I am one of those veterans who was spit at when he was home on leave, and I have heard many personal stories of those who were spit at, had beer bottles thrown at me from passing cars, heard the baby-killer comments, all that.
This professor claims it never happened.
He claims it is just an urban legend. I cannot keep my anger at this a secret.
http://www.newsobserver.com/opinion/story/1815713p-8122285c.html
When Vietnam vets came home
By JOHN LLEWELLYN
WINSTON-SALEM -- Last week voters went to the polls to select a vision for the future. Now Americans must find a way forward together. This week, as we honor service and sacrifice on Veterans Day, an image from this political season must be put to rest.
The presidential campaign featured the resurgence of a myth from the early 1990s. That myth is that soldiers returning from Vietnam were spit upon by citizens or war protesters. That claim has been used to turn honest differences of opinion about the war into toxic indictments.
As a scholar of urban legends I am usually involved with accounts of vanishing hitchhikers and involuntary kidney donors. These stories are folklore that harmlessly reveals the public imagination. However, accounts of citizens spitting on returning soldiers -- any nation's soldiers -- are not harmless stories. These tales evoke an emotional firestorm.
I have studied urban legends for nearly 20 years and have been certified as an expert on the subject in the federal courts. Nonetheless, it dawned on me only recently that the spitting story was a rumor that has grown into an urban legend. I never wanted to believe the story but I was afraid to investigate it for fear that it could be true.
Why could I not identify this fiction sooner? The power of the story and the passion of its advocates offer a powerful alchemy of guilt and fear -- emotions not associated with clearheadedness.
Labeling the spitting story an urban legend does not mean that something of this sort did not happen to someone somewhere. You cannot prove the negative -- that something never happened. However, most accounts of spitting emerged in the mid-1980s only after a newspaper columnist asked his readers who were Vietnam vets if they had been spit upon after the war (an odd and leading question to ask a decade after the war's end). The framing of the question seemed to beg for an affirmative answer.
• • •
In 1998 sociologist and Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke published "The Spitting Image: Myth, Media and the Legacy of Viet Nam." He recounts a study of 495 news stories on returning veterans published from 1965 to 1971. That study shows only a handful (32) of instances were presented as in any way antagonistic to the soldiers. There were no instances of spitting on soldiers; what spitting was reported was done by citizens expressing displeasure with protesters.
Opinion polls of the time show no animosity between soldiers and opponents of the war. Only 3 percent of returning soldiers recounted any unfriendly experiences upon their return.
So records from that era offer no support for the spitting stories. Lembcke's research does show that similar spitting rumors arose in Germany after World War I and in France after its Indochina war. One of the persistent markers of urban legends is the re-emergence of certain themes across time and space.
There is also a common-sense method for debunking this urban legend. One frequent test is the story's plausibility: how likely is it that the incident could have happened as described? Do we really believe that a "dirty hippie" would spit upon a fit and trained soldier? If such a confrontation had occurred, would that combat-hardened soldier have just ignored the insult? Would there not be pictures, arrest reports, a trial record or a coroner's report after such an event? Years of research have produced no such records.
Lembcke underscores the enduring significance of the spitting story for this Veterans Day. He observes that as a society we are what we remember. The meaning of Vietnam and any other war is not static but is created through the stories we tell one another. To reinforce the principle that policy disagreements are not personal vendettas we must put this story to rest.
Our first step forward is to recognize that we are not a society that disrespects the sacrifices of our servicemembers. We should ignore anyone who tries to tell us otherwise. Whatever our aspirations for America, those hopes must begin with a clear awareness of who we are not.
(John Llewellyn is an associate professor of communication at Wake Forest University.)
Here is a link to personal stories of men like me who received this abuse. These stories are real. This professor never asked us apparently…
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/news/1276799/posts
Dad was in the Marines in Korea. He was in the Air Force when he was in Vietnam. I don't know that he was spit on when he came home to the airport in Memphis, but I do remember his car getting egged while he was stationed at the Pentagon.
Professor Llewellyn wrote: "Our first step forward is to recognize that we are not a society that disrespects the sacrifices of our servicemembers."
Huh. Like all the douchebags and f*ckwits who protest servicemembers at the gates of their installations, as they leave for Iraq or Afghanistan, or return?
Like the filth that hold signs that read, "We'll support our troops when they shoot their officers"?
Like the fat tub of blubbery pus that almost got the beatdown of his life for holding a sign that read, "Shame on US troops"?
Like the girl who told me I was a "Nazi" in 1995, because I had a bag with unit patches on it?
Like my best pal and roommate, who was ROTC at the time, who was nearly thrown out of a class the first day he had to wear his BDUs?
Like the all the veterans' memorials and landmarks that are regularly vandalized, year after year?
Llewellyn, you don't know what the f*ck you're talking about. I'm sure you're right at home in academia.
Go VVLF.ORG!
Regards,
TS
We should match their denial with our own.
Example: Drill in Alaska. After all, the Exxon Valdez was an urban legend that never happened!
I was spit on in SF International Airport, in March 1967,. after coming home from my first tour.
You came into Travis and had to wear your uniform in order to get military standby, at SFIA.
It was 3 AM and I brought some hurt on the guy, hippies fought like girls. The rookie cop at the concourse had just got out of the Marines, so their was no trouble.
When I got back from my second tour in '68 I was in Chelsea Naval Hospital. To correct some misnomers about Boston, I never paid for a drink while in uniform outside of the College areas. Eastern Mass had very many people serving, especally Marines, the same holds true today, and per capita one of the highest casuality rates in the VN conflict.
I took more shit from Korean and WW2 vets, when I joined the VFW, not a real war, than I did in any of the neighborhoods of Boston,