Do you think a letter like this would have been a great help before you returned home from Vietnam?
Dear Parents, Sweethearts, Friends, Draft-dodgers, etc.
In the very near future, the undersigned _______________________ will once again be in your presence; dehydrated and demoralized, to take his place again as a human being with the well known form of freedom and justice for all; to engage in life, liberty, and the somewhat belated pursuit of happiness. In making your joyous preparations to welcome him back into organized society, you should provide certain allowances for the crude environment, which has been his miserable lot for the past twelve months. In other words, he might be a little Asiatic from Vietnamesitis and Overseasitis, and should be handled with care. Do not be alarmed if he has all forms of rare tropical diseases. A little time in the “Land of the big PX” will cure his maladies.
Therefore, show no alarm if he insists on carrying a weapon to the dinner table, looks around for his steel pot when offered a chair or wakes up in the middle of the night for guard duty. Keep cool when he pours gravy with his fingers instead of silverware and Seagram’s VO. Pretend not to notice if he eats with his fingers instead of silverware and prefers C-rations to steak. Take it with a smile when he insists on digging up the garden to fill sandbags for the bunker he is building. Be tolerant when he takes his blanket and sheet off his bed and puts them on the floor to sleep.
Abstain from saying anything about powdered eggs, dehydrated potatoes, roast beef, Kool-Aid, or ice cream. Do not be alarmed if he jumps up from the dinner table and rushes to the garbage can to wash his dishes with a toilet brush. After all, this has been his standard. Also, if it should start to rain, pay no attention to him if he pulls off his clothes, grabs a bar of soap and a towel, and runs outside to take a shower.
Never ask why the Jones’ son held a higher rank than he did, and by no means mention the term “extend”. Pretend not to notice if at a restaurant he calls the waitress a “numbah one girl” and uses his hat for an ashtray. He will probably keep listening to “Coming Home Soldier” by Bobby Vinton on AFVN radio. If he does, comfort him, for he is still reminiscing. Be especially watchful when he is in the presence of a woman – especially a beautiful woman.
Above all, keep in mind that beneath this tanned and rugged exterior there is a heart of gold (the only thing of value he has left). Treat him with kindness, tolerance, fill the car with gas, and get the women and children off the streets — — — BECAUSE THE KID IS COMING HOME!!!
*****
Thank you for taking the time to read this. Should you have a question or comment about this article, then scroll down to the comment section below to leave your response.
If you want to learn more about the Vietnam War and its Warriors, then subscribe to this blog and get notified by email or your feed reader every time a new story, picture, video and changes occur on this website – the button is located at the top right of this page.
I’ve also created a poll to help identify my website audience – before leaving, can you please click HERE and choose the one item that best describes you. Thank you in advance!
CherriesWriter - Vietnam War website 
I hadn’t seen that one in a long time. Somehow, every once in awhile they’d float around I guess, mimeographed ones you could send home. Darn if I knew who made them up. Probably someone in Division and they’d pass them out. I sent a couple home, myself.
LikeLike
That says it all and good for the CDR.
Gary W Allen, PhDLTC, US Army (RET)
LikeLike
Suspect it has always been the case with returning combat soldiers everywhere, that they return home bearing a load of baggage from their combat service.
But it’s very well-documented, to my personal knowledge, in every American war from the Civil War to the present. Relatively speaking, our young men have come from relatively peaceful, prosperous, safe environments, and experienced combat in places and under conditions which were horrific beyond anything he’d ever experienced, or even imagined. After a huge dose of life amidst violent and routine death, gross deprivation, and widespread human demoralization, he returns home to more or less the same America–“the World,” where such horrors barely exist and certainly are unknown to the huge majority of his fellow citizens.
The “folks back home” are always warned, but usually in a pretty cozy, reassuring, understated fashion, that he’s been through a lot and in some ways will be “different.” They are insulated from combat’s realities as completely as the veteran ever was before he left home, even more so if they’re female–yes, women generally refuse to even think of such things, and more and more American women have been insulated almost totally from such hardships in their life experience.
From the Civil War through Korea in the 1950s, at least many American females lived in a world of significant economic insecurity, threatened by diseases, without electricity or plumbing, and they were societally conditioned not to expect men to share feelings or the hard facts or life and work, and fundamentally to accept subordination to their husbands. If he was dysfunctional, it could be tough on her and the kids, but she was somewhat hardened to that as “the nature of things.”
By the 1960s and Vietnam, the social and economic hardships were fading into the past, and Women’s Liberation and other developments (e.g. no-fault divorce, later abortion, politics, etc.) were increasing the expectation that she and her man would share thoughts, feelings, and authority within the family and society. Tough enough societal transition there, even without throwing his combat experience into the mix!
Our wars since Vietnam have been much more limited in duration, exponentially more emphasis on sparing American casualties, much more ability to stay in contact with home, get enough to eat and water to drink, generally much more of an overmatch against our opponents, although the IED threat was much the same experience as Vietnam’s mines & booby traps. Casualties were far lower, more likely to be mourned–or at least observed with real solemnity–by military and the public. The new conditions brought about new stresses in the process of alleviating some of the traditional ones.
The Vietnam combat veteran thus experienced a transitional era in many ways, with a largely “old school” combat environment of deprivation and human wastage, but an American society safer and more prosperous than ever in human history, placing greater demands upon him to adapt as a mild, cooperative, sensitive human being, but still a driven provider ready to focus on financial achievement of the American Dream. A very, very tall order.
So yes, it would’ve been helpful to lay it all out there for Americans to understand their returning combat vets! But government and military didn’t understand much of this in the first place, and could never dare tell Middle America just how tough combat really is. Voluntarism, compliance with the draft, support for the war effort, any war effort short of resisting a direct invasion of the USA, would crumble. War is part of the human condition, but except for the occasional society which distorts itself by glorifying it–Spartans, Mongols, Samurai, Nazis–too much knowledge of it tends to make a society unwilling to participate in it, yet there will always be other states, nations, or peoples who will take advantage of their pacifist neighbors.
LikeLike
I believe one statement; LEAVE HIM ALONE could have covered it all. ________________________________
LikeLike