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-- Interview: Bill Hunt
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"How Vietnam
Vets Were Treated Upon
Arriving Back In The United
States"
| Here are my thoughts on your
theme, "How Vietnam Vets Were Treated
Upon
Arriving Back In The United
States."
First of all, I hope someone has
turned you on to "Coming Home," by
Bob
Green. That is the only
book I know that is devoted to your theme. Another
book,
"Lives After Vietnam: The
personal impact of military service", published
by
Lexington Books, is more social
survey research oriented. My guess is,
this
second one is out of print, but
the author, Josefina J. Card is a researcher at
the
Stanford connected American
Institute for Research in Palo Alto.
Of
course, there have been numerous magazine articles
devoted to this subject.
They all say
about the same thing: Vietnam Vets were treated poorly,
and spat
upon, etc.,
etc.
Your theme by title is limited to a
short time frame: the homecoming
experience.
Vets were often met in
airports by protestors, and that is the substance of
most
of the stories that surround this
particular post war experience.
If a vet
did not experience protestors at airports, and most did
not, then the
homecoming story is more
limited to how they were treated by family
and
friends and strangers.
I was
met at the airport by my Korean War brother, and I
remember being
silent and bitter after he made
an innocent comment. He noted in jest that I
was
now home and no longer "surrounded by
the Viet Cong and all that jazz." It
was
said in jest, but it sounded as
though he was not inclined to believe that the
war
in Vietnam was a real war, a war were
in fact I felt the whole time that I
was
there that I was indeed surrounded by
a hostile force.
I got on another plane the
next morning to be reunited with my wife and
her
family. I'll never forget being
re-introduced to my 16-month old daughter,
who
treated me as a complete stranger.
That was really hard. My wife had no
real
concept of where I had been, even
though I had written every day. There was
a
new stress in our relationship that is
hard to describe.
But more toward your
theme, my wife's family barely acknowledged that I
had
ever been gone. Did they know I had just
returned from war? If they did,
they
acted as though it didn't
matter.
In about a week I checked in with
the rest of my family, and I swear it was as
if
I had been down the street buying a
loaf of bread. They were very casual
about
were I had been. I think that my
war duty to them was just another
military
assignment, another station. If
I had been assigned to a post in Germany or
in
Korea their reaction to my
coming home would have been about the
same.
Vietnam was just part of the
background of everyday life, and now I was
more
available for invites to family
gatherings. No one asked me about the war.
They
were totally apathetic on the
subject.
Of course, my tour in Vietnam came
later than most. I was there during 1972,
after
most ground troops were withdrawn, and politicians were
promising
"peace with honor". 1972 was the
Easter Offensive, and that was just
as
devastating as Tet 1968. But mostly it was
the Vietnamese troops who died in
that
offensive, and it got only a tiny amount of American
press compared to
1968. But to me, it had been
one long hellish experience, and I wondered
if
everybody had been asleep.
At
the time, this "treatment" didn't matter much. What was,
was. My service in
Vietnam was just
as normal to me as walking down the street was normal
to
others (though I would have been more
comfortable wearing my combat
gear).
Vietnam Vets came home and tended
stayed to themselves; they didn't
talk
about the war, and generally they
didn't even meet other vets’ who were,
after
all, staying quiet about their
past. I met my first vet friend in 1974,
and
experienced the reality that I knew more
about him in 5 minutes than I knew
the
other strangers around me, ever.
After that, I began to seek out other
vets
because they understood me and I
understood them.
Unlike many, I did
continue to bring up the subject of Vietnam routinely
at
social gatherings until the early 1980's.
Everything reminded me about the
war,
especially food. I had lived
with the Vietnamese, and I missed the food,
believe
it or not. The war was an
exciting period in my life, and many many
interesting
things happened that under
most circumstances people would find
interesting,
though there was
rarely much social feedback.
Then one day,
I mentioned the war at a large lunch affair with various
business
clients. I had said something
very interesting, I thought, and I was stunned
by
the silence that returned. I was so
stunned, I stopped mentioning the war
for
years.
I wasn't the only
vet who stopped mentioning the war. Once, not that long
ago,
I was in another business meeting
with a group of about six men. Over
sandwiches
they started talking about their military experiences.
The guys who
shared
were not war vets, they had been in the service and were
quick to talk
about flying in
planes and assignments on ships and various stuff that
all ex-GI's
have in common. I didn't say
anything, and after all but one of the members
had
left the room, I pointed out to the
last man seated that he hadn't said
anything
either. Turns out he had been a
platoon leader in Vietnam and had learned
the
same social lesson I had learned.
Case closed.
It was 1985 that changed the
way I conducted myself. The Today
Show
celebrated the 10 year anniversary of the
fall of Saigon by broadcasting from
downtown
Saigon. Featured was a May Day Parade. I thought that
was about
the most insensitive thing I had ever
seen. The show was popular with the
American
viewers, it got great ratings, and I was
appalled.
I wrote my first of many "letters
to the editor" after that. I just felt that
the
American people needed some small
insight from the perspective of a
Vietnam
Vet. Dumb stuff was being
said every day, and I felt a need to point out
dumb
stuff, and add something
new.
Newspaper editors loved what I had to
say, probably because at the time no
one
was mentioning Vietnam at all in any
meaningful way. I was called on
the
phone more than once by
other vets, who wanted to thank me for my
"letters",
and that fueled my need
to write on. A mover and shaker in Stockton
who
wanted to help raise money for
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in
Sacramento
enlisted my help in
dealing with the media, and I started to work with other
vets
on a major project that has
given me life-long friendships.
I learned
two important things from my experience with fund
raising for the
California Memorial: (1) Only
vets and their families cared about
contributing
money toward such a thing,
and (2) some vets are very intelligence
thinkers.
They are very successful in
their careers, and they care a lot about honor
and
the future.
I also met
plenty of vets who are loved by the media. They are not
the same
vets. They wore military jungle
fatigues and boonie hats and phony metals
and
seemed to have a hard time taking a bath on a regular
basis. The media
treated them as the only
vets: the victim vets. And to this day, there
are
media people who think all Vietnam Veterans
wear boonie hats 24 hours a day,
take drugs,
sleep in the streets, and need help just to
shave.
It's important to remember, when
discussing how veterans were treated after
the
war, that we as a nation lost the war. That was a new
experience for
America. I know that I assumed
we would win the war, on some level, until
I
was half way through my own tour. I was
raised to believe that winning wars
was
something one took for granted in
America.
When your side is the loser, how
does one behave? Americans acted as though
they
wanted to blame the soldiers, but couldn't. They adopted
a comfortable
mindset that somehow Vietnam
Veterans were victims of bad
government
decisions. The media picked that up,
and a whole mythology was created.
Hollywood
sold movies built around the theme, and even guys who
were never
in the military, but felt like
victims, started wearing jungle fatigues just for
the
whole natural feel of
it.
As a result, our only heroes from the
war are ex-POWs; the poster boy victims
of a
cruel enemy. National law now requires that we fly the
ex-POW flag on
the same staff as the Stars and
Stripes. I call it the "poor me" flag. Sometimes
I
call it the "black
rag".
I believe in honoring ex-POWs, but
those who think about it will tell you that it
is
not good for anyone to view themselves
as a victim. It's unhealthy. And it
is
inaccurate in the case of all but a
very few. When I think about victims, I think
of
several Vietnamese families and
soldiers I know who put all their chips
on
America and lost
big-time.
Your theme is restricted to that
period of coming home immediately after
the
war. I'd stick with that, because you need
to think small to finish your paper.
But
you should know that I view this whole subject as the
"war after the war",
and it continues in
new phases each year. The best book devoted to the
whole
subject of the war after the
war is "Stolen Valor", no doubt available in
the
DeCillis Collection.
You
asked about how vets were treated from different wars.
On this subject,
I would ask vets from those
wars. WWII vets were treated like heroes;
Korea
war vets were ignored. Gulf War vets were
treated quite well, as an
over-
reaction, I think, to how
Vietnam Vets had been treated. But only those
guys
know for sure.
Bill Hunt, Former U.S. Army
Advisor
MACV Team
85
Tieu Can
District
Vinh Binh
Province,
Republic of
Vietnam
1972
Hi Bill,
My name is
Michele Maberry and I got your name from Paul De Cillis.
I am doing
a research paper for my
English class and the topic is "How Vietnam Vets were
Treated Upon Arriving Back in the United
States". Paul told me that you might be
willing to help me with
this.
What I would like from you is your
feelings about the way you were treated
when
you arrived home. Why you felt you were treated the way
you were.
How it differed from the way other
vets from previous wars had been treated.
Did the way you were treated have any affect
on you?
I know that I will have more
questions, but these are the ones that come right to
me. If you don't mind helping me out, I would
really appreciate it. If this topic
bothers
you, I completely understand and am sorry to have
bothered you.
Thank you for your
time
Michele Maberry
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