The Spitting Image

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The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory and the Legacy of Vietnam is a 1998 book by Vietnam veteran Jerry Lembcke, which argues that the common claim that American soldiers were spat upon and insulted by anti-war protesters, upon returning home from the Vietnam War is little more than an urban legend and that posttraumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, was more political invention rather than any real mental health affliction.

One of Lembcke's conclusion in Spitting Image claims is that there was not even a single media report to support the claims. Lembcke claims that the reported "spitting on soldiers" was a mythical projection of those who felt "spat-upon" and was meant to discredit future antiwar activism. He suggests the image of pro-war antipathy against anti-war protestors helped contribute to the image. Lembcke argues that memories of being verbally and physically assaulted by anti-war protesters were largely socially constructed, noting that not even one case could be documented.

However, Lembcke's account has been disputed, and some news accounts that mention spitting do exist. A December 27, 1971, television report on CBS Evening News, for example, told of a returning veteran named Delmar Pickett, who said he was spat on in Seattle. ^[1] And Bob Greene's 1989 book Homecoming contains 63 accounts of spitting.^[2] Lembcke has acknowledged that there likely were some incidents of actual spitting, but has found Greene's accounts to "have elements of such exaggeration that one has to question the veracity of the entire account." He also points out that there were several newspaper accounts of pro-war demonstrators spitting on anti-war demonstrators, and suggests that these accounts may have been reinterpreted over the years.[3]

Spitting Image asserts that the claims of abuse of soldiers only became ingrained in the American consciousness some years after the war had come to a close; Lembcke attributes its growth to films relating to Vietnam, notably Rambo. He says that these claims were used by President George H. W. Bush as a way to help sell the Gulf War to the American people. Lembcke believes that the "myth" is involved in helping to promote the yellow ribbon campaign; it has led some to think that for one to support troops, one must therefore also support the war, because it ties together the ideas of anti-war sentiment and anti-troop sentiment.

Lembcke also argued in Spitting Image, that PTSD was a political invention, designed to castigate returning Veterans and mentally unbalanced. This was done, according to Lembcke, as another way to discredit veterans in the Anti-war movement.

A persistent criticism leveled against those who protested the United States's involvement in the Vietnam War is the complaint that protesters spat upon and otherwise derided returning soldiers, calling them "baby-killers", etc. Lembcke says he found no evidence to suggest this ever happened, and suggests it may have come in part from the common retort made by protestors to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, "Hey hey LBJ, how many kids did you kill today?"

Spitting Image contrasts with author and columnist Bob Greene's book Homecoming in which Greene interviews several dozen Vietnam veterans and focuses on firsthand accounts of mistreatment from anti-war protestors.

1 Review of Jerry Lembcke's book
2 Cinematic depiction of veterans' experiences
3 References
4 See also

[edit] Review of Jerry Lembcke's book

A Los Angeles Times book reviewer wrote:

"The image is ingrained: A Vietnam veteran, arriving home from the war, gets off a plane only to be greeted by an angry mob of antiwar protesters yelling, 'Murderer!' and 'Baby killer!' Then out of the crowd comes someone who spits in the veteran's face. The only problem, according to Jerry Lembcke, is that no such incident has ever been documented. It is instead, says Lembcke, a kind of urban myth that reflects our lingering national confusion over the war." ISBN 0-8147-5147-4

[edit] Cinematic depiction of veterans' experiences

The notion of soldiers being spat upon was featured in a number of American movies, including the Rambo series. According to the Digital History Project at the University of Houston:

In First Blood (1982), John Rambo captured the pain of the returning veterans: "It wasn't my war--you asked me, I didn't ask you...and I did what I had to do to win....Then I came back to the world and I see all those maggots at the airport, protesting me, spitting on me, calling me a baby-killer...." [4]

The 1976 film Tracks features a fictional anti-war activist who spits on his opponents.

In the film Forrest Gump, a protester calls Forrest (in uniform) a baby-killer.