They just hated rara.

What surprised me was the amount of pro Vietnam violence. It doesn't exist in public consciousness so I was shocked when reading Nixonland that a couple of pacifists were killed and there was a lot of street violence against active protesters and people who were passively against the war when the US started getting into the war in a big way. The pro Vietnam violence died down as the war become more and more unpopular though.

But they were his neighbours!

Whatever bro. I was just pointing out that stuff happened, no I didn't stop and take a picture to verify it as Fly would only approve. There is a reason people after serving a couple of months were permitted to not wear the uniform when not on base.

It's a pretty intriguing study in mass psychology that the retconned stories make the victims of domestic political violence Vietnam vets rather than protesters after time and retellings.

Probably not though. No one can prove a negative. But there's basically zero published reports, police reports, or any contemporaneous evidence of vets being spit on. Just word of mouth tales. That's it. Most of them don't show up in books, magazines, and newspapers until the 1980s.

I didn't say that. I was just relaying my personal experience. Obviously when I got away from the areas around the base the experiences were different.

It was official policy? Then you won’t have a problem providing a citation then

Also, how would the public know whether a serviceman were new or had served a couple months?

rara watches Born on the 4th too much.

very much like vandalism at a muslim home in trump's america, it probably happened but it wasn't widespread like some would have you believe.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hard_Hat_Riot

It's on full display in this thread my vets don't come forward with past treatment.

Snarky forum posters?

Yes it did. My next door neighbor had his garage spray painted with "baby killer" and other things. I remember, because I helped my Dad and the neighbor clean it off when I was around 12. This is 1975ish. It could've been kids messing around, who knows? But it happened.

And I remember Memorial Day Parades in the 70s where Vietnam Vets were booed and had things thrown at them. My town always had a Memorial Day Parade to kick off summer. It was a big deal. In 1976 or 77, the town decided not to have the Vietnam Vets march that year because of the problem it caused. Kids wrote papers in class about it. It was controversial. How do I know? I was there.

So, either you're wrong, or I'm a liar and/or misremembering a big chunk of my childhood. Which do you think it is?

I'm not going full "pics or it didn't happen", but I posted earlier about an interview of a historian talking about how the first reports of spitting on veteran's faces when they returned was first reported in the 90s and there were just a couple reports of "baby killer" earlier and the first of those was in 1976.

So, was your memory first hand? We're you older than, say 12, when you first heard it or even saw it?

It's something that basically became common knowledge without having been anything like a common occurance - at least that's my feeling based on what I've heard about it up to this point.

I'm not saying this treatment was widespread, but it DID happen because I saw it. Is it possible I remember "baby killer" on the garage wrong? I guess. We mix memories all the time. But whatever was on the garage was not nice. I still remember it being "baby killer," though. <shrug>

So this answers most of my questions. Like I said the report about "baby killer" did date back to around then, so it's not a contradiction and it's not right when soldiers were returning, but at least a year or two later and more than that for most.

I'm not saying I don't trust your memories as they seem to be more than just impressions, but I will say that I don't trust my memories from when I was 12 very much.

I know, I saw that - it's interesting. But I remember this like anything else I remember! I'm going to call my Dad and ask him if he remembers it.

lol you guys are making me think my memories are not reliable, thanks!

I do know I can't be misremembering the Memorial Day Parade controversy though, that happened.

Again, you keep answering my posts while I'm typing another. Also maybe there was something personal involved between the vandal and victim here.

Elaborate ruse still persists to this day: https://cherrieswriter.wordpress.com...tnam-veterans/

That's dedication. They even got Amazon to play along: https://www.amazon.com/Homecoming-Wh...coming+vietnam

(It's a book with excerpts from letters of vets who where poorly treated when they came home, probably not enough evidence though...)

Booing and throwing stuff at a parade is something that is both very believable and also something where you can easily see just a few people doing it being made out to be much much much more widespread.

The anti-anti-Vietnam protests were brutal. Check out the Hard Hat Riot which was a counter-"protest" (more of an attack) of a rally in commemoration of the kids killed in Kent State four days earlier.

Almost as intriguing as why people would think the mistreatment of the Vets was a myth. First time we had soldiers coming home from an unpopular war that was widely protested to a country still dealing with the transition from the conservativeness of the 50's and early 60's to the wackiness of the late 60's and 70's. Inconceivable that people would conflate the hate of the war with the soldiers forced to fight it...

Treating returning veterans or anti-war protesters that way is equally wrong.

You know who else gets baby killer graffiti on their property? Pro-choice people. Google even has pictures.