Considering the PR it gets,you'd think there'd be one picture...but there isn't.

You have some recovered memories which are not so reliable.

I reviewed Lembcke's book when it first came out, so I guess I have an unfair advantage: I read the book and thought about it (not that all reviewers do, but that's the way I review books).

Of all the points he makes, 5 are worth noting as central to showing why such stories are highly dubious, at best:

(1) No such stories appeared contemporaneously in the press.  Given how overheated emotions were about Vietnam, and what a sensational gesture such spitting incidents would be, it is extremely unlikely that any such incidents occured--and virtually impossible that they were in any way commonplace.

(2) However, the stories did become commonplace several years after the fact--and these newly-surfaced stories make sense in terms of a process of historical revisionism, which Lembcke (himself a Vietnam Vet) shows to have been occurring at the time.

(3) A large number of such stories have been shown to contain demonstrably false elements.  This doesn't mean that all such stories are false.  But given the fact that demonstrably false stories are passionately believed, it casts serious doubt on all such stories, which are supported by nothing more substantial than the false ones.

(4) As a significant historical backdrop, anti-war protesters had a strong, powerful bond with Vietnam Vets.  From around 1970 on, most anti-war marches were lead by Vietnam Vets, many of whom were members of Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW).  VVAW was Richard Nixon's worst nightmare, and Lembcke talks about Nixon's efforts to disappear them from public awareness.  The Spitting Myth continues that revisionist work to this day.

(In fact, though Lembcke doesn't say this, a very good case can be made that the GI anti-war movement was the crucial factor in ending the war.  To a large extent, the Army simply refused to keep fighting.  And when Nixon tried replacing the Army with air power, it wasn't long before Air Force Captains were refusing to fly missions they regarded as violations of international law.)

(5) While the stories often contained factually impossible elements, they also often contained symbolically rich elements--inclusing the spitting itself.  These elements point to psychological over-determination in the shaping of the narratives, as opposed to naturalistic stories.

Finally, three observations of my own:

(1) Being spat on by "hippies," even if it happened, is not the same as being spat on by protesters.  Media images notwithstanding, the large majority of hippies were apolitical, and large majority of protesters were not hippies.  So being spat on by hippies proves nothing.

(2) In fact, straights spat on hippies all the time.  This is hardly surprising since spitting on social outcasts is a common cross-cultural practice.  The fact that hippies were voluntary outcasts would only make them more despicable to some.  OTOH, hippies almost never spat on straights, except sometimes when spat on first. So even stories about hippies spitting are most likely examples of projection.

(3) The folks who really spat on the returning vets were patriotic middle Americans who wanted nothing to do with the war, because of the cognitive dissonance involved.  It was figurative, not literal--they didn't spit with saliva, but they wanted nothing to do with returning vets.

At age 19-21 in particular, I hitch-hiked across country numerous times.  Again and again I got picked up by Vietnam Vets--particularly in rural, small-town America--who just wanted someone they could talk to about their experiences in Vietnam.  "I can't talk to anyone here about it," they would tell me, "No one wants to hear about Nam."  It was particularly painful for those who said "My dad served in WWII, and I can't talk to him.  He just wouldn't understand.  It was nothing like WWII."

In fact, I remember another sort of related incident almost as clearly as if it happened yesterday.  I was in Ft. Lauderdale on July 4, 1970, and one of the long-haired kids I knew there was a Vietnam vet.  There was a VFW picnic in the park there, and he went over just to get a hot dog, and maybe a little validation for what he'd been through.  Well, of course they weren't too pleased to see a long-hair coming over, but he took out his discharge papers and his dog tags to show them--to no avail.  They had absolutely no interest in looking at them.  He was a "dirty fucking hippie," and so he couldn't be one of them, even though he'd only been back from Nam for a few months.

Boy, was he bitter.

Well, of course, I know that memory is a very tricky business.  Why should you trust my memory, and not trust those who claim that they were spit on.  The short answer is, you shouldn't.  But there are two things worth considering: (1) My memories aren't stylized, with mythic elements in them (that young long-haired vet in the park wasn't spat on, just turned away) and (2) They're not offered as proof, but merely as corroboration of other arguments that stand on their own.  So you can ignore them, and it does no real damage to my case.

One final point--about the unreliability of memory (as if you didn't already know, from the fact that eyewitness testimony is so unreliable).  Decades ago, my sister and I used to argue vociferously about things that one or the other of us remembered happening when we were together, which the other one flat-out denied ever happened.

Then, based on a dream she had, we invented a way out.  Whenever she'd remember something that I was positive never happened, we'd say, "Oh, that must have been Kevin who was there." (One of the characters from her dream.)  And whenver I'd remember something that she was positive never happened, we'd say, "Oh, that must have been Kevina who was there." (The other character from the dream.)

I've known lots of people who argue over whether someting happened or not (whether it was someone making a single remark, or a whole scene being played out). It's a commonplace occurance. My sister and I are the only ones I know who have a simple way to deal with this.  Memory is just too damn slippery, and it's foolish to get upset over memories that don't match.

But here's the thing: when we used to argue, we'd each become more and more convinced we were right, and the memories would become extremely vivid in the process.  Once we stopped arguing--with the help of Kevin and Kevina--that no longer happened.  It was the energy of arguing, of attaching so much importance, which gave the memories a solidity and vividness much greater than they would have had if no one had challenged them.

At least, that's how I remember it used to be.

A few points --

Per one of my blog readers, there are two recorded (one on film) instances of civilians spitting on Vietnam Vets...

One happened during the VVAW's "March to Valley Forge" when a group of local Veteran of Foreign Wars members tried to disrupt the march by shouting curses and throwing objects at the passing Vietnam Vets. This episode was captured on film and is part of a documentary called "Distant Sons: Vietnam Remembered," that you can read about here:

http://www.williambowles.info/gispecial/ 2005/gi_3C36A.pdf

My reader says the VFW counterprotest had been organized by Chuck Colson, one of Nixon's staffers.

The other spitting incident involved delegates to the Republican National Convention in Miami in `72...The delegates (including several matronly women) reviled and spat at Ron Kovic and two other wheelchair-bound Vets who had been invited by California Congressman (and Korean War Marine Vet) Pete McCloskey to attend the convention. The scene was described by Hunter Thompson in Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail, my reader says.

I remember back in the day a lot of VFW chapters refused to admit Vietnam vets for a time because the WWII guys thought Vietnam vets were drug-addled slackers who had lost the war. So much for supporting the troops.

Regarding false memories: I have come to realize that false memories are very common and indistinguishable from real memories. Probably most of us have a few, and probably most of them are harmless. But for this reason you can't completely trust stories "remembered" years later, unless the individual has solid documentation he told the same story at around the time the alleged incident happened. The memory may be true, but there's no way to know without some corroborating documentation, preferably something written or recorded at the time.

Regarding Jerry Lembcke, I haven't read the book, but I have read some articles he's written, and my impression is that most of his research involved a particular spitting narrative -- veterans being spat on by protesters just as they returned from Vietnam, often in commercial airports. And I agree with Lembcke that these stories are highly suspect. In particular, stories about protesters lined up in commercial airports waiting to spit on soldiers are absurd, for a lot of reasons. Mainly, there was no regularly scheduled disembarking of Vietnam veterans at any commercial airport. Protesters would have had to hang out in commercial airports all day long just to catch the occasional one or two enlisted men flying into that airport that day. Protesters just didn't do that.

There were a great many incidents of antiwar protesters and soldiers or police squaring off and getting hostile, and I have no doubt spit could have been flying in both directions during those encounters. But as far as soldiers being spat on randomly by "hippies" as they were just walking along in uniform, I'd be astonished if there were more than a couple dozen such episodes during the entire decade of 1965-1975. If any.