MovieChat Forums > Hamburger Hill (1987) Discussion > Anti-Vietnam War protesters attacking in...

Anti-Vietnam War protesters attacking individual soldiers - real?

posted 14 years ago by guysmiley00
64 replies | jump to latest

While I understand that the main thrust of this film was not to make a political statement but to present as accurately as possible a portrait of the US combat soldier's experience of battle in Vietnam, I have to take issue with the political statements made in the film about anti-war protesters, particularly the one speech where a soldier relates a story about a man in his hometown getting calls from anti-war protesters telling him that they're glad his son was killed by the "patriotic peoples of Vietnam". There is also another line where a combat journalist tells a soldier that Senator Kennedy (I'm assuming they meant RFK, although it isn't specified in the film - and btw, can anyone confirm that "Senator Kennedy" made any such remarks?) said they have no chance of taking Hamburger Hill.

My understanding of anti-war activities in the US during Vietnam is that many of the stories of individual protesters attacking individual stories didn't begin to circulate until the mid-1980s, when conservative think-tanks established after the war to prevent another "loss of narrative" began to put about the idea that it was only weak support for the war at home that kept the US from succeeding in Vietnam. One example of this is the inability of anyone to come up with a documented example of the famous "protester spitting on a returning uniformed soldier" story.

I certainly don't doubt that anti-war individuals may have taken offensive personal actions - when you have such a large, heterogeneous group, it's hard to rule anything out absolutely. But my question remains - why include such clearly-vilifying and unconfirmed events in a movie meant to be relatively apolitical? And to what extent is the whole "stabbed in the back" narrative just a convenient excuse, made up by a conservative movement who could not accept the idea that the US military wasn't both angelic and invincible, and it was only the cowardly students and Democrats back home that kept Vietnam from being a total victory?

[–] Terrapin2212 10 years ago

This is exactly the kind of thing that Jeremiah Wright, Bill Ayers, Frank Marshall Davis, and Obama's other mentors would have done.

[–] 10 years ago

[deleted]

[–] movies789 9 years ago

You'll find these boards littered with third-hand anecdotal claims of abusive treatment of Vietnam veterans upon their return, including allegations of having been spat-upon and called baby-killers and the like. Please don't fall for this nonsense. There is ZERO supporting proof of any such incidents. Anyone claiming knowledge of someone else's experience is invariably citing vague details heard from someone who'd heard it from someone else, and their charges are laughably devoid of specifics. The few times I've spoken to someone claiming a first-hand experience with mistreatment, a few well-formed follow-up questions caused their stories to fold like a house of cards, and they slinked away much like today's stolen-valor slugs.

Remember - the people who greeted, hired, or otherwise interacted with returning vets weren't zombies shipped in from Mars for the purpose of conducting some sort of open season on vets. They were ordinary neighborhood Americans, just like you. In fact, depending on your age (if you were alive at the time), they WERE you - you, your brothers, sisters, parents, friends, and neighbors. Regular, normal people. If you think badly of them, you're automatically thinking badly of your own family and friends.

And no, nobody EVER warned anyone not to wear their uniforms back in the States. In fact, when I DID wear my uniform while walking down the street, I couldn't get a hundred feet down the road before cars would screech to a stop and INSIST on driving me wherever I was going. And I could go on and on with memories of how nicely I was treated at every turn - including being hired for every job I ever interviewed for. (I was smart enough to wear a dress shirt and tie for my job interviews, and bathe and shave. Does that count?)

So, don't fall for the spitting/baby-killer malarkey you'll see on these boards. It's total B.S.

-- Infantryman, 1st Cavalry Division, Vietnam, 1969-70