The NY Times is wrong again. I was spat upon.

 

"The reporter was asking about accounts that soldiers returning from Vietnam had been spat on by antiwar activists. I had told her the stories were not true. I told her that, on the contrary, opponents of the war had actually tried to recruit returning veterans. I told her about a 1971 Harris Poll survey that found that 99 percent of veterans said their reception from friends and family had been friendly, and 94 percent said their reception from age-group peers, the population most likely to have included the spitters, was friendly.

A follow-up poll, conducted in 1979 for the Veterans Administration (now the Department of Veterans Affairs), reported that former antiwar activists had warmer feelings toward Vietnam veterans than toward congressional leaders or even their erstwhile fellow travelers in the movement."   NY Times opinion piece

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Someone wrote to tell me that the NY times had published this piece.  The author attempts to make the case that the pro-communist anti-war movement was warmly welcoming to soldiers coming back from the war in VN and that the stories of anti-war people spitting on soldiers and otherwise treating soldiers poorly are  "urban myths."

From my point of view this revised narrative of that period has a basic flaw.  I WAS SPAT UPON in March, 1968 while transiting San Francisco International Airport en route to Travis AFB to board the trans-Pacific airlift en route to Vietnam.  I was in uniform and waiting for the bus when a woman got out of her car and walked across the parking lot.  She chose to spit on my chest rather than on a sergeant standing next to me so perhaps she had a thing for officers.  I asked if the people at her house had a roster to schedule spitting on soldiers.  She said they did.  Perhaps they sent only women to do this.

I wrote to the NY Times yesterday to tell this story in comment on their article.  They did not publish my comment.  There are 217 comments on the article.

IMO the left is engaged in editing the narrative of that time so as to absolve itself of the ugliness of its own actions.  pl  

https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/13/opinion/myth-spitting-vietnam-protester.html?rref=collection%2Fsectioncollection%2Fopinion&action=click&contentCollection=opinion&region=stream&module=stream_unit&version=latest&contentPlacement=7&pgtype=sectionfront

Comments

[LondonBob]

Yes, I assume most deaths were infantry in combat and deaths would be evenly distributed across volunteers, namely West Virginians didn't just happen to be ambushed a lot. So I expect that is a good approximation.

I just don't think it shows what Mike thinks it does. The average is 29.8, sure Virginia, Louisiana, Mississippi and Florida are below it, but only Louisiana is notably so.

I am also think defining the south as only those states that attempted to secede is too narrow. Of course that is subjective.

https://jaymans.wordpress.com/2013/08/14/maps-of-the-american-nations/

[LondonBob]

Actually in that link I provide to 'Maps of American Nations' he shows a breakdown of enlistment by region and a discussion of it.

The South and the Far West are over represented.

[turcopolier]

LondonBob

Yes, the difference between a rural western accident and a Southern accent are often hard to detect. pl

[lally]

The West is also misrepresented; "El Norte" areas are labeled "Mexican" rather than Conquistdor Spanish>Hispanic which they historically and are from the beginning. In addition, the map notes the Native American population as encompassing in the main, Navajo country with another swath of a completely, unrelated group along Arizona"s southern border. The Pueblo peoples at the core of the region are missing.

Why does this matter?

Living and learning that region one is struck by how both groups honor their warrior traditions. The causes have changed but the pride in serving in defense of "the community" weave strong and deep throughout the respective cultures.

The greater SW is rather a blood-soaked place.

[Luther Blissett]

I looked into the question a few years ago. Spitting happened.

One point rarely mention is that throughout history many cultures have consider soldiers returning from battle to be 'polluted' by the bloodshed. Often there is some sort of purification ritual to be done before they are allowed back into the agora. Marching an army through the two halves of a bi-sected dog (or POW...) was one method to absorb off their pollution. See Robert Parker's Miasma (1983).

Uncleansed blood-shedders are considered disgusting/polluted and spitting is a primal evolutionary reaction to disgust. Spitting is often considered to have magical warding power.

You can add all the sociological/political dimesions you want onto this basis.