(That distinction inspired a classic spoof in The Onion.) But even an edifying myth is still a myth. True or not, the story seems to have impressed on Americans the importance of separating “support for the troops” from support for a particular military adventure. Like the notion that returning veterans were denounced as “baby killers,” the spitting story fitted too neatly into conservative denunciations of the antiwar movement. I remember being suspicious of the spitting accounts long before reading about Lembcke’s book. Shafer’s article drew denunciations from readers who insisted that they, indeed, had been spat on for their service in Vietnam, but after a second spelunking into the question Shafer remained skeptical, though he didn’t rule out the possibility.
Lembcke did, however, “uncover ample news stories about antiwar protesters receiving the saliva shower from anti-anti-war types.” Shafer cited a 1998 book by Jerry Lembcke, himself a Vietnam veteran, in which Lembcke was unable to document reports of spat-upon vets. The problem, Shafer said, was that there was no evidence that the iconic humiliation ever occurred. The soiled soldier either slinks away or does nothing.” Yes, I am a Vietnam veteran who was spat upon - literally and figuratively. The protester almost always ambushes the soldier in an airport (not uncommonly the San Francisco airport), after he’s just flown back to the states from Asia. After seven years of research and writing, my book, The Spitting Image: Myth, Memory, and the Legacy of Vietnam was published in August 1998, by New York. “As with most urban myths, the details of the spat-upon vets vary slightly from telling to telling, while the basic story remains the same. Drawing on my own experience as a Vietnam veteran who came home from the war and joined Vietnam Veterans Against the War (VVAW), I called the image of spat-upon Vietnam veterans a myth.
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