Debunking a spitting image (Viet-nam vets)

[kskiska]

By Jerry Lembcke | April 30, 2005

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.

The exaggerations in Smith's story are characteristic of those told by others. ''Most Vietnam veterans were spat on when we came back," he said. That's not true. A 1971 Harris poll conducted for the Veterans Administration found over 90 percent of Vietnam veterans reporting a friendly homecoming. Far from spitting on veterans, the antiwar movement welcomed them into its ranks and thousands of veterans joined the opposition to the war.

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http://www.boston.com/news/globe/editorial_opinion/oped/articles/2005/04/30/debunking_a_spitting_image/

[Submariner]

1. From '65 to '69 I used to hitchhike

everywhere in my cracker jack sailor suit and NEVER got spat upon. Matter of fact, hippies were usually the first ones to pick me up. "Bummer dude", and "stay alive" were usually the only comments I received. The spitting thing I see vets comment about on the boards are usually freeper types tying spitting to the left. Nuff said.

[LiberalFighter]

2. Glad to finally see something to debunk this

[Spiffarino]

3. Finally

I remember that time well. I grew up in the L.A. area and at no time did I hear of any vet being spat upon. The ones that came back to my hometown were greeted warmly. We were just glad they were alive and whole.

Edit: nominated for greatest

[jedr]

4. the worst treatment I got was by my local V.F.W.

It wasn't a real war you know....f**k you John Wayne!

[nightfire]

5. Glad to see Lembcke's refutation making the rounds

VVAW friends likewise told me they spent years trying to track down a single corroboratable instance. Antiwar activists of draft age were hardly disposed to blame GIs in any blanket way since everyone had friends and relatives in one service branch or the other, and could readily sympathize with their plight - which is not to ignore the fact that were plenty of real assholes in uniform just as there were in civlian life.

[ThoughtCriminal]

6. I've heard the claim from vets themselves

but there are often details that bring authenticity into question - the fact that it is part of a different rant about life being unfair to them being one clue. I suspect that many "Vets" who make the claim are in fact Chickenhawks who were nowhere near Vietnam.

[Logansquare]

12. I've only heard it from posters on the web or "a cousin of a friend of..."

The attributions are so vague that I can't help but find them suspect. Now being mistreated by the VFW and the Veteran's Administration, I've heard that straight from the horse's mouth, from more than one Vietnam vet.

[Larkspur]

7. The Police and National Guardsmen who attacked/guarded anti-war protesters

were more likely to be spat upon by anti-war protesters than GI's. It's interesting that the urban legend of GI's being spat upon by anti-war protesters coincided with the rise of Ronald Reagan and the Religious Right.

[Lydia Leftcoast]

8. Right, I never heard the stories until the Reagan administration

One thing I heard while working with street kids was that a lot of the street dwellers who claimed to be Vietnam veterans were just guys who had picked up cheap military duds at surplus stores and used the fake Vietnam veteran identity as a tool for panhandling.

[Name removed]

9. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[triguy46]

10. Life imitating art

Rewind to a Seinfeld in which Kramer and Newman are outraged that Jerry has befriended Met 1st baseman Keith Hernandez. They claim he spit on them and they have a film to prove it. Its a Zapruderesque clip showing impact, ricochet and the fallen heroes. Seindfeld then dissects the trajectories (ala JFK) and announces "That's one tough loogie."

I think we have the same thing here. Perhaps one incident has now spread nationwide with saliva everywhere.

[Briar]

11. Like most "urban legends"

this will go on forever. Especially since it is so useful to the war mongers. Just as it was dragged out to defame the anti war movement in the build up to Iraq, so it will be dragged out every time an illegitimate government is determined to fight an illegal war in the face of principled opposition.