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Vietnam Anniversary: Once Was One Time Too Many

By Pete Zastrow

The 10th anniversary of U.S. Marines jumping into helicopters amid a squalling mass of Vietnamese who wanted to get out—and the end of U.S. occupation of South Vietnam—has come and gone. New York City held a ticker-tape parade, there were kind words and pats on the head from politicians around the country, a smattering of new memorials and rituals bows to the newfound "heroes": the Vietnam vet! Meanwhile, vets without jobs are still unemployed: vets suffering from various forms of post traumatic stress have not been cured; vets whose problems led to alcoholism or divorce and still drunk and divorced. And the Vietnam vet suicide rate—well over 100,000 and rising—continues to grow.

Fifteen years ago VVAW tried to understand and tell others what it meant to separate the warriors from the war. You can and should hate the war, we told people; but don't hate the warrior. Hate the generals who plan the tactics or the politicians who plan the strategy, or the corporations who make billions in profits; don't hate the GI who carries out these god-awful policies.

The distinction between the two sounds simple today. Fifteen years ago we faced those who supported the war and were sure the reason we were losing was the hippy, drug-crazed troops over there; and, on the other side among those who knew that the war was wrong, we faced those who were sure the blood-thirsty GI's were slaughtering innocent Vietnamese.

While much has changed in 15 years, much more stays the same. Reagan and the Reagan-influenced media have begun to make heroes out of Vietnam vets and, not only were the vets "heroes," but the war itself was a "heroic" effort. The war and the warrior are being confused all over again. This time there's a purpose: make Vietnam heroic, show the real American "heroes," and especially let the youth understand the patriotic zeal of these heroes. Make enough camouflaged fatigues (in Taiwan, of course) so that every teenage male can prowl his macho jungles looking like a refugee from an army surplus store. It's guaranteed to pay off at the recruiter's office.

Patriotism is in again. Notice hold often we've been told that the "wounds of Vietnam are now being bound up." "Bound up" means healed means forgotten. A wound hurts, but the scar is somehow heroic.

Recruiters, and Jr. ROTC, reappear in schools. The National Boy Scout Jamboree is treated to several days of Special Forces exhibition—all you need to do is change uniforms. And, of course, Rambo rampages through the theaters, his pockets stuffed with box office receipts.

If we are honest with ourselves almost any Vietnam vet openly or secretly gets off on the adulation, even when we know it's for all the wrong reasons. Our experiences let us live up to the John Wayne image: "I've stared death in the face, and death blinked" which our society has so thoroughly ingrained in us. We've been dumped on for so long it gives us a little thrill to be a sort of role model for high school males.

The image of the Vietnam vet—that is, what others see us as—has shifted drastically in the last 15 years. For us as children of a media age the image is particularly important; once the myth has been set up we try to grow into it.

In the late '60's, the early days of VVAW, we were "alleged vets" as if our authenticity determined our credibility. During Operation Dewey Canyon III, in 1971, climaxed by vets throwing back their Vietnam medals on the steps of the Capital, the medals, the artificial limbs, the crutches and the discharge papers all spoke directly to our "alleged" status.

Nixon's White House, however, could hardly permit a large group of Vietnam vets to protest and, in passing, explain the war in which we had just fought. So they attempted to undermine the credibility of vets with a few more broad brush strokes—we became drug-crazed hippy vets. That we let our hair grown in reaction to the military's silly rules (we had learned in Vietnam that after enough days in the field, hair got long and didn't interfere with the job), and that drug use was, for many of us, one symptom of the disease of the Vietnam experience, these truths didn't matter. Worse than just being drug-crazed hippies, we were dangerous and threatening, planning, according to the indictment of VVAW's Gainesville 8 (and, by extension, the whole organization) to disrupt by violence the Republican convention.

Since vets from Vietnam were not joiners, for the most part (we had joined on thing once and that got us to Vietnam in the first place), the next image foisted on the American people was the vet as loner. And, as a loner, he tended to go beserk. For years we worried each time we picked up a newspaper that headlined an act of violence, because somewhere in the story—usually in the first line—there would be a Vietnam vet. Vet holds hostages. Vet goes beserk—kills family. Vet turns sniper—kills 31. And on and on.

Still, the power structure hoped people would believe that vets had nothing worth saying about the war that did, in fact, drive some of us crazy. By lumping all vets together the powers that be could minimize the effect of what any vet's perception was concerning what had happened to him or her any way. And who can say how many vets, already balancing uneasily on the edge of reality, got their final push over the edge from stories that made all vets seem crazy.

The vet myth had moved from groups of vets to stories about individual's vets; the next stop was nothing—the disappeared vet. Neglect was the key; don't talk about them and maybe they'll go away. Sweep them under a rug, press down hard on the rug, and they will disappear and take their war with them. It was a time when the government seed to believe if people would only forget Vietnam then the government could get on about its important business of invasions, occupations, overthrows of unfriendly governments, etc.

But with events like Agent Orange, with the maturing of many Vietnam vets into seats of power, and with the work of many vets themselves, today's vet image is no longer neglect. Check your newspaper, especially around Vets Day or Memorial Day and you'll find the new vet—a weeping vet. "Vet remembers lost comrades," the caption will say. Weeping is an act that binds wounds; it shows we've come to grips with our grief and with the problems, that, once again, we've put the war behind us. Or so they would like us to believe.

The weeping vet fits, too, with half of VVAW's Memorial Day message: Remember the Dead.

And the living?

The answer to the vet images and the vet myths, to the children prowling their jungle school yards in camouflaged fatigues; to the recruiting ads that hope to reap the harvest of American youth to fight their wars, the answer to all of this is truth. Just simple truth. To understand that a 13-year-old child may be the enemy who wanted to kills us in Vietnam—that the truth stands far above any Rambo-type vision of Russian evildoers pulling all the strings. The agony of the vet whose shrapnel would still pulses when the weather is damp is a fine antidote to the recruiter's poisonous message.

Yes, there was a little rush of adrenalin at the moment we thought we were just about dead, but there was also dirt and leeches and weariness and blood and men who lost fingers and feet and eyes and balls, and there was incredible boredom. There are better ways to get the rush of adrenalin.

If we learned anything from the Vietnam experience, it is that the war was stupid: Looking back it made the situation in Vietnam worse than before we started. And for that American youth died—over 58,000 there and more to come.

There were heroic acts in Vietnam—many of them, but it was far from a heroic war. And we have to make sure it is not a repeated war. Once was one too time too many. Again could only worse.

—Pete Zastrow
VVAW National Office