-- Luke, I'll let you read the exchanges:
Rightwing prowar vet: Steve, you are not only dead wrong, you wrong a fairly large group of very good people. For your information, I was discharged from the US Army on Christmas Eve, 1970. Flying home I had a lay-over in New Orleans, La. Because I flew home in uniform as I walked down the concourse I was spat on by a young beauty of dubious intelligence and called a "Baby Killer." This, and I never went to Vietnam. So, take your myth about myths of vulgarity towards returning (and some who never left) and shove it buster.
Me: Interesting, a soldier well trained in the art of self defense is 'spat upon' by a 'beauty' [Jerry Lembcke notes that it is almost always a woman the prowar vets claim to have been spat upon]. In an airport in the heart of the most conservative and pro-military section of the USA, GM was 'spat on' and 1) he chooses to do nothing even though he has been assaulted and 2) no one around him does anything nor does he seek out a guard or police officer to arrest this 'beauty' [maybe she was a sprinter? bionic woman, uncatchable in pursuit?]. Jerry Lembcke,a Vietnam vet, who has been a guest on Marc's program no less, has written an outstanding book called the "Spitting Image", which recounts how this myth only became 'recalled' in the runup to the Gulf War 1 period.
The myth has its origins in earlier similar myths of woman spitting on soldiers returning from lost wars in Germany after WW 1 and French soldiers returning from colonial adventures in Algeria.
Here's a story on the latest version of the myth, with Iraq bound soldiers being the latest "victims"
http://www.mountainx.com/news/2003/0319troops.php
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Rightwing prowar "vet" 2: it is not a myth and serious critical thinking people look behind the motives of those who make such claims based on Newspaper research alone. I saw it happen to others and had it happen to me. One example: When I left for Thailand (USAF) we had to run a gauntlet of jerring 'flower children'. They were especially hard on the Army guys ahead of us (in full gear) going on a different plane to 'Nam. If I had known this was going to be challenged I would have photographed it and documented it at the time, since 35 years later some details get soft, especially when no one brought it up till now. I am sure other veterans have similar memories.
Me: they also searched out police reports from the time, claims made by prowar groups at the time, etc. your story sounds a lot like the other myths that float around on the web, again a very unusual phenomenon, WHOLE GROUPS of army grunts trained in the art of self defense and warfare didn't react to the 'hoards of hippies'. hippies were pacifists into drugs and free sex, the LEAST likely persons to dare to spit at a soldier who could easily defend himself. And hippies didn't get near soldiers on military bases, especially ones in countries like Thailand that had no room for basic forms of democratic dissent, forget assaulting soldiers.
etc. etc.