Reply #162: Don't I know it

[pinboy3niner]

After I was wounded in VN, I spent 18 months being treated in an army hospital in San Francisco. As I recovered, I had occasion to leave the hospital on pass or convalescent leave.

On my very first pass from the hospital, wearing my uniform--the only clothing I had--I was accosted on a bus by a woman who called me "baby-killer" and a lot of other names. I'd lost half my jaw and teeth, and had a baseball-sized hole in my shoulder, and I was being called those names. I was outraged--but not so much for myself. I could only think of my men, who were still there, still struggling to survive. Counting the days until their "freedom bird" came to take them home. Those good, good men who had volunteered--unanimously--to rappel into a hot firefight to save a wounded officer who was a friend of mine.

Later, studying at a supposedly conservative school--USC--I was belittled and called "stupid" by two profs for going to serve in VN. This was in front of 400 students in an introductory IR class held in a large auditoreum. The funny thing was that I had no memory of that humiliating experience until years later, when I talked to an old friend with whom I had had dinner that very same night. It wasn't until she recounted the story I had told her at the time that my memory of the incident returned.

It took some years, but I forgave that woman, my accoster, long ago. It was the passion of the times, and some in the antiwar movement made the mistake, in their passion, of blaming the troops who were marching off to their own destruction. So, no, I don't blame them. They cared, and tried to make a difference, and tried to save us.

Harder to understand are the revisionists who insist that leftists never spit on veterans, never treated them badly, that that never happened. They may not have seen it happening (much of it was on the west coast, especially at SFO Airport), but they are very much invested in denying the abuses that occurred, and in portraying the antiwar movement as absolutely pure.

As a leftist myself, and antiwar, and on the supposedly truth-based, reality-based side, I acknowledge the truth that mistakes were made, not the least of which was the abuse of the troops by some minority of the movement. It was, like I said, the passion of the times. I've forgiven and forgotten. I wish everyone would.