I Have Nothing To Say On This Matter At This Time.

[booksbenji]

I WILL LET Y'ALL SPEAK Y'ALL MINDS AND THEN I WILL FORWARD EVERYTHING TO HIM OR Y'ALL CAN:

Debunking a Spitting Image

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.

The persistence of spat-upon Vietnam veteran stories suggests that they continue to fill a need in American culture. The image of spat-upon veterans is the icon through which many people remember the loss of the war, the centerpiece of a betrayal narrative that understands the war to have been lost because of treason on the home front. Jane Fonda's noisiest detractors insist she should have been prosecuted for giving aid and comfort to the enemy, in conformity with the law of the land.

But the psychological dimensions of the betrayal mentality are far more interesting than the legal. Betrayal is about fear, and the specter of self-betrayal is the hardest to dispel. The likelihood that the real danger to America lurks not outside but inside the gates is unsettling. The possibility that it was failure of masculinity itself, the meltdown of the core component of warrior culture, that cost the nation its victory in Vietnam has haunted us ever since.

Many tellers of the spitting tales identify the culprits as girls, a curious quality to the stories that gives away their gendered subtext. Moreover, the spitting images that emerged a decade after the troops had come home from Vietnam are similar enough to the legends of defeated German soldiers defiled by women upon their return from World War I, and the rejection from women felt by French soldiers when they returned from their lost war in Indochina, to suggest something universal and troubling at work in their making. One can reject the presence of a collective subconscious in the projection of those anxieties, as many scholars would, but there is little comfort in the prospect that memories of group spit-ins, like Smith has, are just fantasies conjured in the imaginations of aging veterans.

Remembering the war in Vietnam through the images of betrayal is dangerous because it rekindles the hope that wars like it, in countries where we are not welcomed, can be won. It disparages the reputation of those who opposed that war and intimidates a new generation of activists now finding the courage to resist Vietnam-type ventures in the 21st century.

Today, on the 30th anniversary of the end of the war in Vietnam, new stories of spat-upon veterans appear faster than they can be challenged. Debunking them one by one is unlikely to slow their proliferation but, by contesting them where and when we can, we engage the historical record in a way that helps all of us remember that, in the end, soldiers and veterans joined with civilians to stop a war that should have never been fought.

Jerry Lembcke, associate professor of sociology at Holy Cross College, is the author of ''The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam."

© Copyright 2005 The New York Times Company


SEMPER FI

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[jo1753]

Jerry Lembcke,........This is BS. and shows the narrow mindedness writers can have at times. Yes alot/most military troops were flown straight into military bases when coming back. But writer Lembcke.........like alot of other self appointed debunkers who seek out facts from urban legends. They fail to see all the issues that may have been. Yes I did fly into a military base when coming back from Vietnam.

But was that the only flight I took to get to my home....? Did I wear my uniform while traveling into other airports...? When I came home I had two weeks at treasure Island prior to being released back into civilian life.

When the day came and I was actually discharged from active duty. I went directly back to the barracks, picked up my gear and went straight to the airport. If memory serves me correctly, but again this may be yet another urban legend. The military used to have some sort of traveling regulation that said. When someone gets released from active duty and is in transit. They are still considered military personal for 24 hrs after being discharged. And were required to wear their uniforms while in route. It took going thru a total of three major airports for me to make it home. four total if you count Albany Ny.

My point to all this is, If someone were to simply look at Jerry Lembckes way of "how it was" Way back when. You'd get a distorted version of how things were. This I feel automatically makes ( ALL ) who may have been treated less then human after fighting for this country. Look like liars or exaggerators of the truth.

Urban legend........yes I feel theirs an amount that is. In the same way I feel the numbers of war protesters during that period who were accused of doing unthinkable things to lifes and property was exaggerated by the opposing side.

JERRY LEMBCKES...........ALL VIETNAM VETERANS ARE NOT LIARS I KNOW............i WAS ONE OF THEM. SO STOP TRYING TO RE-WRITE HISTORY...!!!!

[Sgted]

The bigger part of my 2 round trips to Vietnam were flown on civilian airlines in and out of civilian airports.
Because I was flying at the U.S Governments expense I was REQUIRED to fly in uniform.
It was no secret to me that there was bitter and divisive sentiment here in the States towards the Vietnam war, and, to a lesser extent, towards the Marine or soldier fighting that war. I was keenly aware of this on my second trip back from WESTPAC. So much so that I changed out of my winter greens and into civies in the bathroom of LAX. I had heard of incidents much worse then spitting. I had no desire to survive the war only to return to the states to become a casualty.
How true the stories were of these incidents I do not know.
In Vietnam we did not have 24 hour on-the-spot news coverage.
We had AFVN radio & TV that I'm sure filtered the news as to keep this demorolizing stuff out of the fighting man's eyes & ears.
Assuming that actually spitting on Vietnam Vets is an urban legend still cannot erase the hostility this country displayed towards the Marines & Soldiers who did an honorable job of fighting a war this government ordered us to fight.
That, my friend, is just as bad as being spat on thousands of times over & over again.
I removed my uniform at LAX because I was ashamed (at the time) of my participation in a war that divided a nation with ME in the middle.
Spit or not, it demorolized, shamed, hurt, robbed and killed alot of damn good men.

[Wyoming]

Went to RVN in late August of ’66 as a member of HMM-165. Was a Crew Chief and spent my time with HMM-365 / HMM-165 & HMM-164. I had trained on 34’s and 46’s at LTA in Tustin, but I digress.


Upon our return to CONUS, in September of ’67, and after a few days in Okinawa, being processed or something, the Freedom Bird flew us to El Toro.

We went through the usual processing and customs BS, donned our uniforms and boarded a bus to LAX. Must have been 6-8 of us.

Strange bus ride. A woman and her 15-16 year old daughter boarded the bus somewhere along the route. I recall the young lady turning around and simply looking at us. Once her Mother noticed, she was immediately counseled and told to turn around and not look at ‘them ’. Didn’t know what the hell was going on and those were the 1st round eyes most of us had seen except on R&R. No biggie, we enjoyed the sights to LAX and didn’t think anything of the issue.

Arrived LAX. Went to the ticket counter, checked in and dropped our bags. Three of us were headed to San Antonio. We decided to simply walk about while waiting on our flight.

We were approached by a group of ‘long haired, hippie-fied, communist pinko MF's ’, male and female (and I use that term loosely) alike, who proceeded to chastise us and spit upon and in our direction. We honestly didn’t know what the hell was going on.

Several SP’s appeared out of nowhere and ‘escorted ’ us to the USO Club and told us to stay there until our flight was to board and if we had any, to change into civilian clothes. Looking back, I don’t see what good that would have done as we wore our hair high and tight and were a bit gaunt.

Anyhoo, once inside, we talked out the experience with a bunch of other returnees and found that they too, were in the USO for the same reason.

We were tired and wanted only to get on a plane, so we stayed in the club.

Upon making the flight and reaching our destination in Texas, we found the atmosphere totally different. We weren’t so much welcomed with a band and confetti, but we weren’t hassled.

Three weeks later I made the return flight to LAX, in uniform, but I was a bit more wary and didn’t have the same ‘deer in headlights look’ as before. No problems of any major deal.


To this day, it still ****es me off to no end. The whole return business sucked.

Wannabees and their ilk, along with the ***** called Fonda, and writers, professors and the like, who spout their ****, have no welcome, nor will receive any quarter from me.

All of them, along with this ******* Jerry Lembcke, can rear up and kiss my rebel ass.

My story. True as the day is long.

End

[d c taveapont]

No problem coming home for me. 1971. but then i'm indian who wants to be around indians.....