Myth of the spat-on Vietnam veteran
A 1995 study by three prominent sociologists (Thomas D. Beamish, Harvey Molotch and Richard Flacks), who carefully examined "press accounts of protests between 1965-1971", concluded that media reports showing the antiwar movement "directly or purposely" targeting troops "are virtually nonexistent."
They did, however, find frequent instances of government officials and military leaders falsely labeling the antiwar movement as anti-troop, which they present as one source of the later developing myth.
All the academic studies have come away essentially empty handed, with no verifiable contemporaneous story matching the basic theme of an antiwar protester spitting on a Vietnam veteran.
In 2007, Northwestern Law School professor and libertarian blogger James Lindgren claimed to have uncovered "[m]any 1967-72" spitting incidents in the press, and was critical of Lembcke's and others' research.
Jack Shafer, writing for Slate, examined these back and forth exchanges and concluded that "Lindgren has failed so far to produce a contemporaneous news account—or other corroborative evidence—of a protester ambushing a returning veteran with a gob of spit, which I take as the main point of Lembcke's book".
[3] Shafer, however, continued to dig into this story and a month later became convinced that he had uncovered one likely and credible CBS news report from December 27, 1971, where Vietnam veteran Delmar Pickett Jr. tells of being spit on at the Seattle airport.
It is more likely any spitting that occurred was related more to tense confrontations that took place between a small group of demonstrators and troops as a few protesters tried to enter the Pentagon and were met with tear gas, bayonets and rifle butts.
"The image of 'hippie' men and women hawking up gobs of phlegm to hurl at the ribbons of veterans, as a pervasive and commonplace act, is surely false.
Even with one or a few possible incidents somewhat like the myth, there is not sufficient confirmation to substantiate it as an accurate portrayal of the overall relationship between the antiwar movement and returning Vietnam veterans, much less maintain it as a powerful and accepted truth over decades.
[27] The most prevalent and oft cited sources used currently to defend the spitting myth are anecdotal stories told by people claiming to be Vietnam veterans who say they were spat on.
Kulik reviewed all of "the most popular early memoirs", "reportage" and "oral histories" by Vietnam veterans, including: Tim O'Brien's If I Die in a Combat Zone (1973), Ron Kovic's Born on the Fourth of July (1983), Robert Mason's Chickenhawk (1983), John Sack's M (1967), Michael Herr's Dispatches (1977), Al Santoli's Everything We Had (1981), Wallace Terry's Bloods (1984) and Mark Baker's Nam (1981).
[26] Specialist in civil-military relations and advisor to the National Institute of Military Justice, Diane Mazur, also looked closely into this subject and concluded: "There is no contemporaneous evidence that Americans who opposed the war expressed those beliefs by spitting on or otherwise assaulting returning Vietnam Veterans."
Homecoming: When the Soldiers Returned from Vietnam, a 1989 book by Bob Greene, has the most extensive public collection of stories, with 60 veterans claiming they were spat on, 68 saying it never happened to them, and 19 more recalling "only acts of kindness".
He pointed out, for example, stories of multiple spittings, including one veteran's claim of being spat on "two and three times per day" at Colorado State University.
Many of the spitters were also "female or male hippies", as in one story about a group of GIs who had to be "escorted through the San Francisco airport by cops" as a mob of "long hairs" threw "bags of feces on us, eggs, & other trash at us."
In addition to the long delay before their appearance and lack of contemporary evidence, many of the stories contain exaggerations and "implausible details, like returning soldiers deplaning at San Francisco Airport, where they were met by groups of spitting hippies.
"[34][15] One of the earliest stories of this kind was quoted in Time magazine in April 1979: Alan Fitzgerald, who was in Vietnam in 1970 said, "When I came back and landed at San Francisco airport with 200 others, we were spit on and kicked at.
[26]: p.87 Lembcke's favorite example of implausibility was published in his local paper, the Worcester, Massachusetts Telegram and Gazette: "In a November 11, 1998 Veterans Day story, James Collins claimed his plane from Vietnam was met at Clark Airforce Base north of San Francisco by 'thousands of protesters throwing Molotov cocktails.'
[38] Others who have viewed the documentary have commented that "the footage from the scene shows a protest sign that read: 'Active Duty GIs Against the War' and a vest worn by a veteran with the same slogan."
They might have heard "on Armed Forces Radio that the folks back home weren't duly appreciative of the job they were doing, many GIs came in from Vietnam thinking mobs of antiwar militants would be waiting to spit on them."
Lt. Henry Howe, who was then stationed at the Fort Bliss Army Base in El Paso, Texas, marched in an antiwar protest in his civilian clothes on November 6, 1965.
Their statements, which were reproduced in leaflets and pamphlets and used extensively by the broader antiwar movement, said in part: "We have been in the army long enough to know that we are not the only G.I.s who feel as we do.... We oppose the criminal waste of American lives and resources.
[39]: p.3 It declared, "The morale, discipline and battle worthiness of the U.S. armed forces are, with a few salient exceptions, lower and worse than at any time in this century and possible in the history of the United States.
"[48] While the antiwar sentiment and activism among troops was widespread, there were, of course, many pro-war and undecided Vietnam GIs and veterans, some of whom were interviewed, sent letters to editors and wrote war memoirs.
[1]: p.20 As U.S. wars continued in Iraq and Afghanistan, along with the promises to "rebuild America", the spitting myth was repeated and embedded deeper into the social consciousness of the country.
As time went on the real rebel GIs and veterans of the Vietnam war would be "pushed out of memory" by the mythical "good" GI Joe like figures who had been spit on by the "bad" antiwar activists.
[49] The larger populace, in turn, would be presented a cartoon GI Joe version of that historical period, obscuring "the real war in which 3,000,000 Vietnamese died fighting for national independence", while tens of thousands of U.S. GIs and veterans tried to prevent it, along with millions of other in the U.S. and around the world.
When television host Jay Leno returned to the air a week after the 9/11 attacks, his invited guest was the then Arizona Senator and Vietnam POW John McCain.
When Dr. Deborah Wilson Overstreet, an associate professor of Language Arts Education, examined young adult fiction written from 1967 to 2018 with the Vietnam war as a subject, she found most of the novels equated "antiwar sentiment with aggressive anti-soldier action".
She concluded that, these inaccurate "representations, combined with images of protesters ubiquitously spitting on veterans and shouting 'baby killer' at them, have served to discredit the antiwar movement and the young people involved in it."
