I think some of those veterans felt that this was an affront to their service, and felt as if they had been figuratively spat upon; for some of the more literally inclined this segued into the notion that they were literally spat upon. Currently, the patient is being quarantined at Hanoi’s Hospital of Tropical Diseases for observation and treatment. 2. By Jim Lindgren on February 8, 2007 5:02 am. The 30-year-old patient of Thai Binh province is a sailor on board Nippon Maru cargo ship. But a simple search on Google will return numerous "documented" stories of Vietnam veterans being spit upon when they returned from war. The persistence of spat-upon Vietnam veteran stories suggests that they continue to fill a need in American culture. Lembcke also discovered something even more remarkable. Reynolds’ account, by the way, is substantially corroborated by the FBI’s file on the VVAW. Of course, I know this score to be wrong. STORIES ABOUT spat-upon Vietnam veterans are like mercury: Smash one and six more appear. There were students who were opposed to the war, but afraid to speak out because of what they had heard about the antiwar movement and veterans during the Vietnam War era. Does being thrown out of class, yelled at, being called a baby killer count? Vietnam veterans were blamed for the war and the failure of the war to meet its objectives. I wanted to start a new life. I made a mistake. He notes that soldiers returning from unsuccessful overseas wars in many countries … To make his case, he politely but ... Lembcke also found no credible evidence of soldiers being spat on, or veterans being confronted at airports; like Dapin, he found that the first allegations of such incidents only surfaced long after the war had ended. Vietnam veteran, antiwar activist and sociologist Jerry Lembcke began researching the stories of spat-upon veterans when they were spreading like wildfire during the buildup to the first Gulf war. On the one hand there was a lot in the news in the papers about the vets antiwar movement at the time, which I know now just from researching it. Maybe it happened; it just didn’t happen to me or anyone I served with. If I were the only one to be spat upon, the score would be: not spat upon, 1,999,999, spat upon, 1. Many 1967-72 Spitting Incidents Are Documented in the Press. There are still millions alive today who lived it, both as soldiers, or as protesters. Its genesis was a controversial newspaper column of 20 July 1987 in which Chicago Tribune syndicated columnist Bob Greene asked whether there was any truth to the folklore that Vietnam veterans had been spat upon when they returned from the war zone. Back then veterans … I came home from Vietnam in the summer. The veterans in question were anti-war protesters and the alleged culprit was a presumably “patriotic” spectator. Hundreds of Vietnam-era veterans have publicly claimed in recent decades that they were spat on by citizens or anti-war protesters because of their military status, either before they went to Vietnam, when they were on leave, or after their returned from overseas. A soldier, fresh from Vietnam duty, wearing his uniform, gets off the plane at an American airport, where he is spat upon by "hippies." That was not the case after Vietnam. The author goes a long way to document that there exists no documented cases on period film or literature that it occurred. In historical terms, it is still too “fresh.” Too close to us. It's built on the image of veterans being double-crossed by their government or by people on the home front, and a prime example is the myth of returning vets being spat upon by anti-war protesters. 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