As a
Vietnam era veteran, my Memorial Day reflections center more on the civilian
reaction to me than on my experiences in the US Air Force as a Systems Analyst
Officer.
First,
let me say that I found my service itself very rewarding. I learned to get along with a wide variety of
people that I never would have met in any other walk of life. I’ll never forget the response of a really
smart sergeant I was training to program computers. I asked him how he got into the
military. He said, “Well, sir, the judge
gave me a choice.” His other option was
jail.
The
officers I served under were generally very professional, but did not behave in
the manner civilians imagine that military officers behave. I had been working on a project which
included a lot of late night and weekend testing as well as quite a few 60 hour
weeks. The Lt. Colonel I worked for was
concerned I had pushed myself too hard.
So he explained to me that he wanted me to take two weeks off. He told me he would let me do this with
something called “basket leave.” The way
it worked was they would prepare leave papers but not submit them, instead
leaving them in the OUT basket. If
something happened, like a recall that required my presence or if I was in a
car accident that had to be reported, they would submit the leave
paperwork. If I came back on time and
nothing happened, they would throw out the leave papers and I wouldn’t be
charged with leave.
There were
other incidents that were unexpected. I
was working for another Lt. Colonel when I found a written official order on my
desk, signed by the Lt. Colonel. It said
that while our sergeant was on leave, I was appointed second alternate coffee
maker. I found out that the sergeant had
been typing it up as a joke when the boss walked in. The boss saw it and told the sergeant he
would sign it himself, instead of having the sergeant signing it “For the
Commander.” This same officer heard that
I played Avalon Hill war games. He told
me his son also played them and thought he was invincible. He asked me to come
over to his house some weekend to teach the kid a lesson. After I did, he thanked me and said that his
son had needed to be taken down a peg.
Reactions
from the civilian community to me in uniform, in any place except the Deep
South, were almost uniformly hostile. I
was called a “trained killer” so many times that I developed a routine for
it. I would ask, “Do you really believe
I’m a trained killer?” They would say
yes. Then I would ask, “Why are you
pissing me off?”
The
irony of this belief in my killer status was really impressive. I fired a weapon in the military on exactly one occasion.. I was given a 38 caliber
revolver and shot 72 rounds at a target.
This qualified me on the official Air Force side arm, which was a
requirement for any officer. I never
handled another gun on active duty. I
shot more with the Boy Scouts than I did with the Air Force.
Due to
the televised Congressional testimony of John Kerry, who said war crimes by US
troops in Vietnam were common, most people assumed every military person was a
murderous psychopath. In addition, it was thought that participation in the
military indicated a deep character flaw in any individual. A popular slogan at the time was, “What if
they gave a war and nobody came?” Since
everyone was “Anti War,” the best way to stop the war was to harass the troops
so they wouldn’t go to war. While
wearing my ROTC uniform on campus, I had a lot of people spit at me.
As a
side note, did you ever wondered what the motivation of the Swift Boat Veterans
was for bad mouthing Kerry? His
testimony about how common war crimes were in Vietnam is the reason they did
it. I’m sure a lot of Nam Era veterans gladly
contributed for the ads. I don’t
remember if I did, but I sure thought about it.
Sometimes
this irrational fear worked in my favor.
My wife flipped somebody off in traffic in Phoenix, Arizona. He followed us into the parking lot where we
were going. When I got out of the car,
he started to yell at me. He was much
bigger than I was, but I was a military officer in uniform. As he yelled, I quietly said “Uh huh” a couple
of times while giving him what was called in the Air Force the “40 mission stare.” I was about 15 feet from the guy. He stopped yelling once he noticed the
uniform and it dawned on him who I was.
He visibly shrank back from me, got back into his car and drove off.
Even as
recently as 5 years ago, the remains of the negative view of Nam vets was still
around. I transferred into a new unit at
work. One of the guys in my new unit had
a chat with me at the end of the day. He
gingerly asked me if I was a Vietnam veteran.
I told him I was a Vietnam Era veteran, a programmer in the Air Force
who had never left the Continental US.
He told me that a fellow employee, who had been drafted into the Soviet
Army, was a little nervous about me. I
told him that I had no problem with Russian Army veterans. It seemed to be a relief for all concerned.
To be
fair, there were a few occasions when my veteran status was the source of
merely reasonable curiosity. In the mid
to late 70’s there was a big scandal about the over classification of secret documents. At a party, a guy I just met, who had
overheard I was a veteran, asked me if I had handled any classified
documents. I said yes. He asked if I thought they were correctly
classified. I told him they were the
exercise results for air defense units in the US, essentially how prepared they
were to do the job for real. He said he
was glad they were classified as Secret.
I am
glad that the view of veterans is so great now days. Even people who were not happy we invaded
Iraq took it out on President Bush and not the guys who did the fighting. This is the way it should have been for
Vietnam veterans. This is the way it
ought to be for veterans from now on.