These are some unspoken, suppressed, resentful memories and self-reflection on my past Vietnam War experience at a university- my voice, my feelings, and perhaps those of others who have been long silent, about how university people blindly and selfishly treated returning veterans of that War.
I grew up in awe of WWII veterans and their sacrifices, learning the values of duty, honor, and country from them, my teachers, and from the culture of the time in Indiana. I came to believe it was my duty to serve when my country called and did so, putting my life on the line. I volunteered for ROTC in 1965, and in 1968 volunteered and was decorated for service in Vietnam. My life from 1967 to 1969 in the Army was focused on order, discipline, consistency, and most of all respect for those serving in the Vietnam War. I lost two years in time as my attention was on duty, not societal changes. While I had a painful Vietnam homecoming at the San Francisco Airport and experienced a Vietnam victory parade confrontation later at Ft. Lewis, Washington, I still expected when I got home to Indiana my service would be acknowledged and appreciated.
The Army discharged me on August 1, 1969, and I started classes at Indiana University Law School in Bloomington, Indiana ten days later. What happened next was re-entry to a society that had changed a lot from the one I had left in 1967.
The combination of race, gender, and Vietnam War confrontation in 1969 was a lethal cocktail that pulled American society apart at the seams. I felt a sense of confusion, chaos, and anxiety that the values I knew growing up were fraying under enormous pressure. Values like duty, honor, and country were under attack, particularly on the IU campus.
I was confused about a university community that failed Vietnam veterans; a university community that unfairly and wrongly demeaned, scorned, and received me without acknowledgment making me feel, not pride, but hostility. I envied WWII veterans whose war service was acknowledged with hero status gratitude and parades on their re-entry to society. I fought in a war that had by 1969 become very unpopular. The Vietnam War was now being fought without unity and support from a large segment of the home population, most predominantly the universities.
My immediate reaction to campus life was that many student protestors made no distinction between the war and those who fought it, regarding me as a ready and willing killer or an ignorant dupe. While generally the campus reaction to my war experience was indifference, some of the protestors were very angry about my Vietnam service and I felt their hostility so I kept my wartime experiences to myself. No one asked what happened or what it was like. I was alone, by myself, with no one to hear or share my experience with. I had no inclination to seek out other veterans and the university offered no basic counseling or human support. I just seemed to slip back unobtrusively into college life and those in my classes and on campus scarely felt my presence. Trying to find my place in the world as a civilian I was before I left and changing back for me meant hiding I was a veteran. I got no haircut for nine months and had trouble getting dates. Girls seemed uncomfortable around me- kind of stay away, don’t contaminate me with whatever you’ve brought back from Vietnam. I was learning to feel numb about my military experience and suspend my feelings in general.
In the spring of 1970, the military “invaded” Cambodia, and campus Anti-Vietnam War protests immediately went white hot. As a Vietnam veteran, my initial reaction to the invasion was yes, payback, we now get to win. I knew some of the units involved in the incursion and the frustrations we all had allowing the North Vietnamese soldiers’ sanctuary to attack us at will from Cambodia with no fear of our chasing them over the border.
I remember at the time being in a criminal law class and the professor never showing up as he was assisting and counseling student protestors being arrested. I was angry at the professor because he assumed he spoke for me (never apologized for missing class, I felt he represented an institutional indifference or hostility toward me). I was angry at the protesters because most could not understand what the war was like because they had not been to Vietnam and I resented them more because I viewed them as privileged and selfish. I had volunteered for service and risked my life in Vietnam in 1968 and my Army unit troops had come from poor or working-class backgrounds and the protestors came from middle or upper class families. These middle-class and above guys that could go to college had something called a 2-S deferment. They didn’t have to get drafted and the guys that didn’t have that deferment got drafted. No deferment meant the possibility of becoming part of a shooting war and the growing casualties from that war. Furthermore, when the draft ended in 1972, I noticed fervent campus interest in anti-war protest almost dissolved and never returned. Once the draft disappeared so did the protests. Protesters went on with their lives, and Vietnam veterans suffered unfair treatment for the rest of their lives. I buried my feelings about Vietnam and my service there as well as the hurt from a hostile university community for the next 50 years.
About this time in 1970, the law school and business school announced a joint four-year law/MBA degree program to begin in the fall of 1970. With Vietnam-related experiences now buried, I threw myself wholeheartedly into a career. I was one of 5 law students accepted in the program and 2 of us completed it. I received my joint MBA/law degree in June 1973 and accepted a position in the Monsanto Company law department but never got my resentment feelings toward the university community out until now. It feels like closure.
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