Vietnam Remembered

Veteran Narratives and the Collective Memory of the Vietnam War

“…43 Another memoirist, Frederick Downs, grew up on a farm in Indiana, and only completed a couple years of college before he enlisted in the Army; but he also made it through OCS and became an officer. 44 Although the great majority of authors were not from truly wealthy backgrounds, most nevertheless apparently came from the middle class. The disproportionately large number of memoirists with college degrees is one indication of this, 45 but many veterans also provide other clues in descriptions of their pre-Vietnam lives.…”

“…Kovic's memoir nevertheless portrays his pre-war life as an 43 Tobias Wolff, In Pharoah's Army: Memories of the Lost War (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1994), 42-58. 44 Frederick Downs, The Killing Zone: My Life in the Vietnam War (New York: WW Norton & Company, 1978), 15, 29, 230. 45 Appy, Working-Class War, [25][26][45][46].…”

“…assigned to a burial detail was "overwhelmed" when it occurred to him that his fellow soldiers were all Caucasians, but the corpses all "looked like [him]." 44 Others, such as a Chicano veteran who was told by a Vietnamese child that the two of them looked the "same," were made aware of these similarities by the Vietnamese. 45 More often, nonwhite troops discovered, whether they agreed or not, that white soldiers thought they looked Vietnamese.…”

“…A 1978 Veteran's Administration study found that almost 50 percent of surveyed black veterans held positive views of the Vietnamese, while a mere 9 percent held negative views. In contrast, over 30 percent of white veterans 44 Carina A. Del Rosario, ed., A Different Battle: Stories of Asian Pacific American Veterans (Seattle, WA: Wing Luke Asian Museum, 1999), 60. 45 Ybarra, Vietnam Veteranos, 69.…”

“…In clarifying his remarks, the senator said that he was not "maligning the brave young Americans in Vietnam," but warning the nation of the impact GIs "behaving in the way that is to be expected of men at war" might have on a "fragile Asian society." 44 This attitude was not only prevalent in the military and the media during the war, it was also evident in how veterans' memoirs portray prostitution. Memoirs often contain extended anecdotes about prostitution that serve as humorous breaks in books otherwise dominated by descriptions of death and destruction.…”