BABY KILLER

The Spring of 1970 was a busy time in America. Even though Japanese cars were only starting to be seen on the highways, the writing was on the wall. American mills, mines and factories were already shutting down. Jobs were already going overseas. OPEC was tightening the screws and the oil embargo was just around the corner. Nixon had been elected 2 years earlier and his secret plan to end the war turned out to be a secret war in Cambodia. College campuses around the country erupted in protest.

I attended a large suburban State College in Southern California. It was a pretty ironic situation. A lot of the guys attending were there for the student deferrment from the draft. A lot of the guys attending were Vietnam vets using the GI Bill to take a breather before going on with their lives. You'd think there might be some tension between the two groups. There was not much. Some of the vets grew their hair long, some were establishment guys. The president of the student body was a vet, so was the president of the campus chapter of the SDS. It was ironic that in this time of the Kent State massacre, Vietnam vets were just as likely to be fired upon as to be doing the firing. A year or so later, while living at a commune in the Pacific Northwest, I found that many of the leading members of this "hippie" community were Vietnam vets.

It was during this time, the early '70s, that I first started hearing stories about soldiers returning from Vietnam, through San Francisco and being spit upon and called baby killers by "hippies". It seemed unlikely to me at the time but it was a time when a lot of unlikely things were happening. I always heard these stories in the third person, never from someone it actually happened to and the stories were remarkably similar. Who knows, it might have really happened.

The Right has used this story over the decades to conjure up images of an un-patriotic anti-war movement that doesn't "support the troops". I feel the same about the veterans returning from Iraq and Afghanistan today as I did about the guys coming home from Vietnam 40 years ago. I want to hear what's going on over there and what's going on in their heads. I don't see them as in any way responsible for the war or it's consequences. They are welcome in my home. I'll get them on at work with me if I can. I may think there are war criminals but I think they are in the Whitehouse and the Pentagon, not patrolling the streets of Baghdad.

I suppose I'll keep hearing the story of the "dirty hippies" and the returning Vietnam Vets for the rest of my life. I don't care. It wasn't me that did it. It wasn't anybody I knew. If it happened at all, I suspect the person that did it was pretty impaired and pathetic. The returning serviceman it happened to probably felt pity for the perpetrator. Certainly he had gone through much worse during the course of his military service and the restraint he showed does him credit.