Where are all these hordes of soldiers spat upon returning from the Vietnam War?

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

I'm not buying it.

[Natural Citizen]

I don't know. It's possible. A lot of the war protesters blamed them. Even though a soldier has never really started any war.

[Ronin Truth]

It happened, though I really doubt it was that much of a 'horde'.

I'd SWAG given how long ago it was, some of them are most probably dead.

The military was 'out of favor' for some time, over the Viet Nam "racket".

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

I got to thinking about because it seemed a little exaggerated, if not improbable.

These vets are letting (in their view) some punk kid spit on them? Shouldn't there be some documented case of vets mixing it up with protesters in specific response to a spitting incident? And the image of the spitter is often a woman. A woman? Really? How many times do you actually see this? I have spit on one person my entire life and it was a family member.
It's also hard to believe that protesters were waiting on vets en masse at airports. Didn't vets return home on military transport anyway?

I am not saying that it never happened. Maybe someone spit on the ground in disgust. Maybe some saliva actually hit someone's shoe. Maybe a bar room fight was started because someone spit. Maybe a heated verbal exchange resulted in someone spewing a drop, like what happens when one talks too fast.

I don't discount that vets were cursed and the like, but this narrative just seems over the top.


I just started looking into it. So far, most of it is superficial research on my part. I would like to see primary source documentation of a person being spat upon. And not just hearsay, as in my friend's, brother's cousin could tell you about it.

Here is one book on the subject. It actually said the opposite often happened because anti-war protesters viewed vets as an ally. Much the same way liberty minded people can view vets as an ally.

I am often one to say that the truth is often somewhere in-between. That could be the case here.

From the book The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam


One of the most resilient images of the Vietnam era is that of the anti-war protester — often a woman — spitting on the uniformed veteran just off the plane. The lingering potency of this icon was evident during the Gulf War, when war supporters invoked it to discredit their opposition.

In this startling book, Jerry Lembcke demonstrates that not a single incident of this sort has been convincingly documented. Rather, the anti-war Left saw in veterans a natural ally, and the relationship between anti-war forces and most veterans was defined by mutual support. Indeed one soldier wrote angrily to Vice President Spiro Agnew that the only Americans who seemed concerned about the soldier's welfare were the anti-war activists.

While the veterans were sometimes made to feel uncomfortable about their service, this sense of unease was, Lembcke argues, more often rooted in the political practices of the Right. Tracing a range of conflicts in the twentieth century, the book illustrates how regimes engaged in unpopular conflicts often vilify their domestic opponents for "stabbing the boys in the back."

Concluding with an account of the powerful role played by Hollywood in cementing the myth of the betrayed veteran through such films as Coming Home, Taxi Driver, and Rambo, Jerry Lembcke's book stands as one of the most important, original, and controversial works of cultural history in recent years.





https://www.amazon.com/Spitting-Imag.../dp/0814751474

[Natural Citizen]

The main gripe I have with the way returning soldiers are treated is the way that their government treats them. I have a brother who has done 3 tours. He's been shot all to hell and has some ptsd as well as some physical problems and he can't even get the care he needs without going through what is literally years of hoops and ladders with the VA and a bunch of bureaucrats.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Natural Citizen, I hear that from people. It does not sound uncommon. That is why I often steer away from such "causes." You do something and you often get screwed. Sort of like with the BLM and police. I am not going out in the street for them. Of course, one reason is that the whole issue of big government has been skewed to make it an exclusively race issue. Either way, I often look out for my family and myself.

[cajuncocoa]

//

[Natural Citizen]

...Either way, I often look out for my family and myself.

Yep.

[oyarde]

I'm not buying it.

I dunno , probably did happen . I was never spit on , if someone had spit on me I would have drove its nose through its brain in about one second and kept on walking. I always made sure to be quiet , polite and courteous to everyone regardless of whatever , that did not cover saliva .

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Okay, here's another source from someone who looked into it:

Were veterans spat upon as they returned from serving in Vietnam? When Holy Cross College scholar Jerry Lembcke studied the allegations for his 1998 book Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam, he found no evidence to back the claim.

Since 2000, I've been using this column to track Vietnam vet spit allegations as they appear in the press, and have found nothing that contradicts Lembcke's basic assessment. On Jan. 30, when I wrote a column criticizing a current Newsweek story that offhandedly asserted that vets had been spat upon as if it was established fact, I asked readers to forward to me accounts from the Vietnam era they found reliable. On Feb. 5 and Feb. 12, I published pieces that looked at newspaper stories everybody's research had unearthed.


The news stories undermine Lembcke's belief that the spat-upon-returning-vet meme didn't really start circulating until about 1980, but none documents a spit incident with any specificity. I still believe the stories deserve the "urban legend" status assigned to them by Lembcke.

But a spit tip offered by reader Kevin Bowman proves difficult to dismiss. Bowman sent me a link to the Television News Archive at Vanderbilt University that describes a segment about returning veteran Delmar Pickett Jr. from the Dec. 27, 1971, edition of the CBS Evening News. The abstract to the segment reads:

Headline: Vietnam Veteran

Abstract: (Studio) January, 1971, report on medics in Vietnam recalled; retd. medic featured.

REPORTER: Charles Collingwood

(Manhattan, Kansas) Delmar Pickett, Junior, hero, returns from Vietnam, finds US indifferent to war; vets' unemployment high; returns to school at Kansas State University as better student than before Vietnam experience. [Student Gwyn STEERE - speaks of Pickett's modesty.] [Vietnam film from earlier feature shown.] Pickett home is in Olsburg, Kansas. [PICKETT - tells of being spit on in Seattle, WA.] Disillusioned but not downed by Vietnam experience. [PICKETT - tells of experience as medic in Vietnam.] [Father Delmar PICKETT, Senior - says son more settled.] [MOTHER - says son a much better student than formerly.] Drugs no problem for Pickett. 2 1/2 million Vietnam vets.

REPORTER: Morton Dean

[Emphasis added.]

I ordered the CBS Evening News segment from Vanderbilt and have excerpted the most relevant half-minute from it so it can be viewed here.


Much-decorated Delmar Pickett Jr. has returned to Kansas after two years in Vietnam and is now attending a state university. The segment reprises parts of a January 1971 CBS News dispatch about Pickett's service as a medic in a combat zone, so there can be no doubt of his service. CBS News correspondent Morton Dean reports both segments.

In voice-over, Dean says:

Minutes after arriving back in the states on the West Coast, he got the feeling that no one really cared about where he had been, what he had done.

Then Pickett says:

Man, I got into the airport and these two dudes walked up—one of them spit at me. [Note that Pickett says "spit at me," and NOT "spit on me." Seem it describes someone possibly spitting in his direction, as in disgust. His demeanor makes me think it was not something he took too seriously.]

Later, Dean reports that the spitting took place in "Seattle."

Oddly, neither Dean nor Pickett provide the context to help viewers judge whether the alleged spitting was an unexpected outrage or a common "welcome home" rained down on vets. Pickett is described as formerly "hawkish" on the war, but now thinks U.S. involvement makes no sense, yet he doesn't come across as a peacenik. His biggest complaint doesn't seem to be the spit incident but about the war apathy he faces. "Nobody really cares" about war, he says, and "nobody seemed interested" in what he did there. He calls U.S. troops in Vietnam a "forgotten Army."

If Delmar Pickett Jr. is still alive, he would be about 59 years old. If you know of Pickett's whereabouts, have him drop me a line at slate.pressbox@gmail.com. I want to hear more about the Seattle spit take. (Addendum, March 7: I've now spoken to Pickett. See this piece for more.)

******

(E-mail may be quoted by name unless the writer stipulates otherwise. Permanent disclosure: Slate is owned by the Washington Post Co.)

The 30 second video in the link is sort of interesting. Note that Pickett says the two "dudes" "spit at me," and NOT "spit on me." If someone hits you with spit, then you say "spit on me." Seem it describes someone possibly spitting in his direction, as in disgust. His demeanor makes me think it was not something he took too seriously.

Either way, hunting these stories with such fervor without much success or clarification makes me think these are one off incidents, and not the mass incidents portrayed in the media and pro war people.



Source: http://www.slate.com/articles/news_a...ts_charge.html

[Natural Citizen]

I dunno , probably did happen . I was never spit on , if someone had spit on me I would have drove its nose through its brain in about one second and kept on walking. I always made sure to be quiet , polite and courteous to everyone regardless of whatever , that did not cover saliva .

Hm. I didn't know you were a Vietnam Vet, oyarde. I wonder how many we have around here.

[RJB]

I saw a documentary that followed a battalion or company who went to Vietnam. They claimed they were spat upon when they arrived at the San Francisco, CA Airport.

It could have depended upon where the vets they landed. I doubt any had the balls to spit on a vet at the airport in Des Moines, Iowa.

And who knows, there may have already been a protest going on in SF when that group arrived and they were unlucky enough to walk through the heart of it.

Some times legends, stereotypes, and other beliefs are based on a kernel of truth that come to be believed as the whole truth in time.

[MelissaWV]

*shrugs* I always heard it from my parents, but the phrase can be interpreted as "spit at me" or "spit on me", and I never felt it would become significantly different depending on the interpretation. Someone spitting at you in disgust as you come home is not a whole lot better than someone spitting on you in disgust.

[NorthCarolinaLiberty]

Some times legends, stereotypes, and other beliefs are based on a kernel of truth that come to be believed as the whole truth in time.

Yeah, this is sort of my line of thinking right now.

[Origanalist]

I used to have a good friend who was a tunnel rat in Vietnam, claimed he was spat on at San Francisco by women protesting. I wasn't there. Guy drank himself to death.

[pcosmar]

Guy drank himself to death.

MANY DID.
Many found other means.

Some blamed the soldiers for the atrocities. and they were not welcomed as "heroes".

If there was any similar media coverage of later wars.. there would be the same disgust.

[erowe1]

Where'd the OP come from?

Did somebody say something about that in a speech at the RNC or something?