Starting when the Vietnam whatever was winding down, GIs were treated poorly and so were many returning veterans.
As usual, the media pushed the agenda.
The returning veteran population was just another slice of American society and as such probably had just about the same crime rate as the rest of the country.
Still, when one of them did something particularly brutal the first thing the media would advertise is that he was a 'disgruntled Vietnam veteran.' When it was a non-vet the story never seemed to get as much press.
For a while the first thing the media would ask if a violent crime was committed was "Is he a Vietnam veteran?" If he was it went STRAIGHT to the top of the nightly news.
Later it grew to anyone that had served during the Vietnam years.
You could have served as a clerk in Dubuque, Iowa for your entire enlistment and been labeled as a baby killer. It was ridiculous but the Karens and Kens of the time believed it religiously. Vietnam veterans were to be avoided at all costs because they were apt to start murdering people randomly.
I remember the time I cut down a dead tree and some dumb granola bar asked me why I had done it. I sensed the were a of tree hugger of some sort. I headed him off at the pass.
'Because I'm a f***ing disgruntled Vietnam veteran," I snapped sarcastically and they fled, much to my amusement. (So sue me for stolen valor.)
In a sense I wondered what the public thought. They sent a lot of former paperboy down the street and Wally and the Beav types overseas and elsewhere during Vietnam and the as usual stupid American public was shocked when the paperboy and Wally and the Beav returned changed people. (FWIW Jerry Mathers-The Beav- served a hitch in the Air Force.)
Military service changes everyone in one form or another. Hell, so does practically everything in life. Nobody even leaves the Boy Scouts the same way they entered it.
It wasn't until Ronald Reagan was president until the services got their pride back.
Anyway the 'Disgruntled/deranged Vietnam veteran crap continued on for decades afterwards. The last throes of it seemed to end about October 2002 when some media hack suggested that the Beltway sniper was a deranged Vietnam veteran.
The internet board I was (and still am a part of) rolled their eyes and since then I have not heard any bull$hit trash talk about veterans in general and Vietnam vets in specific. That was about 20 years ago.
About ten years ago I was bullshitting with another shooter at a match and we were griping about getting old. He had spent a year in Vietnam. He had a couple of years on me and a kindred soul in that he was somewhat tongue in cheek bitter and VERY sarcastic.
"We're getting old now and the youngsters are trying to run all over us," he griped. "It was just yesterday when I was a deranged Vietnam veteran and had some real respect! People were scared of us."
"Yeah." I added. "Mothers pulling their kids off the sidewalk and ducking into stores with the and admonishing the to stay away from you because you were a Vietnam veteran and could go off on a killing spree at any time."
"Yeah. I miss the old days," he said.
Actually the conversation slipped on to when he finally got his welcome home and he replied it was about ten years earlier from a young GI he met at an airport. The GI, a Sp/4 looked at him and said he knew the Vietnam guys got poor treatment, shook his hand and said, "Welcome home."
For me it was on my way to Camp Perry about 15 years ago.
I had lost a lot of weight and a couple of the Marines on the team asked me to wear my uniform when I returned for the Garand match. (I figured they had a bet as to if my uniform was blue or grey.)
En route to Perry I stopped to get something to eat and and a well dressed woman about my age walked up to me and apologized for the way she treated GIs when she was in college. A number of people approached me and had nice things to say.
As a Vietnam veteran what I remember most was being either ignored or treated as if nothing happened to me. Most of the people I knew at that time just acted as if I had gone on vacation to a tropical isle. The most abuse I received was from WW2 vets, the so called 'greatest generation", who insulted me by declaring that 'Nam was not a real war, that I was no doubt a dope addict and/or baby killer, that we 'Nam vets had had it easy, that we did not deserve any medals, ad infinitum. Even my own family would not discuss the war or express any desire to hear what I saw or did. For many years I kept mum and just kept truckin' along. About 1976 or so I started to shift my feelings and became a militant Vietnam Vet. I am proud of my service and would do it again in a heartbeat. Any patience I had with draft dodgers has evaporated in the mists of time. I respect true conscientious objectors, but have no time for the pukes that ran away to Canada to hide from the draft. End of rant!
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