And Even More on Spitting

Coincidentally, as I was composing the previous blog entry, I got a post on my old "spitting on vets" post. Someone who prefers to hide behind anonymity cites a reference to an alleged CBS news story from December 1971 that "proves" that Vietnam vets were spit on. And based on this single citation he claims that "hundreds" of Vietnam vets were victims of expectorant attacks.

Okay, I'll bite. I looked at the source. Just as I suspected, it is not a documented contemporary account. It's just some guy saying after the fact that he was spit on at the Seattle airport on his way back from Vietnam. There were no arrests, no incident reports filed by airport security or local police, no contemporary newspaper accounts, nothing. Just one guy's after-the-fact claim.

Some proof.

Saying so does not make it so. When I came back from Vietnam in 1969, we landed at Travis Air Force in California. Then we were loaded on busses and carted off to the Oakland Army Terminal for processing out. Finally I took a taxi to the San Francisco airport and caught a flight to Seattle.

So I went through both of the airports that figure prominently in most of those "spitting on veterans" stories, without incident. So did my fellow Vietnam vets; out of all the veterans that I know -- and I know a lot of them -- NO ONE has reported that they were spit on.

And when you think about it, just how would anyone know you had just returned from Vietnam? Why were no other soldiers, sailors or Marines in uniform spat on? If they were, why haven't they reported it? It seems to me that those rabid leftwing pinko-commie antiwar protesters full of spit and looking for a place to explode wouldn't be that discerning.

After I returned I went back to college and became active in the anti-war movement. No one I ever met in the movement called me a baby-killer or spit on me. Quite the contrary, returning vets held a special cachet because it was felt that we had been there and seen it all, and we could speak with authority. Members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, in the early days before the ideological split, were honored with prominent spots in the antiwar rallies and demonstrations.

Ironically, it was the warhawks who dissed the Vietnam vets. I've said before that we were made to feel uncomfortable in the American Legion and the VFW -- they looked at us as losers, slackers and stoned-out druggies who were unable to win our own war the way they had won theirs.

So if anyone was routinely disrespecting Vietnam vets, it was not the anti-war movement. Let's get that straight once and for all.

Okay. But let's just say, for argument's sake, that the CBS story is correct, and he actually was spit on by an anti-war protester at the Seattle airport.

So what? One incident proves nothing. One incident is just that, one incident. It certainly does not serve as the basis for the blanket statement you see everywhere, that Vietnam vets were routinely spit on when we returned.

It's easy to see why the rightwing wants to promote this canard. But it's sad to see so many of my fellow vets buying into it and manufacturing false memories of it happening to them.

Remember, there is ZERO evidence that these spitting incidents ever occurred. None. Not a single arrest, police report or newspaper/media account contemporary with the event.

If you can find one (and not some bogus after-the-fact reminiscence), send it to me and I will eat my words.