the far side of a cyclone wire fence. In front of them, on our side of the fence, were MPs, wearing ponchos. As we started to file out of the plane, the MPs shouted to us to move quickly, and began holding up their ponchos.
We were in khaki short-sleeved uniforms, and I was surprised that it would be raining in California. As I got closer to the MPs and the crowd, I still could not make out what they were yelling. Then the first egg landed near my foot. At first, like a fool, I looked up in the air, still not putting together what was going on. As my ears popped, adjusting to the change in pressure, I began to hear for the first time the chant: “How many babies did you kill today?”
Several of them were leaning against the fence, spitting at us and at the MPs blocking their view. Others were heaving eggs over the fence and into our midst. The MPs were covered with spittle and eggs, which explained the ponchos. They were obviously used to this ritual. The fellow behind me said, “Jesus, I wish I had brought my M-16!,” and my stomach dropped as I realized for the first time what was going on.
I stopped to ask one of the MPs who these people were, and as I did so a woman about forty years old, not a teenager by any stretch of the imagination, leaned back and spit on me with all her strength. It landed on my shirt pocket, near the ribbons that I was wearing for the first time. “Bull’s-eye!” she yelled. An MP lieutenant took my arm and said, “Go inside, son, and ignore them.”"
David McTamaney; Newburgh, New York, pp. 21-23
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I take no pleasure in a ‘Yes, I was spat upon’ vote, but here it is.
In June or July of 1969 I was going to take a college entrance exam at Palomar College near Oceanside, California. I had plans of going on to college in the fall after getting an early out from the Marines. While waiting on the steps leading from the parking lot, I was approached by a female and two males — average looking, nicely dressed, 17 or 18 years old.
The girl asked if I was in the Marines — I guess because of my haircut. I said yes. She then said, “So you’re one of those baby killers.” Then one of the boys spit on me, hitting my neck and shirt collar.
I punched at him while his buddy ran away and his girlfriend screamed at me, calling me all kinds of vulgarities.
I didn’t take those exams. I just drove back to Camp Pendleton, as I had no desire to be further reviled by my fellow countrymen, for what I perceived to be a hatred of those who served this country.
I still feel the slime on my neck.”
Ronald L. Trousdale; Las Vegas, Nevada, p. 23
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I was medically evacuated from Vietnam in November, 1969, to a Naval hospital in Japan where, after my recovery, I was stationed. During my tour there I married a Japanese lady and adopted her son. She became pregnant; in early 1970 I was transferred back to the U.S.A.
My family and I landed at San Francisco International Airport after a very long flight from Japan. We were going into the cafeteria to eat and, of course, I was in my uniform with all my Vietnam medals, including the Purple Heart adn the Gold Star.
My family and I were standing in line, when, out of the blue, this middle-aged lady walked up to me with a bowl of potato salad in her hand.. She threw the potato salad smack in the middle of my chest and spat what salad she had in her mouth in my face. Then she proceeded to call me a “baby killer,” “war monger,” and a lot of other vile names.
I became so angry and humiliated that I balled my hands into fists and would have hit this ‘lady,’ had it not been for two other servicemen who grabbed me and got me out of there. I’m glad they did get me out of there before I’d had the time to react, because I later thought about headlines that could have read: “Craze Vietnam Vet Assaults Middle-Aged Woman.”
That is how I was welcomed home. That is how my family was first introduced to America.
This ‘lady’ was no hippie. I sort of get the feeling it has been easy to ‘blame’ hippies for things like this because they were easily identifiable, and because they did dramatically, in many cases, communicate their opposition to the Vietnam war. But the verbal and physical abuse of returning Vietnam veterans took place in all levels of American society.”
Frederick H. Giese; Arlington Heights, Illinois, p. 24
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“It happenned to me, and it was no joke.
In September of 1967, I was called to active duty with the U.S. Army Medical Corps. I was a neurosurgeon then (as I am now), and had recently completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of California at Berkeley. I was fortunate during my military service (two years of active duty) to be stationed at a large hospital facility stateside — although I did not actually go to Vietnam, I was responsible for the treatment of a large number of wounded Vietnam soldiers.
I was stationed at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, and I commuted between the hospital and my home in Berkeley. … In any case, when I would come home from the hospital (of course wearing my uniform, which was required), I would receive many negative comments from other residents of Berkeley. One afternoon a youngster, approximately twelve years old, who lived across the street from us, literally spat on me as I got out of my car. He shouted, “How many did you kill today?”
You can imagine how I felt — especially since I had spent that day trying to reconstruct the skull of a Vietnam soldier who had suffered severe shrapnel wounds, and who had recently been transferred back to the United States for surgery.”
Dr. Robert A. Fink; Berkeley, California, pp. 26-27
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“When I got back to the U.S. I had what they called burial detail. That’s when you have to escort a person’s body back to his next of kin and represent the U.S. and tell them their son, husband, or whoever had given his life for his country and you had to stick around until he was buried — you were there to make sure the next of kin was okay.
Well, I had to take this fellow’s body to his wife — she was nineteen years old. It was in 1966 and his home was in Sacramento. …
But to get to the bad part, I was helping the mortician take the casket out of the hearse. Of course, I was in my dress uniform, medals and all that, and the American flag was over the casket and some guy walked by when we had it out about halfway and the fool spit on it and said, “Good, he deserved to die.”"
Tony J.; San Francisco, California, pp. 26-27
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“During August of 1966, while I was assigned for duty in the Munitions Building on Constitution Avenue in Washington, D.C. I was spat upon by a complete stranger while returning from lunch.
I was in Class A uniform, a CWO in the Army, walking along the street when I passed this man in casual civilian dress. As he passed he spat and made a remark: “You dirty (obscenity) killer.”
I didn’t realize he had spit on me at first, and decided not to cause a scene over what he had said. But I noticed his spit on my tie shortly after. His only possible provocation was my being a soldier in the uniform of my country.
He was not a hippie. He could have been a tourist, and both he and I were walking alone walking in different directions. I had never seen the man before.
As a result of this instance and to avoid other problems, our commanding officer encouraged us to wear civilian attire to work instead of our uniforms.”
Claude A. Smith; Gaithersburg, Maryland, p. 31
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“In June 1969, the LST I was on sustained implosion damage from the grenades used to ward off ‘zappers.’ The damage required dry docking, and the ship was sent to Japan. I had been overseas for 19 months already, and the majority of that time was spent in Vietnam. I got lucky and was able to get a hop all the way from Yokota, Japan, to Wright-Patterson AFB, Ohio, which was great, considering home was a suburb of Cleveland.
I was sitting in a chair in the Columbus airport talking to some of the infantrymen who had hopped in with me, passing time. We had some girls come over to us and one or two hippies had a word to say, but we ignored them (not the girls, of course). …
Shortly thereafter another hippie-type person came over to us, stood directly in front of where I was sitting and, in language flowered with the best vernacular of the day, was pointing at our service ribbons and other accoutrements, and calling us sarcastically ‘war heroes.’ He then proceeded to spout a line I had not heard before, but I would live to hear over and over: He called us ‘baby burners.’ At that point he spat on me. I’m sure he never expected the response he got. As a reflex action, I sprang up and put his lights out. It was the proverbial two-hit fight.
Before I even realized what I had done, one of the local constabulary had grabbed me and was escorting me to the Security Room, despite the objections fo the other servicemen present. The person I hit was not detained even a moment. He was helped to his feet, asked if he was okay, and summarily dismissed. They didn’t even ask him if wanted to press charges. … I think the only reason they did, in fact, let me go was because they had neglected to have the guy sign a complaint or press charges. … Looking back on things, it is obvious to me now that the guy who spit on me was performing for the others nearby.”
George M. Householder; Painesville, Ohio, pp. 35-36
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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In January 1969 I joined the Army due to a draft declassification back to 1A while attending college at Texas Wesleyan in Fort Worth. … Aprile 1970 and I am at the airport in Dallas on my way to Nam. The airport Bible flippers wouldn’t even approach you because of the uniform. I think ‘Mother fuckin’ baby killer’ was the favorite line we heard. In Frisco, we had to change flights with a one hour wait. I was spit on twice — once by a female hippie-type who smelled as bad as she looked and secondly by a well-dressed young business type who would be called a ‘yuppie’ today. Him I flattened with a left hook in the gut and a right to his big mouth. My fellow officers and I were escorted to our plane by security and held there until the plane left. The average American in the airport only called us names without any physical violence threatened. Terms such as ‘Murderer,’ ‘Baby killer,’ ‘Mercenary asshole,’ ‘Rapist,’ and ‘Fucking Bastard War Monger’ were the parting words from our fellow Americans we were getting ready to die for.
These taunts came form men and women, young and old. …
Vietnam was Vietnam. I came back on a stretcher with seven bullet holes in me, 57 combat decorations (two Silver Stars), and spent two years in an Army hospital due to my service.
Some of my friends that didn’t come back on military Medevac told me the name-calling and spitting got them again in Frisco and other major airports. We all resolved this in our future assignments by not wearing our uniforms in public. This worked well, because the Army was letting us wear our hair longer and we purchased civilian-type luggage and did not use the bags issued to us by the military. As long as you didn’t look like military, you were left alone. …
If we ever do go to war again and I decide to participate if the Army will have me, I’ll shoot every SOB who curses or spits on me for defending our country.”
Lou Rochat; Universal City, Texas, pp. 37-39
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“The circumstances of my being spat on were somewhat different than the stereotype, and, frankly, I never realized that there were other veterans complaining of similar occurrences.
I served in Vietnam during the height of the war, September 1967 to September 1968. If you recall, the war sentiment at the time was such that when I went to Vietnam I was still considered by many to be a patriot. By the time I was ready to return home, the United States had experienced the Chicago Democratic Convention, the riots in Detroit, the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. and Bobby Kennedy, the riots in many cities — and Haight Ashbury in San Francisco had blossomed. Frankly, I felt safer in Vietnam.
When I returned from overseas duty, I was to leave the Army and ‘outprocess’ in San Francisco. My girlfriend, who became my fiancee in San Francisco and now has been my wife for eighteen years, met me upon my arrival. One day while simply touring San Francisco, in uniform, a rather nondescript man on the street spit at my uniform because he was obviously in disagreement with what it represented at the time. Nothing was said, but the incident saddenned and confused me. I took off my uniform later that day and never put it on again during the rest of my stay in San Francisco.
What bothered me the most about the incident was that, having been born in 1944, I grew up with World War II movies which made soldiers heroes, and always showed them coming home to ticker-tape parades down Fifth Avenue. If there is any aspect of the war I have trouble coping with, it was trying to understand spitting on a uniform. I was an officer involved in covert intelligence work in Vietnam, so I did not experience some of the horrors of the infantrymen who were in the heat of battle every day. The only ‘mental scar’ that remains with me today was the unwelcome display of that man in San Francisco.
I had effectively put the incident out of my head to the point that I do not remember anything about the man except that he was not a hippie. Until now, I always thought my experience was somewhat isolated.”
J. Leonard Caldeira; Chicago, IL, pp. 40-41
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“I attended a military reunion in New York in 1968. I was standing in front of the Waldorf waiting for a cab when a young girl walked up to me and spat. She said something and walked away. The doorman told me that it was not a ‘good idea’ to wear a uniform in New York.”
M. Tierny; Las Vegas, Nevada, p. 41
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989
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“Upon my return from Vietnam in March 1969, I was assigned to duty in Detroit, Michigan. I was given the duty of notifying and providing assistance to the next-of-kin whose loved ones were killed in Vietnam. This job required special care and sensitivity to assist people who had lost someone they cared for. While walking through a local shopping mall I was spat upon by other Americans. It was quite a shock to have people so hostile toward me. I felt rejected by my country, and still do. The same country I was willing to die for, if necessary. To the American people: please, for my sake and for the sake of other Vietnam veterans, understand that we want to come home. Unfortunately for many, the horrors of war will last a lifetime. And also to the American people: thank you for listening to our stories.”
Fred G. Alderman; Denver, Colorado, p. 47
Bob Greene, “Homecoming: When The Soldiers Returned From Vietnam”, 1989