I've referred in several posts to the book The Spitting Image by Jerry Lembcke, which looked at popular culture images of Vietnam veterans. The title comes from the story that our war lovers are so fond of, about female protesters spitting on Vietnam veterans. Lembcke was unable to locate even a single contemporary report on such a thing happening. He did find a number of reports of people spitting on Vietnam veterans who were protesting against the Vietnam War.
He recently had an op-ed piece on the theme: Debunking a spitting image by Jerry Lembcke Boston Globe 04/30/05
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.
I had the following exchange recently with a commenter on one of my earlier posts on Lembcke's book. The post where the comments are was about the case of Foster Barton, an off-duty who the wingnuts decided had been attacked by an antiwar protester. The comment was:
In the article, The Spitting Image, labeling the returning Vietnam Veterans being spat upon as an Urban Legend, may I ask, why do you readily accept a veteran’s word that he was exposed to Agent Orange while in Viet Nam, but discredit the many stories of being spat upon?
While I wasn't physically spat upon on my return, there was other mistreatment of us the equivalent to being spat upon. Since I experienced it first-hand in 1970, I know it did happen.
As for me personally, since I was in Viet Nam in 1969, I was hearing about it while still there from guys I served with that had gone home and come back over.
Just because Lembecke didn't find a police blotter nor a news story about it doesn't mean it didn't happen. In his book, when he did run across a Vet who said he was spat at, unless he could "document" it, it was discredited.
If memory serves me correctly, he was, or is, a member of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, a group hardly noted for truths. By that, I mean Naval Intelligence investigated the infamous testimony of 1971, at the order of Congress. Although granted immunity by investigators, none of those claiming the number of atrocities testified to could either support or document them either, but they are handily accepted as fact.
Since Lembecke did not even speak to a majority of the 2.5 million of us who served there and returned at various airports, both civilian and military, his claims are dubious, as his agenda and you are doing a great disservice to Viet Nam Veterans by supporting his work.
Lew Waters
Comment from lwa2629 - 5/2/05 2:22 AM
This was my response (with a grammar correction):
Lembcke's work holds up well. His main point, that the notion of antiwar protesters being hostile and contemptuous toward veterans is mostly false, is accurate.
As we saw in the last election with the Swift Boat Liars for Bush, both veterans and non-veterans in the Republican Party had no qualms in trashing John Kerry over his military service in Vietnam. It was all politicsto them, nothing about "honoring service" and so forth.
On the particular folk tale of antiwar protesters spitting on veterans, if you find some contemporary reference to such an event, I would recommend you forward it on to Lembcke so he can incorporate it into his research.
I'm not sure what you mean about Agent Orange. I don't recall ever posting anything about it, and I also don't know a lot about that particular controversy. Maybe I touched on it in some other post, but I don't recall it.
It later turned out that Foster Barton had been attacked by another veteran. They were having a argument over whose unit had been the toughest. - Bruce
Comment from bmiller224 - 5/2/05 10:55 AM
4 comments:
Lew Waters commented "Naval Intelligence investigated the infamous testimony of 1971, at the order of Congress. Although granted immunity by investigators, none of those claiming the number of atrocities testified to could either support or document them either, but they are handily accepted as fact."
Another urban myth, actually. No such NIS investigation report has ever been found. The source of this particular myth, Gunther Lewy, has admitted that he can't remember if he actually saw the report or was told about it. There's solid evidence for you.
And as a matter of fact, soldiers who testified at Winter Soldier WERE investigated by the US Army, as explained by Nicholas Turse:
>>> According to the formerly classified army records, 46 soldiers who testified at the WSI made allegations that, in the eyes of U.S. Army investigators, "merited further inquiry." As of March 1972, the army's CID noted that of the 46 allegations, "only 43 complainants have been identified" by investigators. "Only" 43 of 46? That means at least 93 percent of the veterans surveyed were real, not fake. Moreover, according to official records, CID investigators attempted to contact 41 people who testified at the Detroit session, which occurred between January 31 and February 2, 1971. Five couldn't be located, according to records. Of the remaining 36, 31 submitted to interviews—hardly the "few" asserted by SBVT. Moreover, as Gerald Nicosia has noted in his mammoth tome Home to War, "A complete transcript of the Winter Soldier testimony was sent to the Pentagon, and the military never refuted a word of it." <<<<
http://www.villagevoice.com/news/0438,turse,56936,1.html
My apologies for the large lapse in time, I just don't look into anything AOL except for a couple times a year. I will reply to yours and itsmetoo628 comments below;
According to the darling of the left, John F. Kerry; “We returned home to an America that was indifferent, even hostile. There were no parades, only nightmares. Veterans were spat upon, called baby-killers, our uniforms themselves targeted us for ridicule from those who could never understand our pain.” John Kerry, The War That Will Not Go Away, Boston Globe 04/29/2001. Available on Kerry’s Web site: http://kerry.senate.gov/v3/cfm/record.cfm?id=180076&
Not very objective to defame over 200 Highly decorated Viet Nam Veterans.
I do have a jpg of an article from the Reno Evening Gazette dated Wednesday, June 9, 1971 in which a Jim Minarik is quoted as saying “he was twice spat on, denied restaurant service and called a war criminal, all before he had time to buy a civilian suit.” You also have to words of the left’s current darling, John F. Kerry above.
As laughable is the effort of some anti-war leftist to now claim it was we returning Veteran who spat on them.
What I meant by that was that any Veteran claiming exposure to Agent Orange is automatically believed, especially by the left.
TO itsmetoo628: Since Marines were involved in Winter Soldier, they would be investigated by NIS from Marine Corps request. The US Army doesn’t investigate Marines. Why this particular report has not been found is beyond me, but knowing our government, it’s not unusual for documents to be lost forever. Then again, accidental shreddings, such as by Sandy Bergler, do happen.
If you will pick up a copy of Stolen valor, there is a whole section dedicated to the search of Military records from NARA of some of those 43 you and VVAW mention. I also note that neither you nor the VVAW mentions any outcomes of this CID investigation either. No comment is hardly not refuting.
Lembcke describes in some detail in his book public and well-documented cases of *antiwar* veterans in demonstrations being spat upon by *supporters* of the war. Ron Kovic was spat on when he protested inside the Republican National Convention in 1972 by good, presumably prowar, Republicans there.
As for the Kerry reference in the article from 2001, I don't know if he was referring to those instances or to others. He doesn't give any specifics.
In another article from 1999, Lembcke wrote:
http://www.holycross.edu/departments/publicaffairs/hcm/hcspr99/roadsigns/
<< Many veterans have responded to my book with gratitude that I have set the story straight. Others have challenged my thesis, claiming to have been treated badly when they returned from the war. Few of the latter stories, however, lend validity to the myth that it was anti-war activists who were hostile to vets. Upon questioning, vets will often concede that the hostility came from older veterans, the Veteran's Administration hospital, or simply a drunk in a bar. The historical fact is that the peace movement saw veterans as potential allies and reached out to them. >>
If you think the *Reno Evening Gazette* article is solid, you may want to forward a copy to Lembcke himself. He's on the sociology faculty at Holy Cross College, and his e-mail address according the college Web site is: jlembcke@holycross.edu.
He probably would respond to you. Let us know what he says about it. Or send a scanned copy to me by e-mail and I'll forward it to him.
You could also write him by "snail-mail" at:
Department of Sociology & Anthropology
College of the Holy Cross
Box 50A
Beaven Hall 220
1 College St
Worcester MA 01610
- Bruce
I'm not a Vietnam veteran, but since I am of that generation, a lot of my friends and acquaintences are. None of them experienced spitting or ridicule upon returning, and many of them share stories of people buying them drinks in bars when they found out they were returning veterans, or stopping in restaurants to thank them.
I was active in the anti-war movement, and the idea that it would target returning veterans or ridicule is absurd -- precisely because veterans were the principal movers and shakers in the organization, and we viewed them with both respect and a bit of awe. In my experience, anyone silly enough to call a veteran a "baby killer" or spit on one would have been looking to get his ass kicked in pretty short order.
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