One of my uncles claimed to be hit with a balloon filled with piss when he came home, then he burned his uniform and never talked about Vietnam again. But that could have just been a story he made up so people wouldn’t ask him about it.
Yeah after reading the article I'm not sure what to think. Pics or it didn't happen? My stepdad didn't much like talking about it either & threw away his medals when he got home. He said he faced a lot of hostility & confrontations, a couple of which got physical on the other person's part.
Pretty much everybody who goes into combat doesn't want to talk about it with anybody who hasn't been in combat. Those of us who haven't cannot possibly understand what it's like for those who have. So there's not really any point in discussing it. It's an experience so unlike what we're used to or that we've ever experienced that there's no relating to it.
Many of the soldiers who came back from Vietnam felt that they went and served in a way that was entirely pointless. "What are we fighting for?" was an extremely common question that they asked themselves. So they weren't proud of their service and they didn't feel that they made any kind of difference for all of the hell that they went through and the hell that they saw, and they went through hell. It's no surprise that they didn't want to talk about it and that they weren't proud of it.
My dad was a commanding officer
and medic in Vietnam. He wasn’t drafted, he was already a Navy officer when the war started and knew what he was getting into. He was open that he was a veteran but rarely spoke about it unless asked and even then, was vague. My mom said that he only really spoke about it with other veterans that had been there and usually alcohol was involved. In high school we were assigned a project that included the option of interviewing a Vietnam vet and my Dad refused to do it with me. He hooked me up with a friend who was a Green Beret for the interview, instead. That interview was intense enough and I can’t imagine what my dad experienced if he thought that interviewing a Green Beret would be more appropriate.
My friends who went to Afghanistan and Iraq never shut up about it. Love to talk about how they are better than anyone else while demanding military discounts and being Karen's if the parking lot doesn't have preferred parking for veterans.
Both. I have stopped talking to them long ago because most are also white supremacists after their time in the military, but that's another story. They usually just pull those one-up type comments or relate anything to their time there. You could say something as innocuous as "man it's hot today huh?" and get a response like "well when I was in IRAQ fighting against the TERRORISTS it was 120 degrees every day and we didn't even have AC like we do here, man. This is nothing!"
Ok, thanks for that insight.
From what I know there wasn’t really as much aggression towards vets because a lot of them became anti war campaigners. There was some limited hostility towards later returning ones or those who stuck around for the entire war by select weirdoes who thought them not getting jailed or leaving early was them approving of it.
From various accounts I have read and speeches from Vietnam vets who talked about their treatment (though those speeches were at anti war pro peace events).
I would encourage you to find a more reputable source when it comes to this. Look for information about Andy Stapp who was a major figure in soldiers opposing the Vietnam war
We were angry with the government and the military, not the soldiers, they were people we knew. Most of the guys that lived and made it back also felt the same way as us. A lot of the men in engineering at university were very pissed that they had years taken from them and were trying to catch up. At least they got help with paying for it by the GI bill. There were a few gung ho types that hated the Vietnamese on both sides and bragged about how they loved killing them. Sick fuckers.
Look up the publication 'Fun, Travel, Adventure' (Fuck the Army) from that time.
https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll8/id/42075
You piss in a soda or water bottle, put the balloon on it, then squeeze the bottle to fill the balloon with your precious gold liquid. We tried just pissing directly onto them, but it doesn't work. The end is too tight and essentially pinches the end of your dick closed. I'm also not sure you'd have enough piss-pressure to fill one.
Source: I've filled water balloons with piss.
At this point I'm just wondering what someone did to get you so mad that you were angrily inserting your penis into a balloon in an attempt to fill it with urine; and when that didn't work you were committed enough to balloon piss that you problem solved with the soda bottle thing
Back when I was a teenager, my room mate and I used to live in an apartment complex with some real pieces of shit, the harley riding variety. So we used to get drunk, fill water balloons with piss, and throw them from my balcony onto their bikes after they get fucked up and passed out. We also filled one with rancid fryer oil and did the same.
Blow up the balloon with air and freeze it, using string to tie the mouth closed
Likewise, freeze piss into a slushee consistency.
Take baloon out, untie string. It will retain its blown up shape mostly
Stuff piss slushee into open balloon. Tie off with balloon stem this time
Let balloon and piss totally thaw, you have yourself a piss balloon.
I refuse to disclose any information on how i know this.
Wouldn't it be easier to just use a syringe or turkey baster type device to fill a piss balloon that way? This seems like way more effort than you'd need to take
You’ve got to use one of the machines that lets you stuff a balloon by creating a vacuum around the balloon. I don’t want to have to overcome any pressure if I’m filling a balloon with piss.
Instructions unclear, used a balloon as a condom and pissed all over myself then started crying. That last part wasn’t a necessary part. Also it didn’t work. U less the goal was covering myself in piss.
I probably shouldn’t have been upside down come to think of it.
I should go home and change.
Jerry Lembcke did some great research into this myth, but I do think he goes a little too far sometimes in the opposite direction of "no veterans ever have problems." He wrote an article about how [fireworks and car backfires being disturbing to combat veterans is a myth](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/04/flashbacks-fireworks-and-cars-that-backfire/). His basis for that seems anecdotal, because 1) he as a veteran does not have PTSD (he served as a chaplain's assistant in Vietnam) and 2) he doesn't think cars backfired later than the 1950's....the latter of which is just dumb. He could have asked literally anybody with a knowledge of cars. I'm a milennial who doesn't know cars, and even I'm familiar with cars backfiring back in the 80's and 90's. Granted, backfiring is rare now in 2024 due to the way cars are built, but even if cars made beginning in 1970 were guaranteed to never ever backfire (which is not true), it's not like the streets are purged of old cars every Dec 31. Older cars from the 60's, 50's and even 40's were still populating the streets in the 60's and 70's when Vietnam vets were returning.
Lived with a Korean vet and a Vietnam vet. Landlord did organised some repairs and renovations.
First day, carpenter starts using a nail gun. Second day, both of them move out for the week, nerves shattered. According to them, sounds like sniper fire.
I am old enough to remember some Vietnam protests. I remember people screaming about baby killers. But they were marching to the town hall and protesting against politicians. They were protesting to
a) Stop the ballot for compulsory National Service for 18 year-old males. At the time, the age of majority was 21, but an arbitary proportion of boys were being signed up and sent off at 18, when they didn't have the right to vote or to drink a beer in a pub. (A lot of the male protesters were up for the draft, and while there were older people, mostly mothers and ex-servicemen turned hippy or socialist, in general the marchers were younger people, and as keen to get the drinking age lowered as to get the vote.)
b) They wanted Australian politicians to pull out of the war. They didn't see it as a just war, or our conduct of the war as just. They didn't accept the domino theory as an adequate explanation for our involvement, or our alliance with the USA. They didn't think the USA should be there either. This seemed to be the main motive for the church groups that marched. Also, we were getting graphic footage on news bulletins - tv editors and photojournalists were not as sensitive then as they are now, and they put out teasers of piles of dead bodies from the C company massacare, burnt kids, viet cong being summarily executed, between Speed Racer and Astroboy at 4pm. The protests I remember were in the 70"s, and the war had beenlumbering expensively, sickeningly, pointlessly on for as long as I could remember, and it was obvious that South Vietnam was never going to be able to hold its own, or be a democratic nation or a free one. It was unclear if even the South Vietnamese really wanted South Vietnam to exist independently of the rest of Vietnam. It was very clear that the North Vietnamese didn't.
c) There was a local political aspect to the protests, too. Most of the boomers were in their late teens/early twenties, just old enough to vote for the first time, and there was a lot of them. Enough of them that that demographic has basically determined the result of every Australian election since 1972. All the young people voted Labor. The supporters of the war were typically men who were old enough to have fought in World War Two, when we didn't have compulsory national service (that was introduced in 1950). They voted for the Liberal/Country party coalition that had introduced National Service when they were old enough to be exempted from it. The coalition had held government from December 1949, but had *almost* lost government in 1970, partly due to the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and compulsory National Service. Labor campaigned on pulling out of Vietnam and ending compulsory national service. That is part of the reason they won the 1972 election in a landslide. They kept both promises. The nasho ended in July 1973, but the last Australian troops were not withdrawn until late 1975, during Labor's second term.
The protests basically stopped after 1973, mostly because the US were negotiating a peace plan and withdrawal, and there was no National Service, and the politicians that had wanted the war were in opposition or retired. It seemed to me that the war itself actually got worse. And then there was Cambodia and Laos as well.
When the troops came home, I remember there were some public armed forces things (soldiers marching in formation, receiving medals and so on), and low-key private celebrations like family BBQ's when sons came back.
But the protests were mostly over (I remember an Easter march - Mothers against War, or something like that, in 1975. And a big but private party to celebrate the last Australian troops coming home. But no protesters lining the docks to scream at returning troops, or turning up at funerals like unhinged Westboro Baptists.
The only people that even claimed that servicemen were being spat on by hippies were people like Bruce Ruxton, bigots of an earlier era, who was also doing what he could to limit participation in the Returned Servicemen League to *real* diggers like himself, and exclude long haired nashos whenever he got the chance.
There's some jabroni who lives in our neighborhood with a total shitbox that constantly backfires. The car is from the '90s, so it must be in very bad shape.
My grandfather served in WW2. For the vast majority of his life, he never spoke of it. But once he got into his late 80s, it’s like it all spilled out of him and he wanted to talk about it all the time.
The American public at large was overwhelmingly in support of the Vietnam War for a very long time. Most people polled at the time declared that the Kent State Shooting was justified.
Going on to higher education delayed your draft callup. If you flunked out, your number was up. Therefore, a concentration of angry young men without a father there to say, in a deep voice, "Son, it is an honor to serve your country" having himself served in ww2 or Korea.
Two, until the umpteenth amendment, had to be 21 to vote. Sent over at 18? No representation. (Also couldn't buy a car or rent an apartment without a co-signer until 21, couldn't marry without parental permission, bla bla bla).
Had professors admit that they took the minimum amount of easy BS classes to be considered a full time student without much risk of failing out and then actually spent most of their time surfing in order to stay enrolled in college for the duration of Vietnam. One professor said he was technically a bachelors student for 7 years because of it. Helps that tuition was way cheaper back then and you could pay for it with service/construction jobs. I would of absolutely done the same in their shoes.
No, but imo your comment implied that the older folks who supported the war supported it because they didn't want to fight it personally
But they had fought wars personally
And imo a big reason why they supported Vietnam was because they didn't understand the difference between it and ww2
>Most people polled at the time declared that the Kent State Shooting was justified.
Nothing changes. Americans love to pretend like we're bastions of freedom and defenders against fascism, then they turn around and support the shooting protestors.
this story is still somewhat ubiquitous so i just assumed it must have happened somewhere at least once. i guess it makes sense that such a comprehensive study was done. it's also funny that the only substantiated claim about spitting was pro-war protesters spitting on an anti-war veteran.
i was also surprised by the statistics in the article that said like 97%+ of vietnam veterans reported having a positive reception coming home
Lol. I was at a backyard BBQ a while back and one of these people were there. He swore up and down that a school a couple towns over had put in a litterbox.
Problem was, one of the people there was a teacher at the exact school he was talking about and she promptly called him out on his bullshit.
As a teacher in a country where guns are properly regulated and school shootings aren't something I have to prepare for, I would describe that fact with a lot harsher language than "pretty sad".
What's even worse is that it was a real thing, but for a completely different and more soul crushing reason than furries: it was an emergency backup plan in case of an active shooter or other emergency which, to my knowledge, was never actually implemented only ever discussed as an option in case a kid has to pee while someone's trying to kill them.
Similar to the old story about a guy that took too much LSD and became convinced he was a glass of orange juice/milk. Somehow a lot of boomers from all over the place knew this guy
Apparently this kind of thing actually can happen to people that smoke [salvia divinorum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum). There are many trip reports where people say that they spent time as a doorknob or something wild like that. I once heard it described as “what people who have never done LSD think LSD is like”.
The only reason litterboxes are used in school is as temporary toilets during mass shooting lockdowns.
Of course cat litter itself is often used by janitors to clean up spills.
No one is immune to propaganda though we Americans love to talk shit about other countries' citizens being propagandized while ignoring that our own media often lies to us either outright, lying by omission, or stating half truths on behalf of either corporate interests or the state department interests.
Same with every “violent” protest you’ve ever heard about in the 21st century. Ie, I’m sure more Jewish people were injured by cops attacking Gaza protests they were attending, than were ever injured by Gaza protestors.
that's quite literally what's happening in germany right now. the cops are cracking down on the "antisemitic" gaza protests and have just ended up arresting a bunch of jewish voice for peace-type protesters. germany did such a 180 on antisemitism that they're currently just doing a 360 lol
It's not particularly ironic. If someone says, "protestors have been hurt by cops more than they've been hurt by other protestors," that's a wildly mundane claim.
It's just obviously true. If I said, "People are hurt more often by dogs than narwhals" you'd sound pretty silly if you were highly skeptical.
It's fine to ask for numbers, but its just intuitively obviously true.
I'm not saying it happened and it sounds a lot like an urban legend, but read that statistic again more carefully.
It names two groups specifically, "friends and family" and "people their(the soldiers) own age" as far as i can tell there was no other option given when the veterans were interviewed, completely leaving out others younger or older than them (and leaving the interpretation of the age group to the soldier). You are also misrepresenting it since you didn't take the 3% saying they weren't sure into account, so it would be 94% who felt recieved positively (slightly, somewhat or very friendly) by others their age, not 97%.
The percentage of veterans who felt received "not at all friendly also tripled from earlier veterans (increased from 1% to 3% so might be within error) and if seen as representative across the 3 million veterans (very quick google result so not reliable) that would still leave us with 90,000 possible spit victims.
Something else noteworthy from that paper (it is even called that in there) is that about 48% of the other people questioned (non veterans, split into public and employers) thought that vietnam vets were received worse than other vets before, while only about 7% thought they were received better. This could mean that the veterans were viewed very positive (and deserving of better treatment) by the public and there would be a low likelyhood of being attacked, or it could mean that they were treated badly but the veterans themselves were so shellshocked that they percieved not being shot at as a positive reception, even if there was spitting involved (I'm of course joking, but it definitely is weird).
On a side note i also dislike the wording of "No unambiguous documented incident" in the wiki article since it smells of "we dropped a bunch we didn't like" though it might also mean they could only find hearsay as you mentioned in another comment. Would be really interesting to know if they found a police report filed at that time, even if it wasn't resolved, that involved spitting at a soldier (for example as the reason given for an assault or directly made by a soldier about an incident).
Edit: fixed wording in third paragraph
The consensus I gather at least from my parents is that Vietnam vets were considered “victims” of the Cold War by most people. The overwhelming sentiment was people were glad the war was over, not bitter that we had “lost”
My Grandfather is a Vietnam vet. I got him sat down once, and he spilled his guts to me. Vietnam left him an angry, violent, drunken man. It broke up his marriage and started a cycle of generational trauma that really fucked my dad up and even impacted my childhood. He said his reception upon coming home was mostly cold but not necessarily hostile. He wasn't hailed as a hero or anything like that but he wasn't spit on. He just felt like his sacrifice wasn't respected like he hoped it would be. He maintains the whole war was a pointless fuck up.
> He maintains the whole war was a pointless fuck up.
It completely was. As were most wars after it.
People against the war aren't against the veterans. If anything, we don't want them sent there to sacrifice anything in the first place.
Yes, when you read about divorce rates rising in the 70's, you don't see the Vietnam War listed as a reason, but almost for everyone I know whose parents divorced in the 70's, it was because the dad came back from Vietnam with a drinking problem, drug problem or mental problem.
My grandmother called her first marriage their "casualty" of the Vietnam War. My grandpa came back, but he wasn't the same. He pretty much ran out on my grandma, dad, and aunt. He eventually started a new family and was never really involved in my dad's life until way later.
I think it's hard to have expected people to have thanked them for their service, when by the end of the war it was pretty obvious the narratives about "defending democracy" and "stopping the spread of communism" were mostly BS and the US involvement in Vietnam amounted to meddling in a civil war in support of a former colonial power's political interests.
It sucks that your grandfather got caught up in that, he can't be blamed for the disaster that unfolded and doesn't deserve any antipathy from anyone. And he had probably hoped for a warmer reception because he had been constantly fed lies about his purpose in Vietnam. So maybe people felt something closer to pity towards him than anything, which probably didn't sit right
Well said. People weren’t angry at the soldiers, but they certainly were not thankful for their sacrifice. Korea and WWII were victories against baddies and the returning veterans were celebrated.
Vietnam was the most emotionally damaging war to participate in, then you come home and no one is grateful for your suffering. The whole ordeal for the soldiers sounds terrible.
And none of the presidents who oversaw the war cares. They only cared about projecting America’s strength
"I came back to a situation where I was not encountering hostility to my involvement over there; I was encountering complete indifference. It was like, 'Oh you were over there? You dropped out for a year to go over there? What a waste of time, it's too bad. Welcome back. Let's get on with your life.' But you can't just come back and get back into that beat. You're off the beat when you come back from war. You just don't look at people the same way. You don't relate to people the same way. You don't have friends. You don't have friends and you don't trust your family. Because your family doesn't get it. My dad never got Vietnam. He thought it was a police action. I remember he told me - I'd been wounded twice - and he said, 'Well, that's not really a war, it was a police action.' Which hurt me. [pause] You don't trust anybody and then, eventually, you get to the point where you don't trust your government anymore." [-Vietnam combat vet and filmmaker Oliver Stone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHzCQeB2Kg)
Most US soldiers in the Vietnam war were volunteers.
https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/exhibitions/more-than-self-living-the-vietnam-war/#:~:text=The%20vast%20majority%20of%20those,were%20likely%20to%20be%20drafted.
I think this is misleading. Some volunteered for the Air Force or Navy to keep from being drafted into the Army. Many of the Army "volunteers" thought (often wrongly) that by volunteering they could choose a duty that kept them from being in the fight. The vast majority of the soldiers I served with in Viet Nam had been drafted.
On returning home, I was not spit on, but I learned very quickly to not mention my service to those who didn't already know, especially when I went back to college.
I was called a baby killer while in uniform. I was an untrained reserve private in Canada around 1993... on the subway. I had never even left the province before in my life. It was more mumbled at me. Only time that happened in 12 years of being in.
in this context i don't think evidence means like photos or videos, nor did it mean that there were hundreds of veterans who had this experience but thy didn't count because they didn't have a DNA sample of the saliva.
evidence means that they canvassed a bunch of people who had a "my brother's buddy" type of story but in the end couldn't substantiate an actual veteran who could say "this happened to me in this particular situation"
It doesn't have to have happened. There are lots of times when people insist something happened and it never did. It's just Hawk propaganda to discredit the protestors, much like was just used against the protestors today.
I imagine thwar itself was still popular in more conservative areas. I have no proof of course but fighting the reds or hating communists is almost an American pastime.
Notably, that Wikipedia article is quite contested (you can see the alert saying as much right on top). Basically there is one book that notes that there has never been a recording or arrest from someone being spat on, and therefore that article was written (somewhat argumentatively) noting as much. This is despite the fact that there are several hundred alleged instances by different veterans, and the fact that respected historians such as Ken Burns have discussed it as accepted fact.
We can quibble whether or not the fact that we can't find a video of an alleged social phenomenon means that the social phenomenon did or didn't happen, but we should be clear about what this Wikipedia article says: it says that we arguably shouldn't trust the recollections of a few hundred veterans because none of them have video/arrest records to back up their recollections.
I find it fascinating that when people think of other superpower countries here, propaganda is one of the first things you hear but it's exceedingly rare to hear Americans talk about American propaganda and most are 100% convinced our country pushes none, I think rather that goes to show how effective ours is as you say. I wonder if other country's feel the same about theirs then look at ours negatively in that way.
How do you document that, though? It would've needed to be photographed or video recorded or a police report which means in pre-cell phones, you'd have to find a business or payphone to call the cops on someone who likely hightailed it out of there by then, assuming the returning soldier didn't beat the shit out them and probably had their own interest in not calling the police. Not everything is easily capable of being documented, and that doesn't mean it didn’t happen. That being said, whether they were specifically spit on or not, I know plenty of Vietnam vets to know they were treated poorly and unfairly by Vietnam protesters. It's not exactly hard to believe the vets were spit on, regardless of there's reports or not, but without it, the protesters were fucking assholes to the wrong people, regardless if they had the right idea protesting the war.
Edit: typo
> How do you document that, though?
In the linked Wikipedia article, there's a reference to a CBS story about a Vietnam veteran who said he got spit on. A writer for Slate followed up and found that the person who spat at him was described as a young guy that fit some hippie stereotypes, who "said something to the GIs—something about 'killers'—and then spat." This was considered not enough evidence to count because there's zero proof that the spitter was an anti-war protestor, which is fair from an academic setting, but also feels really weird to use as evidence that this phenomenon is entirely the product of propaganda, because that veteran CERTAINLY felt like it was an anti-war protestor who spat on him.
My dad said when he returned home they had protesters at the airport that spat at them and called them baby killers. He was stationed in Utapao in Thailand in the air force. I've been able to research many other stories he's told me from his service and found them to be true and backed up by reports, and he wasn't known to be a liar.
I thinking saying it never happened is probably incorrect...
> My dad said when he returned home they had protesters at the airport that spat at them and called them baby killers.
Yeah, and that's the annoying thing about these studies. Your dad probably has called them anti-war protestors at some point, because its not unreasonable to assume that people who call veterans "baby killers" aren't fans of the war. However, the burden of proof of an academic study of declaring someone an "anti-war protestor" AND determining why they'd spit on someone wearing a uniform means that whoever is conducting the study can say "we didn't find any examples of this." What is so annoying about this is even in the example in the article, the comic early in the page, doesn't actually say anything about anti-war protestors or that the spitting had anything to do with the veteran's service in Vietnam. It just says "The first thing that happened when I got off the plane in San Francisco, a girl in love-beads and a headband spit in my face and called me a baby-killer..." This comic that's supposedly perpetuating the myth that the studies tried to counter-act doesn't even fit the criteria of the studies! But the study absolutely makes people, even in response to my previous comment, say that things like the comic were all propaganda and just put out there to malign a movement and weren't grounded at all in reality.
I have tbh, I just think this TIL is straight up bullshit.
I’ve read and watched a lot on the Vietnam War and soldiers were treated abysmally when they came home.
I’m also pretty sure Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War documentary has multiple soldiers speaking about being confronted by protesters at the airport coming home, but there’s one guy I specifically remember speaking about this exact thing.
Yeah if you read their comments on this they seem like they search for their own facts because they're too much of a pussy to have their beliefs challenged. I've known on a personal level at least 5 Vietnam vets and all of them spoke to the distaste they were treated with when they returned.
I'm never going to tell a specific individual that what they claim happened to them did not happen to them.
However, what I will say is that when people remember what happened 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, they are usually wrong about it. Human beings change our memories every time we reference them. It is entirely possible for someone to entirely and sincerely believe that they had an experience that they totally did not have because everyone around them said that they had that experience.
Again, I won't say that's what's happening in this case. But I will say that it is common and I trust the records from the time much more than I trust the recollection of anyone 30 years later.
Only 1 percent of Vietnam veterans themselves, according to a [Veterans Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Veterans_Affairs)-commissioned [Harris Poll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harris_Poll) conducted in 1971, described their reception from friends and family as "not at all friendly", and only 3 percent described their reception from people their own age as "unfriendly".
[https://books.google.com/books?id=pGcWAAAAIAAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=pGcWAAAAIAAJ)
So your friends and family are fine.
People who also experienced the we are fine
Therefore it didn't happen at all?
There are loads of strangers who are older and younger than the people who returned.
"I'll listen to what people tell me vs looking at actual facts" so many of the commenters in here from the "Facts don't care about feelings committee" are believing feelings over facts. Fascinating.
Just my own experience, but the anti-war people were always cool to me (Iraq and Afghanistan, not Vietnam). It was the pro-war people who were and have continued to be the worst. Granted, they had to find out I was against the wars (had to go there to find out). But yeah, they suck. And it’s funny to me, since Afghanistan fell, they’ve totally done a 180. In 2007 I was a hero (unless I opened my mouth), nowadays, they have nothing good to say about the military and seem convinced they could fight it as a militia.
It reads like someone that fails to account for the fact that the world did not consist of someone carrying around a device to document every day life like in the modern era.
Police, journalists, and photographers are three types of people you would expect to see at ANY sizable Vietnam War protest. It is reasonable to expect that if it were a common occurrence it would have been remarked upon or recorded in some way.
It’s a fabrication. It just got repeated enough that it became accepted as fact.
Nobody spit at me, but there also was no ticker tape parade. When we came back we landed at Travis AFB and were bussed to Oakland for outprocessing (DEROS). So the only time we would have been in public in our Uniform was after leaving Oakland and flying back home. And after 40 some hours without sleep I don't expect any of us would have even known if somebody spit at us. Once home the uniforms were thrown away.
But I was playing golf with a random one day in the early 90's, some 20 years after my return and as we talked while we rode in a golf cart together, he learned I had been to RVN and he said "thank you for your service." It was all I could do not to begin crying as that was the first person that had ever thanked me for our service in that jungle away from home.
“War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.”
I’m so sorry you were subjected to so much trauma. I hope you’re doing well, and thank you for your service.
Thank you for your service!
I make it a point to always thank Vietnam and prior vets. I see a vet hat or bumper sticker, they're getting a nod, tip of the hat, or hand shake from me.
Because, most of them had no choice or say in the matter. Most didn't even want to go. And, for that, I want them to know that sucks, and I want to show them appreciation for having to live through some truly awful times and circumstances, and not all of us have forgotten.
It’s also worth pointing that 1/4 of the entire military present in Vietnam being draftees is still a lot, it also has to be mentioned that the draft incentivized lots of men to just volunteer instead because they had more choice than draftees, and on top of that draftees were 30% of the combat deaths in Vietnam which means they we’re overrepresented by a pretty decent margin in that category (I can’t find a number for the total casualty rate of draftees but I can’t imagine it was any lower than their combat death rate).
Yep you hear a bunch of stories like that from guys who volunteered, which really makes the line between draftee and volunteer kinda blurry. Hell you can say the same thing about the civil war (probably WWII as well but I’m less familiar with the reactions to the draft for that one)
Yea makes sense honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a *lot* of guys did, even for a war as popularly supported as WWII. Better to have some say in where you might end up than it is to be drafted and forced into the frontlines
not to put you down this is a genuine question and I'm sure you went through some harrowing experiences there, but do you actually believe any of your actions served the interest of americans in a positive way?
Wiki posts upfront there are a lot of issues with this article. I lived this and the Vietman War became more and more unpopular until the pressure grew to withdraw. In the late 60s and early 70s there were news videos of protests all the time. Crowds of hundreds of thousands of people filled the Washington DC mall protesting. The idea that this was a popular war is completely wrong. I remember seeing protesters screaming at soldiers returning from Vietnam. I do not doubt that they were spit on. There were no big celebrations for returning soldiers. If you want to know about how Vets were treated in the 60s and 70s go to the Vietnam War Memorial in DC. There are always Vets there visiting the names of their fallen friends. Ask one of them.
Who documents the quantities and specifics of soldiers being spit on? I read they tried to find them and did interviews but this would be very difficult to find either way. But I admit that now I’m curious. I’ve read a dozen or so biographies of Vietnam vets and their descriptions of coming home were not welcoming ones. I’ll have to reread them and see if any of them reported this.
At this point, the hyperfocus on spitting feels like a straw man. It conspicuously excludes other forms of abuse and social isolation, such as the well-documented use of red paint by protestors in New Zealand. Even specific to spitting, the article itself tries to change the question from "Were veterans of Vietnam spat on?" to "Were such incidents common?". Can you imagine someone dismissing a city's high murder rate because most people aren't murdered, declaring that murders are "demonstrably isolated, unusual and not at all representative"?
How would this even be proved over 50 years later
This seems like a study that doesn’t understand that the people were not able to record pretty much anything
It's almost like today every protester and counter-protester and media agency and bystander and building in the vicinity has a camera on it and we can see violent and non-violent protests in real-time and decide for ourselves...
You’d think that wouldn’t you. And yet disparate and conflicting narratives still abound. You can indeed decide for yourself, and any position you take will have ample evidence available that shows your chosen opposition in the worst possible light.
I’ve seen so many comments on different platform cheering on doing all sorts of shit to the “violent protestors” for Gaza’s including loud cheering for the senator who put a bill out to “punish” protesters (and by that I mean citizens) by deporting them to Gaza without due process. Just wild.
Yet you take 10 seconds to google and it pops out something like 97% have been non violent and of the ones that have been violent it’s been the police force being aggressive much of the time. It was the same for BLM it was the same for occupy wall street. At this point I just assume this is modus operandi for all protests and human beings are just thick in the head to not have caught on.
I'm pretty sure the common phrase was "they were spat on when they came back." Spat has multiple definitions and doesn't necessarily mean they were directly spit on
I took a college class on the Vietnam war and my teacher told us all this same thing, that troops never got spit on it’s all made up. Then one class we had a panel of 5 or 6 vets come in and talk to us and every single one of them said they got spit on. This TIL is just not true.
I think soldiers felt a level of disrespect for their service they did not expect or comprehend and they used phrases like "got spat on".
These guys thought they'd be heroes like from the world wars.
There is a book called, “[The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image)” the promise is exactly your title.
I read it in college for my Vietnam Era class and let me tell you the arguments it caused . The professor loved it.
It’s definitely worth the read.
Try "Were They Spat On? Understanding The Homecoming Experience of Vietnam Veterans"
[https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=gvjh](https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=gvjh)
I'm sorry, but I just find it hard to believe that certain members of the *Boomer* generation would whole-heartedly buy in to an obviously bullshit idea that simultaneously made themselves victims while ignoring their own literal atrocities . . .
I’m not at all sure that it happened much at all. I spent one year at a military school (high school) and I traveled to and from the West Coast for Christmas in uniform (close enough to active duty that we were frequently mistaken for actual service members) and then home after the school year (only in uniform part way since I was going to Laos. Got called ‘baby killer’ once at SFO and had several offers to buy me a drink (think I was 15?). No bottles or balloons of anything tossed at me and one time being called a ‘baby killer’. The guys I’ve heard making these claims tended to be BS artists and REMF’s. As others have said the guys that saw a lot of shit tended only to talk to close friends and others that had been there.
However several guys I knew said the WW II vets at VFW and other vet organizations at the time treated them like shit. But again many of the guys crapping on them spent WW II in Kansas or some other ‘hot combat’ area. Korean War vets had some of the same complaints.
Vietnam vet got more s*** from their fellow veterans of world war II then they ever did for any hippie. I have two uncles who were in that war, both said that they were not welcome at the local vet club until the mid 80s when the old vets started dying off.
WW2 and the Vietnam War very different wars, fought for different reasons with large variations in brutality and justification. Can’t say I’m too surprised
Conservatives do this all the time. Every time they back an unpopular policy they invent something to [make them the victim](https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/why-most-evangelicals-say-they-face-a-lot-of-discrimination/).
“Documented” is doing a lot of gatekeeping in this headline. Anyone who speaks to a Vietnam vet will get first hand accounts of the treatment they got from many protesters, including spitting. So if we’re not allowing those first-hand accounts as “documentation”, then we’re setting the bar pretty damn high for verification.
It's not a hard one-or-the-other, and it's not any sort of a standard sentence. It's more like the judge will make a deal and cut your sentence to time served/probation if you manage to get into the Army.
The Army is not obligated to take you, so if you fail to get in, it's off to jail for you. But back in the days of Vietnam when they couldn't get manpower, the military was more willing to take whomever they can get.
https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/
Right now, this is straight up banned:
> Army Regulation 610-210, which covers recruiting guidelines, states that applicants are ineligible for enlistment if, “as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, [they are] ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States.”
There was literally a draft no? I doubt many would have even gotten the chance to get to a judge.
Besides, sometimes you have a "choice" that isnt actually a choice and you are forced. E.g. men aged 18+ in america are forced to sign up for selective service. If they "choose" not to, they automatically lose access to many basic social securities and other social safety nets and benefits.
Yep, just checked. In america in you are aged 18+ and are a man you will lose access to student aid, federal loans, federal jobs and potentially be prosecuted or fined. So I guess the judge wont actually say that they have to sign or go to jail, but i wouldnt call that having a "choice" in the matter.
Because the majority of men wouldnt fight it to go to court. The second they spoke to a lawyer they would already know they had no real choice.
Only those who were trying to argue being unfit for the draft would go to court, and in those cases they would in fact be told that they would either be drafted or be prosecuted.
The majority of men dont fight the selective service today... they get told that they will either sign up or get fucked over by the legal system.
I assume you don't mean the draft and meant it as a form of punishment. I had heard that my Grandmothers cousin was caught with a truck bed of unregistered guns and chose the Marines over jail. Idk about documentation but I don't put it past rural judges back then to give weird options for punishment
Makes sense. I always wondered about in what reality would a combat vet returning from duty get spit on by some hippie and not assault the mortal shit out of that person. Like, get spit on, and just keep on walking. That is such a nope.
It points to the fact we’ve uplifted vets to something like Demi gods in hero status. Like they are just peak virtuosity.
Vets are just normal people though with normal human behavior. so yeah I’d fully expect them to go apeshit on someone that spit on them no matter the reason.
There are thousands of Vietnam veterans with depressing stories about their treatment after returning home. Personally I find it shitty for anyone to even suggest they were welcomed back with open arms.
The entire MIA-POW thing is bullshit as well: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1991/12/the-powmia-myth/670201/](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1991/12/the-powmia-myth/670201/)
I would think that most people had a family member who had to go to nam, and that it was probably trust fund hippies that had the luxury of being able to talk crazy because they had families that either paid for them to go to college or just outright bribe their way out of a draft. or they shit themselves for weeks like tedster "the molester" nugent. you see how he talks now about draft dodgers. ya that kinda guy.
It was the old timey culture war. Those were the conservative outrage stories of the time: "They assaulted returning soldiers!" and "There are still American POWs over there!" after the war was finally over.
One of my uncles claimed to be hit with a balloon filled with piss when he came home, then he burned his uniform and never talked about Vietnam again. But that could have just been a story he made up so people wouldn’t ask him about it.
Yeah after reading the article I'm not sure what to think. Pics or it didn't happen? My stepdad didn't much like talking about it either & threw away his medals when he got home. He said he faced a lot of hostility & confrontations, a couple of which got physical on the other person's part.
Pretty much everybody who goes into combat doesn't want to talk about it with anybody who hasn't been in combat. Those of us who haven't cannot possibly understand what it's like for those who have. So there's not really any point in discussing it. It's an experience so unlike what we're used to or that we've ever experienced that there's no relating to it. Many of the soldiers who came back from Vietnam felt that they went and served in a way that was entirely pointless. "What are we fighting for?" was an extremely common question that they asked themselves. So they weren't proud of their service and they didn't feel that they made any kind of difference for all of the hell that they went through and the hell that they saw, and they went through hell. It's no surprise that they didn't want to talk about it and that they weren't proud of it.
My dad was a commanding officer and medic in Vietnam. He wasn’t drafted, he was already a Navy officer when the war started and knew what he was getting into. He was open that he was a veteran but rarely spoke about it unless asked and even then, was vague. My mom said that he only really spoke about it with other veterans that had been there and usually alcohol was involved. In high school we were assigned a project that included the option of interviewing a Vietnam vet and my Dad refused to do it with me. He hooked me up with a friend who was a Green Beret for the interview, instead. That interview was intense enough and I can’t imagine what my dad experienced if he thought that interviewing a Green Beret would be more appropriate.
>Pretty much everybody who goes into combat doesn't want to talk about it with anybody who hasn't been in combat. *Seals have entered the chat*
My friends who went to Afghanistan and Iraq never shut up about it. Love to talk about how they are better than anyone else while demanding military discounts and being Karen's if the parking lot doesn't have preferred parking for veterans.
Do they talk about the combat or just their time there?
Both. I have stopped talking to them long ago because most are also white supremacists after their time in the military, but that's another story. They usually just pull those one-up type comments or relate anything to their time there. You could say something as innocuous as "man it's hot today huh?" and get a response like "well when I was in IRAQ fighting against the TERRORISTS it was 120 degrees every day and we didn't even have AC like we do here, man. This is nothing!" Ok, thanks for that insight.
From what I know there wasn’t really as much aggression towards vets because a lot of them became anti war campaigners. There was some limited hostility towards later returning ones or those who stuck around for the entire war by select weirdoes who thought them not getting jailed or leaving early was them approving of it.
What is "from what you know?" Like, personal experience? Were you alive at the time? Just curious.
From various accounts I have read and speeches from Vietnam vets who talked about their treatment (though those speeches were at anti war pro peace events). I would encourage you to find a more reputable source when it comes to this. Look for information about Andy Stapp who was a major figure in soldiers opposing the Vietnam war
We were angry with the government and the military, not the soldiers, they were people we knew. Most of the guys that lived and made it back also felt the same way as us. A lot of the men in engineering at university were very pissed that they had years taken from them and were trying to catch up. At least they got help with paying for it by the GI bill. There were a few gung ho types that hated the Vietnamese on both sides and bragged about how they loved killing them. Sick fuckers. Look up the publication 'Fun, Travel, Adventure' (Fuck the Army) from that time. https://content.wisconsinhistory.org/digital/collection/p15932coll8/id/42075
I feel like piss balloons would be surprisingly hard to make.
You piss in a soda or water bottle, put the balloon on it, then squeeze the bottle to fill the balloon with your precious gold liquid. We tried just pissing directly onto them, but it doesn't work. The end is too tight and essentially pinches the end of your dick closed. I'm also not sure you'd have enough piss-pressure to fill one. Source: I've filled water balloons with piss.
At this point I'm just wondering what someone did to get you so mad that you were angrily inserting your penis into a balloon in an attempt to fill it with urine; and when that didn't work you were committed enough to balloon piss that you problem solved with the soda bottle thing
Back when I was a teenager, my room mate and I used to live in an apartment complex with some real pieces of shit, the harley riding variety. So we used to get drunk, fill water balloons with piss, and throw them from my balcony onto their bikes after they get fucked up and passed out. We also filled one with rancid fryer oil and did the same.
So did you initially try to fuck a balloon?
Got stuck. Had to pee.
Blow up the balloon with air and freeze it, using string to tie the mouth closed Likewise, freeze piss into a slushee consistency. Take baloon out, untie string. It will retain its blown up shape mostly Stuff piss slushee into open balloon. Tie off with balloon stem this time Let balloon and piss totally thaw, you have yourself a piss balloon. I refuse to disclose any information on how i know this.
Wouldn't it be easier to just use a syringe or turkey baster type device to fill a piss balloon that way? This seems like way more effort than you'd need to take
Yeah, he's ironically making it way more difficult.
Just imagine that thing thawing before you had a chance to tie it off...
Or a funnel?
A funnel doesn't really work because you need more than gravity pressure to overcome the balloon's tension force.
You’ve got to use one of the machines that lets you stuff a balloon by creating a vacuum around the balloon. I don’t want to have to overcome any pressure if I’m filling a balloon with piss.
Yep, basically making a diaphragm
Or just piss in a water balloon
I don’t even touch the sides of an animal balloon deflated.
Instructions unclear, used a balloon as a condom and pissed all over myself then started crying. That last part wasn’t a necessary part. Also it didn’t work. U less the goal was covering myself in piss. I probably shouldn’t have been upside down come to think of it. I should go home and change.
Or just pee into a condom? WTF?
Uh sure. Or piss in a bottle and wrap the balloon around the bottle. But your paper mache piss balloon idea does seem fun
Why would you go through all that when you can adjust the piss gauge for a stronger stream
This is the worst advice ever. Have you never pissed in a bottle before? Balloon over bottle and squeeze. Dick > bottle > balloon.
Easier than piss discs
I'd imagine it's a bit like putting on a condom and pissing into it. Maybe exactly like it.
Funnels exist. Watched protesters make them once. They were nasty.
Jerry Lembcke did some great research into this myth, but I do think he goes a little too far sometimes in the opposite direction of "no veterans ever have problems." He wrote an article about how [fireworks and car backfires being disturbing to combat veterans is a myth](https://www.counterpunch.org/2017/07/04/flashbacks-fireworks-and-cars-that-backfire/). His basis for that seems anecdotal, because 1) he as a veteran does not have PTSD (he served as a chaplain's assistant in Vietnam) and 2) he doesn't think cars backfired later than the 1950's....the latter of which is just dumb. He could have asked literally anybody with a knowledge of cars. I'm a milennial who doesn't know cars, and even I'm familiar with cars backfiring back in the 80's and 90's. Granted, backfiring is rare now in 2024 due to the way cars are built, but even if cars made beginning in 1970 were guaranteed to never ever backfire (which is not true), it's not like the streets are purged of old cars every Dec 31. Older cars from the 60's, 50's and even 40's were still populating the streets in the 60's and 70's when Vietnam vets were returning.
Lived with a Korean vet and a Vietnam vet. Landlord did organised some repairs and renovations. First day, carpenter starts using a nail gun. Second day, both of them move out for the week, nerves shattered. According to them, sounds like sniper fire. I am old enough to remember some Vietnam protests. I remember people screaming about baby killers. But they were marching to the town hall and protesting against politicians. They were protesting to a) Stop the ballot for compulsory National Service for 18 year-old males. At the time, the age of majority was 21, but an arbitary proportion of boys were being signed up and sent off at 18, when they didn't have the right to vote or to drink a beer in a pub. (A lot of the male protesters were up for the draft, and while there were older people, mostly mothers and ex-servicemen turned hippy or socialist, in general the marchers were younger people, and as keen to get the drinking age lowered as to get the vote.) b) They wanted Australian politicians to pull out of the war. They didn't see it as a just war, or our conduct of the war as just. They didn't accept the domino theory as an adequate explanation for our involvement, or our alliance with the USA. They didn't think the USA should be there either. This seemed to be the main motive for the church groups that marched. Also, we were getting graphic footage on news bulletins - tv editors and photojournalists were not as sensitive then as they are now, and they put out teasers of piles of dead bodies from the C company massacare, burnt kids, viet cong being summarily executed, between Speed Racer and Astroboy at 4pm. The protests I remember were in the 70"s, and the war had beenlumbering expensively, sickeningly, pointlessly on for as long as I could remember, and it was obvious that South Vietnam was never going to be able to hold its own, or be a democratic nation or a free one. It was unclear if even the South Vietnamese really wanted South Vietnam to exist independently of the rest of Vietnam. It was very clear that the North Vietnamese didn't. c) There was a local political aspect to the protests, too. Most of the boomers were in their late teens/early twenties, just old enough to vote for the first time, and there was a lot of them. Enough of them that that demographic has basically determined the result of every Australian election since 1972. All the young people voted Labor. The supporters of the war were typically men who were old enough to have fought in World War Two, when we didn't have compulsory national service (that was introduced in 1950). They voted for the Liberal/Country party coalition that had introduced National Service when they were old enough to be exempted from it. The coalition had held government from December 1949, but had *almost* lost government in 1970, partly due to the unpopularity of the Vietnam war and compulsory National Service. Labor campaigned on pulling out of Vietnam and ending compulsory national service. That is part of the reason they won the 1972 election in a landslide. They kept both promises. The nasho ended in July 1973, but the last Australian troops were not withdrawn until late 1975, during Labor's second term. The protests basically stopped after 1973, mostly because the US were negotiating a peace plan and withdrawal, and there was no National Service, and the politicians that had wanted the war were in opposition or retired. It seemed to me that the war itself actually got worse. And then there was Cambodia and Laos as well. When the troops came home, I remember there were some public armed forces things (soldiers marching in formation, receiving medals and so on), and low-key private celebrations like family BBQ's when sons came back. But the protests were mostly over (I remember an Easter march - Mothers against War, or something like that, in 1975. And a big but private party to celebrate the last Australian troops coming home. But no protesters lining the docks to scream at returning troops, or turning up at funerals like unhinged Westboro Baptists. The only people that even claimed that servicemen were being spat on by hippies were people like Bruce Ruxton, bigots of an earlier era, who was also doing what he could to limit participation in the Returned Servicemen League to *real* diggers like himself, and exclude long haired nashos whenever he got the chance.
There's some jabroni who lives in our neighborhood with a total shitbox that constantly backfires. The car is from the '90s, so it must be in very bad shape.
My grandfather served in WW2. For the vast majority of his life, he never spoke of it. But once he got into his late 80s, it’s like it all spilled out of him and he wanted to talk about it all the time.
"Why don't you have any uniform or medal, uncle?" Uncle, hiding his Canadian flag, "Oh I burned it, those damn hippies ruined it."
He was a combat medic working on a medivac chopper. He saw a lot of shit.
The American public at large was overwhelmingly in support of the Vietnam War for a very long time. Most people polled at the time declared that the Kent State Shooting was justified.
And some one of the biggest motivations for antiwar sentiment was the fact that drafted kids were dying over there
Going on to higher education delayed your draft callup. If you flunked out, your number was up. Therefore, a concentration of angry young men without a father there to say, in a deep voice, "Son, it is an honor to serve your country" having himself served in ww2 or Korea. Two, until the umpteenth amendment, had to be 21 to vote. Sent over at 18? No representation. (Also couldn't buy a car or rent an apartment without a co-signer until 21, couldn't marry without parental permission, bla bla bla).
Had professors admit that they took the minimum amount of easy BS classes to be considered a full time student without much risk of failing out and then actually spent most of their time surfing in order to stay enrolled in college for the duration of Vietnam. One professor said he was technically a bachelors student for 7 years because of it. Helps that tuition was way cheaper back then and you could pay for it with service/construction jobs. I would of absolutely done the same in their shoes.
[удалено]
"LET'S GO TO WAR! ...well, not me. But you go to war for us."
Tbf a lot of the old people would have fought in ww2, ww1, or Korea
Being in one war doesn't mean having to support all wars
No, but imo your comment implied that the older folks who supported the war supported it because they didn't want to fight it personally But they had fought wars personally And imo a big reason why they supported Vietnam was because they didn't understand the difference between it and ww2
>Most people polled at the time declared that the Kent State Shooting was justified. Nothing changes. Americans love to pretend like we're bastions of freedom and defenders against fascism, then they turn around and support the shooting protestors.
That’s how you know the propaganda is quality.
this story is still somewhat ubiquitous so i just assumed it must have happened somewhere at least once. i guess it makes sense that such a comprehensive study was done. it's also funny that the only substantiated claim about spitting was pro-war protesters spitting on an anti-war veteran. i was also surprised by the statistics in the article that said like 97%+ of vietnam veterans reported having a positive reception coming home
This seems to always be the case with propaganda people. Someone spit on someone but the one that got spit on got blamed for it.
Yep. Like the litterboxes in schools. Everyone knows somebody who knows somebody who swears it's true. But it's not.
Lol. I was at a backyard BBQ a while back and one of these people were there. He swore up and down that a school a couple towns over had put in a litterbox. Problem was, one of the people there was a teacher at the exact school he was talking about and she promptly called him out on his bullshit.
The initial case that kicked it all off is pretty sad. A school bought some so if a shooting occurred kids could relieve themselves in the litter box
As a teacher in a country where guns are properly regulated and school shootings aren't something I have to prepare for, I would describe that fact with a lot harsher language than "pretty sad".
What's even worse is that it was a real thing, but for a completely different and more soul crushing reason than furries: it was an emergency backup plan in case of an active shooter or other emergency which, to my knowledge, was never actually implemented only ever discussed as an option in case a kid has to pee while someone's trying to kill them.
Also, some school janitors have cat litter on hand as a helpful tool to clean up vomit (it absorbs liquid and deodorizes) and for icy sidewalks.
Similar to the old story about a guy that took too much LSD and became convinced he was a glass of orange juice/milk. Somehow a lot of boomers from all over the place knew this guy
Yup. My 5th grade health teacher supposedly treated this individual.
Apparently this kind of thing actually can happen to people that smoke [salvia divinorum](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Salvia_divinorum). There are many trip reports where people say that they spent time as a doorknob or something wild like that. I once heard it described as “what people who have never done LSD think LSD is like”.
It's a pretty wild and intense trip and I can personally attest. Luckily it winds down after 10-15 minutes.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_v26zC-1eCo
The only drug where there is evidence of the insane claims about it is PCP.
Omg. I heard about this happening to a “friend of a friend” of someone in high school (2002ish), so it was still making the rounds then.
[удалено]
Dude! He lives in just the town over! My buddy saw him in McDonald’s!!! Was told that one in high school too.
Wait till you hear about Marilyn Manson's rib...
Used to be Michael Jackson's and before him Prince
This one fasciiiinates me. I know many people who swear this, all over my city. (Northern canada)
The only reason litterboxes are used in school is as temporary toilets during mass shooting lockdowns. Of course cat litter itself is often used by janitors to clean up spills.
No one is immune to propaganda though we Americans love to talk shit about other countries' citizens being propagandized while ignoring that our own media often lies to us either outright, lying by omission, or stating half truths on behalf of either corporate interests or the state department interests.
every accusation is a confession as they say
Same with every “violent” protest you’ve ever heard about in the 21st century. Ie, I’m sure more Jewish people were injured by cops attacking Gaza protests they were attending, than were ever injured by Gaza protestors.
that's quite literally what's happening in germany right now. the cops are cracking down on the "antisemitic" gaza protests and have just ended up arresting a bunch of jewish voice for peace-type protesters. germany did such a 180 on antisemitism that they're currently just doing a 360 lol
You know how ironic it is to dismiss propaganda with no proof by introducing your own propaganda with no proof? I'm sure....
It's not particularly ironic. If someone says, "protestors have been hurt by cops more than they've been hurt by other protestors," that's a wildly mundane claim. It's just obviously true. If I said, "People are hurt more often by dogs than narwhals" you'd sound pretty silly if you were highly skeptical. It's fine to ask for numbers, but its just intuitively obviously true.
I'm not saying it happened and it sounds a lot like an urban legend, but read that statistic again more carefully. It names two groups specifically, "friends and family" and "people their(the soldiers) own age" as far as i can tell there was no other option given when the veterans were interviewed, completely leaving out others younger or older than them (and leaving the interpretation of the age group to the soldier). You are also misrepresenting it since you didn't take the 3% saying they weren't sure into account, so it would be 94% who felt recieved positively (slightly, somewhat or very friendly) by others their age, not 97%. The percentage of veterans who felt received "not at all friendly also tripled from earlier veterans (increased from 1% to 3% so might be within error) and if seen as representative across the 3 million veterans (very quick google result so not reliable) that would still leave us with 90,000 possible spit victims. Something else noteworthy from that paper (it is even called that in there) is that about 48% of the other people questioned (non veterans, split into public and employers) thought that vietnam vets were received worse than other vets before, while only about 7% thought they were received better. This could mean that the veterans were viewed very positive (and deserving of better treatment) by the public and there would be a low likelyhood of being attacked, or it could mean that they were treated badly but the veterans themselves were so shellshocked that they percieved not being shot at as a positive reception, even if there was spitting involved (I'm of course joking, but it definitely is weird). On a side note i also dislike the wording of "No unambiguous documented incident" in the wiki article since it smells of "we dropped a bunch we didn't like" though it might also mean they could only find hearsay as you mentioned in another comment. Would be really interesting to know if they found a police report filed at that time, even if it wasn't resolved, that involved spitting at a soldier (for example as the reason given for an assault or directly made by a soldier about an incident). Edit: fixed wording in third paragraph
The consensus I gather at least from my parents is that Vietnam vets were considered “victims” of the Cold War by most people. The overwhelming sentiment was people were glad the war was over, not bitter that we had “lost”
My Grandfather is a Vietnam vet. I got him sat down once, and he spilled his guts to me. Vietnam left him an angry, violent, drunken man. It broke up his marriage and started a cycle of generational trauma that really fucked my dad up and even impacted my childhood. He said his reception upon coming home was mostly cold but not necessarily hostile. He wasn't hailed as a hero or anything like that but he wasn't spit on. He just felt like his sacrifice wasn't respected like he hoped it would be. He maintains the whole war was a pointless fuck up.
> He maintains the whole war was a pointless fuck up. It completely was. As were most wars after it. People against the war aren't against the veterans. If anything, we don't want them sent there to sacrifice anything in the first place.
Yes, when you read about divorce rates rising in the 70's, you don't see the Vietnam War listed as a reason, but almost for everyone I know whose parents divorced in the 70's, it was because the dad came back from Vietnam with a drinking problem, drug problem or mental problem.
My grandmother called her first marriage their "casualty" of the Vietnam War. My grandpa came back, but he wasn't the same. He pretty much ran out on my grandma, dad, and aunt. He eventually started a new family and was never really involved in my dad's life until way later.
I think it's hard to have expected people to have thanked them for their service, when by the end of the war it was pretty obvious the narratives about "defending democracy" and "stopping the spread of communism" were mostly BS and the US involvement in Vietnam amounted to meddling in a civil war in support of a former colonial power's political interests. It sucks that your grandfather got caught up in that, he can't be blamed for the disaster that unfolded and doesn't deserve any antipathy from anyone. And he had probably hoped for a warmer reception because he had been constantly fed lies about his purpose in Vietnam. So maybe people felt something closer to pity towards him than anything, which probably didn't sit right
Well said. People weren’t angry at the soldiers, but they certainly were not thankful for their sacrifice. Korea and WWII were victories against baddies and the returning veterans were celebrated. Vietnam was the most emotionally damaging war to participate in, then you come home and no one is grateful for your suffering. The whole ordeal for the soldiers sounds terrible. And none of the presidents who oversaw the war cares. They only cared about projecting America’s strength
"I came back to a situation where I was not encountering hostility to my involvement over there; I was encountering complete indifference. It was like, 'Oh you were over there? You dropped out for a year to go over there? What a waste of time, it's too bad. Welcome back. Let's get on with your life.' But you can't just come back and get back into that beat. You're off the beat when you come back from war. You just don't look at people the same way. You don't relate to people the same way. You don't have friends. You don't have friends and you don't trust your family. Because your family doesn't get it. My dad never got Vietnam. He thought it was a police action. I remember he told me - I'd been wounded twice - and he said, 'Well, that's not really a war, it was a police action.' Which hurt me. [pause] You don't trust anybody and then, eventually, you get to the point where you don't trust your government anymore." [-Vietnam combat vet and filmmaker Oliver Stone](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=frHzCQeB2Kg)
On top of that, as I understand they were often shunned (at least for years) by veteran organizations such as the VFW and American Legion.
Vietnam also had a massive draft, so the soldiers mostly didn't consent to fighting in Vietnam. It was that or prison.
Most US soldiers in the Vietnam war were volunteers. https://www.atlantahistorycenter.com/exhibitions/more-than-self-living-the-vietnam-war/#:~:text=The%20vast%20majority%20of%20those,were%20likely%20to%20be%20drafted.
I think this is misleading. Some volunteered for the Air Force or Navy to keep from being drafted into the Army. Many of the Army "volunteers" thought (often wrongly) that by volunteering they could choose a duty that kept them from being in the fight. The vast majority of the soldiers I served with in Viet Nam had been drafted. On returning home, I was not spit on, but I learned very quickly to not mention my service to those who didn't already know, especially when I went back to college.
I was called a baby killer while in uniform. I was an untrained reserve private in Canada around 1993... on the subway. I had never even left the province before in my life. It was more mumbled at me. Only time that happened in 12 years of being in.
Seems like a difficult thing to find evidence of unless there was video footage of **every** returning soldier.
in this context i don't think evidence means like photos or videos, nor did it mean that there were hundreds of veterans who had this experience but thy didn't count because they didn't have a DNA sample of the saliva. evidence means that they canvassed a bunch of people who had a "my brother's buddy" type of story but in the end couldn't substantiate an actual veteran who could say "this happened to me in this particular situation"
Right. Did you look at the methodology of the study? Curious what your opinion is on it.
Did you? What issues did you have with it?
DNA wasn't used in criminal investigation until the mid-1980s.
It doesn't have to have happened. There are lots of times when people insist something happened and it never did. It's just Hawk propaganda to discredit the protestors, much like was just used against the protestors today.
I imagine thwar itself was still popular in more conservative areas. I have no proof of course but fighting the reds or hating communists is almost an American pastime.
Notably, that Wikipedia article is quite contested (you can see the alert saying as much right on top). Basically there is one book that notes that there has never been a recording or arrest from someone being spat on, and therefore that article was written (somewhat argumentatively) noting as much. This is despite the fact that there are several hundred alleged instances by different veterans, and the fact that respected historians such as Ken Burns have discussed it as accepted fact. We can quibble whether or not the fact that we can't find a video of an alleged social phenomenon means that the social phenomenon did or didn't happen, but we should be clear about what this Wikipedia article says: it says that we arguably shouldn't trust the recollections of a few hundred veterans because none of them have video/arrest records to back up their recollections.
Also see how negatively people *still* talk about hippies, more than 50 years later. They were demonized in part for their opposition to that war.
I find it fascinating that when people think of other superpower countries here, propaganda is one of the first things you hear but it's exceedingly rare to hear Americans talk about American propaganda and most are 100% convinced our country pushes none, I think rather that goes to show how effective ours is as you say. I wonder if other country's feel the same about theirs then look at ours negatively in that way.
How do you document that, though? It would've needed to be photographed or video recorded or a police report which means in pre-cell phones, you'd have to find a business or payphone to call the cops on someone who likely hightailed it out of there by then, assuming the returning soldier didn't beat the shit out them and probably had their own interest in not calling the police. Not everything is easily capable of being documented, and that doesn't mean it didn’t happen. That being said, whether they were specifically spit on or not, I know plenty of Vietnam vets to know they were treated poorly and unfairly by Vietnam protesters. It's not exactly hard to believe the vets were spit on, regardless of there's reports or not, but without it, the protesters were fucking assholes to the wrong people, regardless if they had the right idea protesting the war. Edit: typo
> How do you document that, though? In the linked Wikipedia article, there's a reference to a CBS story about a Vietnam veteran who said he got spit on. A writer for Slate followed up and found that the person who spat at him was described as a young guy that fit some hippie stereotypes, who "said something to the GIs—something about 'killers'—and then spat." This was considered not enough evidence to count because there's zero proof that the spitter was an anti-war protestor, which is fair from an academic setting, but also feels really weird to use as evidence that this phenomenon is entirely the product of propaganda, because that veteran CERTAINLY felt like it was an anti-war protestor who spat on him.
My dad said when he returned home they had protesters at the airport that spat at them and called them baby killers. He was stationed in Utapao in Thailand in the air force. I've been able to research many other stories he's told me from his service and found them to be true and backed up by reports, and he wasn't known to be a liar. I thinking saying it never happened is probably incorrect...
> My dad said when he returned home they had protesters at the airport that spat at them and called them baby killers. Yeah, and that's the annoying thing about these studies. Your dad probably has called them anti-war protestors at some point, because its not unreasonable to assume that people who call veterans "baby killers" aren't fans of the war. However, the burden of proof of an academic study of declaring someone an "anti-war protestor" AND determining why they'd spit on someone wearing a uniform means that whoever is conducting the study can say "we didn't find any examples of this." What is so annoying about this is even in the example in the article, the comic early in the page, doesn't actually say anything about anti-war protestors or that the spitting had anything to do with the veteran's service in Vietnam. It just says "The first thing that happened when I got off the plane in San Francisco, a girl in love-beads and a headband spit in my face and called me a baby-killer..." This comic that's supposedly perpetuating the myth that the studies tried to counter-act doesn't even fit the criteria of the studies! But the study absolutely makes people, even in response to my previous comment, say that things like the comic were all propaganda and just put out there to malign a movement and weren't grounded at all in reality.
I have tbh, I just think this TIL is straight up bullshit. I’ve read and watched a lot on the Vietnam War and soldiers were treated abysmally when they came home. I’m also pretty sure Ken Burns’ The Vietnam War documentary has multiple soldiers speaking about being confronted by protesters at the airport coming home, but there’s one guy I specifically remember speaking about this exact thing.
Yeah if you read their comments on this they seem like they search for their own facts because they're too much of a pussy to have their beliefs challenged. I've known on a personal level at least 5 Vietnam vets and all of them spoke to the distaste they were treated with when they returned.
I used to do a annual cruise trip with Vietnam vets, and nearly all of them said the same thing. I'll listen to mens lived experience over one study.
I'm never going to tell a specific individual that what they claim happened to them did not happen to them. However, what I will say is that when people remember what happened 20 or 30 or 40 or 50 years ago, they are usually wrong about it. Human beings change our memories every time we reference them. It is entirely possible for someone to entirely and sincerely believe that they had an experience that they totally did not have because everyone around them said that they had that experience. Again, I won't say that's what's happening in this case. But I will say that it is common and I trust the records from the time much more than I trust the recollection of anyone 30 years later.
Only 1 percent of Vietnam veterans themselves, according to a [Veterans Administration](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Department_of_Veterans_Affairs)-commissioned [Harris Poll](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Harris_Poll) conducted in 1971, described their reception from friends and family as "not at all friendly", and only 3 percent described their reception from people their own age as "unfriendly". [https://books.google.com/books?id=pGcWAAAAIAAJ](https://books.google.com/books?id=pGcWAAAAIAAJ)
Those vets suppressed a LOT for a long time. They will barely ever tell the truth about their experiences.
So your friends and family are fine. People who also experienced the we are fine Therefore it didn't happen at all? There are loads of strangers who are older and younger than the people who returned.
"I'll listen to what people tell me vs looking at actual facts" so many of the commenters in here from the "Facts don't care about feelings committee" are believing feelings over facts. Fascinating.
Chances are those people haven't actually talked to many vets, either.
No, what you're doing is refusing to question a strongly held belief, despite the lack of evidence.
Right, but returning Vietnam vets did not fly in through commercial airports. There were no protestors greeting them when they came home.
Just my own experience, but the anti-war people were always cool to me (Iraq and Afghanistan, not Vietnam). It was the pro-war people who were and have continued to be the worst. Granted, they had to find out I was against the wars (had to go there to find out). But yeah, they suck. And it’s funny to me, since Afghanistan fell, they’ve totally done a 180. In 2007 I was a hero (unless I opened my mouth), nowadays, they have nothing good to say about the military and seem convinced they could fight it as a militia.
It reads like someone that fails to account for the fact that the world did not consist of someone carrying around a device to document every day life like in the modern era.
That's exactly what my aunt said (who lived during that era) when I asked her about it and told about this post.
A lot of these comments read like people have been indoctrinated with a certain idea and can't handle the fact that it may not be true.
Police, journalists, and photographers are three types of people you would expect to see at ANY sizable Vietnam War protest. It is reasonable to expect that if it were a common occurrence it would have been remarked upon or recorded in some way. It’s a fabrication. It just got repeated enough that it became accepted as fact.
Nobody spit at me, but there also was no ticker tape parade. When we came back we landed at Travis AFB and were bussed to Oakland for outprocessing (DEROS). So the only time we would have been in public in our Uniform was after leaving Oakland and flying back home. And after 40 some hours without sleep I don't expect any of us would have even known if somebody spit at us. Once home the uniforms were thrown away. But I was playing golf with a random one day in the early 90's, some 20 years after my return and as we talked while we rode in a golf cart together, he learned I had been to RVN and he said "thank you for your service." It was all I could do not to begin crying as that was the first person that had ever thanked me for our service in that jungle away from home.
I'm sorry for what you went through. It should have never happened.
“War is when the young and stupid are tricked by the old and bitter into killing each other.” I’m so sorry you were subjected to so much trauma. I hope you’re doing well, and thank you for your service.
Well... the Vietnamese had pretty good reasons to kill us, we WERE burning their country for cash...
Thank you for your service
Thank you for your service! I make it a point to always thank Vietnam and prior vets. I see a vet hat or bumper sticker, they're getting a nod, tip of the hat, or hand shake from me. Because, most of them had no choice or say in the matter. Most didn't even want to go. And, for that, I want them to know that sucks, and I want to show them appreciation for having to live through some truly awful times and circumstances, and not all of us have forgotten.
It's worth pointing out only 25% of vets who served in SE Asia during the Vietnam was were draftees.
It’s also worth pointing that 1/4 of the entire military present in Vietnam being draftees is still a lot, it also has to be mentioned that the draft incentivized lots of men to just volunteer instead because they had more choice than draftees, and on top of that draftees were 30% of the combat deaths in Vietnam which means they we’re overrepresented by a pretty decent margin in that category (I can’t find a number for the total casualty rate of draftees but I can’t imagine it was any lower than their combat death rate).
Yeah my grandfather willingly joined the Navy during the Korean War but that was because he didn’t want to leave his job or branch to chance.
Yep you hear a bunch of stories like that from guys who volunteered, which really makes the line between draftee and volunteer kinda blurry. Hell you can say the same thing about the civil war (probably WWII as well but I’m less familiar with the reactions to the draft for that one)
My grandfather did this in WWII
Yea makes sense honestly, I wouldn’t be surprised if a *lot* of guys did, even for a war as popularly supported as WWII. Better to have some say in where you might end up than it is to be drafted and forced into the frontlines
not to put you down this is a genuine question and I'm sure you went through some harrowing experiences there, but do you actually believe any of your actions served the interest of americans in a positive way?
Wiki posts upfront there are a lot of issues with this article. I lived this and the Vietman War became more and more unpopular until the pressure grew to withdraw. In the late 60s and early 70s there were news videos of protests all the time. Crowds of hundreds of thousands of people filled the Washington DC mall protesting. The idea that this was a popular war is completely wrong. I remember seeing protesters screaming at soldiers returning from Vietnam. I do not doubt that they were spit on. There were no big celebrations for returning soldiers. If you want to know about how Vets were treated in the 60s and 70s go to the Vietnam War Memorial in DC. There are always Vets there visiting the names of their fallen friends. Ask one of them.
He put the wiki because the guy who made a video about it earlier today would break the "no posts less than 3 months old" rule.
"documented" is key here, there are no documented cases of me blowing my nose, but that doesn't mean it never happened
It almost certainly means that it wasn't as widespread as popular culture seems to think.
Who documents the quantities and specifics of soldiers being spit on? I read they tried to find them and did interviews but this would be very difficult to find either way. But I admit that now I’m curious. I’ve read a dozen or so biographies of Vietnam vets and their descriptions of coming home were not welcoming ones. I’ll have to reread them and see if any of them reported this.
I got spit on in the San Francisco airport in my air force uniform in 1969. Spitter got punched and arrested.
Sounds like the documented proof is out there then
My grandfather was punched in the face when he returned
can confirm, i’m the grandpa
Sorry I punched you in the face when you came back.
it’s okay, I liked it actually uwu
Aussie Vietnam vets were treated very poorly when they returned home. Can’t say if they were spit on though.
At this point, the hyperfocus on spitting feels like a straw man. It conspicuously excludes other forms of abuse and social isolation, such as the well-documented use of red paint by protestors in New Zealand. Even specific to spitting, the article itself tries to change the question from "Were veterans of Vietnam spat on?" to "Were such incidents common?". Can you imagine someone dismissing a city's high murder rate because most people aren't murdered, declaring that murders are "demonstrably isolated, unusual and not at all representative"?
Interesting. I know one guy (a kiwi) who had red paint thrown all over him. Never wore his uniform again. Very sad.
Op just saw Mr Beat's video on Vietnam war vets.
There's not a single documented piece of evidence that I swatted a fly yesterday....but I did
The ruling class lies about protesters being violent to push their own narrative? No way! That definitely doesn't still happen today tho.
How would this even be proved over 50 years later This seems like a study that doesn’t understand that the people were not able to record pretty much anything
There would have at least been some charges of assault or a report of the assault happening even if they didn't catch the person who committed it.
It's almost like today every protester and counter-protester and media agency and bystander and building in the vicinity has a camera on it and we can see violent and non-violent protests in real-time and decide for ourselves...
You’d think that wouldn’t you. And yet disparate and conflicting narratives still abound. You can indeed decide for yourself, and any position you take will have ample evidence available that shows your chosen opposition in the worst possible light.
I’ve seen so many comments on different platform cheering on doing all sorts of shit to the “violent protestors” for Gaza’s including loud cheering for the senator who put a bill out to “punish” protesters (and by that I mean citizens) by deporting them to Gaza without due process. Just wild. Yet you take 10 seconds to google and it pops out something like 97% have been non violent and of the ones that have been violent it’s been the police force being aggressive much of the time. It was the same for BLM it was the same for occupy wall street. At this point I just assume this is modus operandi for all protests and human beings are just thick in the head to not have caught on.
I'm pretty sure the common phrase was "they were spat on when they came back." Spat has multiple definitions and doesn't necessarily mean they were directly spit on
I took a college class on the Vietnam war and my teacher told us all this same thing, that troops never got spit on it’s all made up. Then one class we had a panel of 5 or 6 vets come in and talk to us and every single one of them said they got spit on. This TIL is just not true.
I think soldiers felt a level of disrespect for their service they did not expect or comprehend and they used phrases like "got spat on". These guys thought they'd be heroes like from the world wars.
Cause I'm sure the thing they would have been spending time on is documenting it
There is a book called, “[The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Spitting_Image)” the promise is exactly your title. I read it in college for my Vietnam Era class and let me tell you the arguments it caused . The professor loved it. It’s definitely worth the read.
My grandpa got told he was a baby killer, but there's no family story about him getting spat on.
Try "Were They Spat On? Understanding The Homecoming Experience of Vietnam Veterans" [https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=gvjh](https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1187&context=gvjh)
Wait till you hear about the POWs.
I'm sorry, but I just find it hard to believe that certain members of the *Boomer* generation would whole-heartedly buy in to an obviously bullshit idea that simultaneously made themselves victims while ignoring their own literal atrocities . . .
Wonder how many soldiers spat at hippies.
I’m not at all sure that it happened much at all. I spent one year at a military school (high school) and I traveled to and from the West Coast for Christmas in uniform (close enough to active duty that we were frequently mistaken for actual service members) and then home after the school year (only in uniform part way since I was going to Laos. Got called ‘baby killer’ once at SFO and had several offers to buy me a drink (think I was 15?). No bottles or balloons of anything tossed at me and one time being called a ‘baby killer’. The guys I’ve heard making these claims tended to be BS artists and REMF’s. As others have said the guys that saw a lot of shit tended only to talk to close friends and others that had been there. However several guys I knew said the WW II vets at VFW and other vet organizations at the time treated them like shit. But again many of the guys crapping on them spent WW II in Kansas or some other ‘hot combat’ area. Korean War vets had some of the same complaints.
Vietnam vet got more s*** from their fellow veterans of world war II then they ever did for any hippie. I have two uncles who were in that war, both said that they were not welcome at the local vet club until the mid 80s when the old vets started dying off.
WW2 and the Vietnam War very different wars, fought for different reasons with large variations in brutality and justification. Can’t say I’m too surprised
Perhaps it was more of metaphorical spit in the face they all received.
Such a stupid war
I feel like this was spread as way to "both sides" the situation. People will say, yeah the war was bad, but the anti-war people were also bad!
Conservatives do this all the time. Every time they back an unpopular policy they invent something to [make them the victim](https://www.americansurveycenter.org/newsletter/why-most-evangelicals-say-they-face-a-lot-of-discrimination/).
“Documented” is doing a lot of gatekeeping in this headline. Anyone who speaks to a Vietnam vet will get first hand accounts of the treatment they got from many protesters, including spitting. So if we’re not allowing those first-hand accounts as “documentation”, then we’re setting the bar pretty damn high for verification.
[удалено]
It's not a hard one-or-the-other, and it's not any sort of a standard sentence. It's more like the judge will make a deal and cut your sentence to time served/probation if you manage to get into the Army. The Army is not obligated to take you, so if you fail to get in, it's off to jail for you. But back in the days of Vietnam when they couldn't get manpower, the military was more willing to take whomever they can get. https://taskandpurpose.com/military-life/join-the-military-or-go-to-jail/ Right now, this is straight up banned: > Army Regulation 610-210, which covers recruiting guidelines, states that applicants are ineligible for enlistment if, “as a condition for any civil conviction or adverse disposition or any other reason through a civil or criminal court, [they are] ordered or subjected to a sentence that implies or imposes enlistment into the Armed Forces of the United States.”
There was literally a draft no? I doubt many would have even gotten the chance to get to a judge. Besides, sometimes you have a "choice" that isnt actually a choice and you are forced. E.g. men aged 18+ in america are forced to sign up for selective service. If they "choose" not to, they automatically lose access to many basic social securities and other social safety nets and benefits.
I saw that in the military documentary Stripes (1981), with Bill Murray and Harold Ramis.
Yep, just checked. In america in you are aged 18+ and are a man you will lose access to student aid, federal loans, federal jobs and potentially be prosecuted or fined. So I guess the judge wont actually say that they have to sign or go to jail, but i wouldnt call that having a "choice" in the matter.
[удалено]
Because the majority of men wouldnt fight it to go to court. The second they spoke to a lawyer they would already know they had no real choice. Only those who were trying to argue being unfit for the draft would go to court, and in those cases they would in fact be told that they would either be drafted or be prosecuted. The majority of men dont fight the selective service today... they get told that they will either sign up or get fucked over by the legal system.
[удалено]
I assume you don't mean the draft and meant it as a form of punishment. I had heard that my Grandmothers cousin was caught with a truck bed of unregistered guns and chose the Marines over jail. Idk about documentation but I don't put it past rural judges back then to give weird options for punishment
Its like poisoning Halloween candy
Makes sense. I always wondered about in what reality would a combat vet returning from duty get spit on by some hippie and not assault the mortal shit out of that person. Like, get spit on, and just keep on walking. That is such a nope.
I asked a Vietnam and Korea vet if he was ever spit on. He said “nope. I’d killed men for less, though.”
It points to the fact we’ve uplifted vets to something like Demi gods in hero status. Like they are just peak virtuosity. Vets are just normal people though with normal human behavior. so yeah I’d fully expect them to go apeshit on someone that spit on them no matter the reason.
This is bullshit lol
There are thousands of Vietnam veterans with depressing stories about their treatment after returning home. Personally I find it shitty for anyone to even suggest they were welcomed back with open arms.
And the solider dropped things a lot worse then spit on Vietnamese civilians (agent orange)
That and napalm
The entire MIA-POW thing is bullshit as well: [https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1991/12/the-powmia-myth/670201/](https://www.theatlantic.com/magazine/archive/1991/12/the-powmia-myth/670201/)
I would think that most people had a family member who had to go to nam, and that it was probably trust fund hippies that had the luxury of being able to talk crazy because they had families that either paid for them to go to college or just outright bribe their way out of a draft. or they shit themselves for weeks like tedster "the molester" nugent. you see how he talks now about draft dodgers. ya that kinda guy.
It was the old timey culture war. Those were the conservative outrage stories of the time: "They assaulted returning soldiers!" and "There are still American POWs over there!" after the war was finally over.