[groanup]

Sorry for the vanity but I would like to prove this guy wrong.

[groanup]

ping

[Brad’s Gramma]

Bump this!!!!

[Gordongekko909]

Looking for news articles...

[MNJohnnie]

A Sniper's Journey : The Truth About the Man Behind the Rifle
By Douglas Valentine.
Story by a Vietnam vet details his experience in an Airport when he came home. So please have your "History Teacher" explain why I should believe them and NOT this Vet?

[The Spirit Of Allegiance]

BUMP!

[Spktyr]

Check out _Homecoming_, by Bob Greene: http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/0399133860/americanherit-20/103-0601318-8195066

Also: http://www.americanheritage.com/blog/200511_8_71.shtml

Yes, it did happen. My father was fortunately not a recipient of this treatment, but one of the other men deplaning with him *was*.

Also, if it didn't happen, why do so many hippies talk about how they showed "The Man" by spitting/urinating/throwing feces at "The Man's Stooges", i.e. soldiers? (Notice that they're busily editing history now, but they were crowing about it all through the 90s.)

[MineralMan]

There's no question that such abuse happened, but it did not happen to everyone. In most cases, servicemen came back from overseas and were welcomed home by family and friends.

While I did not serve in Vietnam, I was in the USAF during the late '60s. I always traveled in uniform, since I got a good break on tickets. Nobody ever insulted me or called me any names. Often, I got a free drink in the airport bar and some nice hugs from pretty girls.

Still, such incidents did happen from time to time, usually in large cities.

[BeAllYouCanBe]

I returned from the Republic of Vietnam in 1969.

1. I was refused a job because the interviewer said that many of us were drug addicts.

2. I was called a "baby-killer" by a girl I met at a party once she learned I was a vet.

3. I was ignored by high school friends who were into that anti-war movement. Some of my "friends" thought that I might go psycho and didn't like having me around.

Most nights in the 70's TV programs like Magnum PI often had as the plot some Vietnam Vet going psycho and killing someone. Most people then thought most of us were crazy thanks to Hollywierd.

[tertiary01]

He has a type of personality disorder and you won't change his mind. I'll bet he doesn't believe most of history because he didn't personally experience it. A complaint by you and your parents is in order and get into another class.

[ElkGroveDan]

"I don't believe Viet Nam veterans were mistreated when they came back from the war. I don' know any who were."

I don't have stories for you, but I would like to say that," I don't believe terrorists were mistreated in Abu Ghraib or Guantanamo. I don't know any who were."

[Gordongekko909]

Let's see: we've got a vet named Tim Beebe who claims to have been spat on.

[mountainlyons]

I was in a bar and went up to a cute girl and she said "I do not speak to short hairs" I have had people deny that I was ever in Viet Nam. My brother was landing in Anchorage to go home and Jane Fonda said to the group to "go AWOL" "don't go" so I assume she was saying don't to home. John Kerry cost a lot of fellow vets jobs by calling us baby killers and war criminals. John Kerry you are a liar!

[Explorer24]

Xavier HS in NYC, where Scalia went, had to make changes to their military program as a result of how students were being treated by anti war trash. "In the 1970s, service in the JROTC unit became optional, which had been mandatory from the unit's inception in the late 19th century." (wikipedia). It became optional b/c so many students were attacked they: a) had to stop requiring students to wear their uniforms to and fro school, and b) pressure put on the school. This is what I was told when I attened.

[Cagey]

I served in the Army from 1968 to 1972 and there is no doubt that many Soldiers, Sailors and Marines returning from VietNam were treated poorly compared to the way servicemen returning after WWII were treated. In reality, the veterans of the Korean War were ignored too.

However, I believe many of the stories regarding servicemen being "spit on" are grossly exaggerated. Most of the "war protesters" of that era wouldn't have the guts to spit on a serviceman. Servicemen were called "Baby Killers" after the Mai Lai incident, but hardly ever to their face.

I found that many of us were treated pretty good during those war years. While stationed at Fort Devens, MA, I'd make the trip into Boston and visit Boston Garden and get into Hockey games for free when dressed in uniform. On one occasion, a flight attendant moved my seat up to first class because I was in uniform and in an arm cast.

There were no parades and most men who served during those years did their duty and returned to civilian life, got married and had families.

Like the stories of VietNam veterans coming home and turning into malcontented freaks and druggies, most of the stories about those same veterans being treated like crap are over sold.

I served those four years here in the States and only speak for myself and what I saw going on with the men I served with and those who were in combat in VietNam. Two men I knew gave their lives there and what does bother me more than anything is that I feel they gave their lives for nothing accomplished.

[abclily]

When my brother-in-law walked out of an airport terminal in Washington state, on his way home from Vietnam, he was greeted by screams of "baby killer" and was spat upon.

[abclily]

This teacher does not believe the returning Viet Nam vets were mistreated?

This teacher is on the same intellectual level as the leader in Iran who says the World War II Holocaust did not happen.

Good luck with trying to educate the teacher, but you can't fix stupid.

[groanup]

I was in New York on leave with a friend during the weekend of the anti-war moratorium in Washington. It would have been October of 1969 I think. We wore our uniforms all weekend. We went to the USO and got tickets for the College Bowl and the Ed Sullivan show. We got a free pass to tour NBC studios. We were at the end of the line to get in the Ed Sullivan show when some people in front of us demanded that we go to the front of the line. They persisted and eventually we went. When we got there, the usher said we couldn't break in and we turned to leave. The entire crowd yelled to the usher that we could go ahead.

On Monday I needed to get to La Guardia and I stopped a lady and asked her how to get there. She asked me what time my flight left and, after I told her, she pulled out a twenty and insisted I take a cab or I'd miss my flight. I said thanks anyway and she said she would yell RAPE! right then and there if I didn't take it.

When I got home all of my "friends" who never served loved to tell me how wrong the war was. No one ever thanked me for my service.

New York was far "friendlier" to me than my hometown.

[brazzaville]

Good afternoon.

I extended my tour and took a 30 day leave in May/June of 1968. I was a proud 19 year old buck sergeant with 9 months of of combat under my belt and I had just seen us kick Chuck's arse during Tet and it's aftermath.

My trip home put me in SFO and I was just kicking back enjoying being alive while waiting for my flight to Santa Maria. A blond girl walked up smiling and asked what the purple ribbon on my chest was for. When I told her, her faced screwed up and she yelled 'Too bad it didn't kill you!".

I didn't know what to say so I just looked around. The only person in the crowd who wasn't grinning was a black airport employee. He looked embarrassed.

I've never felt that sad again.

I didn't experience overt hostility on any of my other trips home, but the lack of interest or caring was almost as bad. I was always glad to get back to Nam.

I got some back by beating the crap out of a UC student who was flying a VC flag and I made sure that he understood that he was paying some of the butchers' bill for the deaths of my friends.

If you would like to hear a good monologue about the affect of the antiwar movement on soldiers, watch Hamburger Hill. During a lull in the fighting the Platoon Sergeant, Worcester tells the Platoon Leader and the other paratroopers about a trip home. He says it better than anyone I know of.

Luck to our warfighters

Michael Frazier

[VOA]

"I don't believe Viet Nam veterans were mistreated when they came back
from the war. I don' know any who were."

This is a big claim by lefties today.
One otherwise sane liberal on Los Angeles Radio "Mr. KABC" (at
KABC 790AM) makes the claim as well.
I think he might have even had some academic who makes the claim that
the citizens abusing returning Viet Vets is just an urban myth.

[VOA]

for the forum...I've taken the liberty of putting this under keyword:
"VETERANABUSE"

(and the MSNBC thread from post 27)