A Peacetime War
By Earle Holland
Air Force captain Phoebe Spinrad saw nothing unusual when she entered
the New York City restaurant. On leave and in uniform, she found a table,
sat, and waited to be served. It was 1972, a year or two before she was
to serve her tour in Southeast Asia.
Unable to attract the waitress' attention, she waited patiently with the
calm discipline that is basic to the military.
"I couldn't get the waitress to serve me," she explained. "At first, I thought she didn't see me. After 15 minutes, I finally reached out to grab her as she passed. She sidestepped me! That's when I realized this was being done deliberately. That's when I noticed that people were looking at me, smirking and pointing, and I knew it was the uniform.
"I am sure that this is what other persecuted minorities must have felt. You just didn't make a fuss. You kept a low profile and hoped that they didn't do anything worse to you. I knew this [discrimination] was going on, but this was the first time it had ever happened to me."
Twenty-some years later, Spinrad, now an associate professor of English, watched the opening days of the Gulf War on CNN, and that episode crashed back into her psyche. The scene in the restaurant was her flashback. Not the human carnage -- the body bags and wounded that passed through Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines, where she was stationed. Not the ghosts of comrades lost in combat. Not the seemingly endless flights of refugees fleeing the fall of South Vietnam.
Her hell was the personal hatred of the uniform and all who wore it. And that memory is painfully fresh even today.
Twenty years after the pullout of American troops from the Republic of South Vietnam, the wounds of that war remain fresh in the minds of those who fought there. In essence, 1992 may well be the year of the veteran. After the apparent victory of Operation Desert Shield/Desert Storm, American flag-waving and boosterism is at an all-time high. And America's fighting men and women are the heroes of the day.
But amid the hoopla and patriotism are the forgotten Vietnam-era veterans. What about their sacrifices, their victories, their losses? Who will praise their service and reward their devotion? Their silence appears to be breaking. Like Richard Nixon's supposed "silent majority," they're climbing out of the shadows and demanding what they say is their right -- recognition as a federally protected minority.
Surprisingly, higher education may become a battlefield where the status of veterans -- their protected status, that is -- is tested against mounting pressures of political correctness and diminishing resources for affirmative action programs. And some of the first skirmishes may be fought here.
Ohio State is waiting to hear the results of a nearly two-month-long review this fall by investigators from the U.S. Department of Labor to discover whether the University is complying with the Vietnam Era Veterans Readjustment Assistance Act of 1974.
This little-known law is the veterans' equivalent to the Civil Rights Act of 1964 that brought federal legal protection against discrimination based on race, sex, religious beliefs, or national origins. But unlike the Civil Rights Act, the veterans' laws are seen by experts as weaker and without the enforcement "teeth" necessary to ensure compliance.
At the same time, Ohio State, along with every other publicly supported university in Ohio, has received the results of another review concerning veterans' issues. This one, a report by the governor's office of veterans' affairs, examined the extent to which veterans were being served through University affirmative action programs.
Both the federal review and the state report are linked to the results of a University white paper submitted last summer, the report of an institution-wide task force charged with assessing "the state of Ohio State affirmative action issues and programs relating to Vietnam-era and disabled military veterans." The 11-member task force was also asked to make recommendations of how the University can best meet veterans' needs.
Topping the list of recommendations was the call to establish a campus office of veterans' affairs. The Board of Trustees approved the creation of such an office at its November meeting, and a search for a director of veterans' programs will begin early this year.
Both campus veterans and administrators alike agree that progress is being made. But to effect real change, they believe we must address what they see as blatant prejudice and discrimination, an over-riding anti-militarism that seems to pervade modern higher education.
The irony, they point out, is that universities are supposed to be places where all viewpoints are welcome, where dialogue, debate, and inquiry on any topic -- including veterans and the military -- are welcome and even mandatory.
John Guilmartin, Jr., associate professor of history and chair of the veterans' task force, was an Air Force helicopter pilot who served two tours in Vietnam, flying long-range rescue missions. For his courage, he was awarded the Silver Star with oakleaf cluster, the Air Medal with five oakleaf clusters, and the Legion of Merit. (Each cluster is equivalent to receiving the award an additional time.) But between his two tours, he earned his doctorate at Princeton and wrote a book on sixteenth-century naval history. Highly decorated and equally educated, he admits he's not the typical veteran.
"Consider for a moment that the living heart and soul of any first-class research university -- and that certainly includes Ohio State -- is the faculty. The faculty of today came of age intellectually, politically, and socially on campus during the period of the anti-war movement. Most were not activists, but they did see the war through the eyes of the anti-war movement to some degree.
"No generation of American college youth had less exposure to the military than the folks who today are the core of our university faculties."
Contrast that, Guilmartin said, with experiences during the Civil War, World Wars I and II, and, to a lesser degree, the Korean War.
During those conflicts, the military was an active and welcome presence on campus. But during the Vietnam War, the military fell from grace at universities. Part of the reason was the overlap in membership and tactics between the anti-war movement and the civil disobedience that grew from the civil rights movement. Another part was the overt dissatisfaction with the government's inability to justify the Southeast Asian conflict.
Demonstrations, riots, draft card burnings, love beads, and peace symbols -- these were the badges of the armies of anti-war students on campuses, the students who became the faculty members and administrators of today, Guilmartin said.
Contrast that to the Vietnam Service Ribbon and the Combat Infantryman's Badge -- the respected CIB -- awarded to those who actually fought in the war.
These are the two sides of the argument, the two ends of the continuum. And there is no more middle ground now than there was two decades ago at the height of the conflict.
"The winners, as far as internal American politics is concerned, were those who were opposed to our involvement in Vietnam," Guilmartin said. "And as winners, they got to write the history.
"The debate about the war tended to be either black or white, right or wrong. In the case of Vietnam, however, the war was characterized by enormous shades of gray. It wasn't entirely clear what we were doing, even at the time. A lot of Vietnam combat veterans recognized at the time that there were enormous ambiguities.
"What we have now is a history written by the winners that doesn't hold up very well," he said, "and the Vietnam-era veterans wind up taking the brunt of it."
Spinrad sees the current situation in more definitive terms. She was an administrative officer with the 374th Tactical Airlift Wing in the Philippines working with medivac (medical evacuation) units and refugee transport.
"The people who today are in a position of power in higher education are those who, on the whole, did not serve. They took their academic deferments. They finished up. They got into tenured and administrative positions. But they have the same feelings now about us as they did then," she said.
"But now, they are really in charge. The hatred they had then, they have now."
Hatred may be too harsh a term. It may fairer to label this anti-military, anti-veteran attitude -- if it does exist -- as "politically correct." The PC movement is alive and well in academe, Spinrad says.
"They think they are very open-minded and they talk a lot about academic freedom. But if you try to advance an idea that is not on the roster of allowable ideas, then you are called rigid, dogmatic, and inflexible. But they aren't rigid, dogmatic, and inflexible for refusing to listen to something that contradicts their assumptions.
"The anti-PC forces are not powerful," she said. "In fact, they're almost invisible until the press wants to make an issue out of them. I'm the only outspoken anti-PC person in my department."
That outspokenness, both in word and deed, has produced hostility from colleagues. The worst, Spinrad said, came when she arrived at work one Thursday in early October. She had hung a poster outside her Denney Hall office that supported a proposed memorial to women who served in Vietnam. It was one of the originals used as a petition for the memorial, and it bore signatures in support on the back. It showed a set of military dog tags bearing a woman's name and the words, "Not all women wore love beads in the sixties."
That morning, she found that someone had scrawled in pen the words, "Yeah, some were murderers."
She called President Gordon Gee to inform him of the "hate-message," and four days later he visited her office to express concern over the incident.
"When I first hung my poster, three of my colleagues asked me to take it down, including one from the women's studies department. That really surprised me. I thought she would be happy to see something like that," Spinrad said. "She reminded me that she had worn love beads in the 1960s and had protested the war. The poster, she said, was very upsetting." Another colleague warned that displaying it would open old wounds.
But Spinrad wondered aloud about other posters displayed this year. One showed the marines raising the flag on Iwo Jima; the flagpole, however, bore three oil company logos. In another case, when the Gulf War broke out, one professor hung an American flag upside down above his door, the flag smeared with mud. Nearby was a pro-Iraqi poster and a picture of President George Bush wearing a dress.
"Now you tell me that his students didn't learn something from that?"
Ask veterans who is to blame for such anti-military sentiment and the odds are good they'll point a finger at "the media." Newspapers, magazines, radio, TV, even Hollywood -- veterans believe they're all the same. The media never depict veterans as they really are, or Vietnam as it really was.
That's John Kovalcik's answer, or at least part of it. Kovalcik is an Ohio State graduate and University staffer working for Residence and Dining Halls. He served as an enlisted man in the Coast Guard during the Vietnam years, although he was never "in country."
According to federal law, Vietnam-era veterans are those who served on active duty more than six months between August 5, 1964, and May 7, 1975.
"As a veteran, I think [the anti-militarism] was because of the overwhelming effect of the media. A lot of us, myself included, felt a self-hate. When I got discharged, I gave away my uniforms. I didn't want anything to do with the military. I got caught up in the overwhelming dose of anti-war, anti-military fervor in the media."
At the heart of veterans' damning of the media is a reliance on stereotypes, stereotypes that categorize all Vietnam-era vets as either victims or victimizers. "We've tried to find a movie about Vietnam -- and there have been dozens -- that is somewhat realistic in not showing veterans this way. We can't find anything. The media are still cranking out the same garbage," said Kovalcik.
Never mind the fact that in the 1960s, American hero John Wayne produced perhaps one of the most propagandistic pro-war films ever made -- The Green Berets. That was early in the conflict and certainly was the exception to the rule. Later films have almost all centered on the victim or victimizer stereotypes -- even movies produced by veterans themselves. Film director Oliver Stone's acclaimed movie Platoon was no different, Kovalcik said. Stone's latest project is a story of the war through the eyes of Vietnamese peasants. But veterans accuse him of playing to the stereotypes or selling his soul for profit. Kovalcik labels him a "repentant veteran."
Veterans point to a constant campaign, conscious or otherwise, of stereotyping. A recent wire service story of a sniper in a California town identified him as a Vietnam veteran. Spinrad, Guilmartin, and Kovalcik were livid.
During the Gulf War, Garry Trudeau's comic strip "Doonesbury" depicted the Vietnam-vet character B.D. discussing "fragging" with his younger service buddies. B.D. is asked, "You mean you actually killed your officers?"
"Only the dumb ones, and mainly lieutenants," he replies.
"I'm sure that other people think it is sort of light-hearted, good fun," said Guilmartin. "It depends on who the butt of the joke is. To me, that was a vicious caricature of what went on."
As of March 1991, 841 of the University's more than 18,000 employees had identified themselves as Vietnam-era veterans. There are probably more who have remained silent about their veteran's status. One of the University's veterans' task force recommendations was to develop a system that could identify all who qualify under the law. That effort is underway now.
At the core of the veterans' controversy at Ohio State is one man, Ron Trewyn, professor of medical biochemistry. It is to Trewyn's credit -- or blame, depending on the point of view -- that the disputes can be traced. Admittedly stubborn -- his fax machine labels each transmission as coming from an "unrepentant veteran" -- he started it all.
His experience is perhaps the most typical among veterans. A sergeant in a line company in combat in 1969, his wounds cut short his tour in Vietnam, and very nearly his life.
But until 1987, he had thought little of veterans' status under affirmative action programs. His subsequent four-year war of correspondence, with salvos to university presidents and provosts, administrators, Department of Labor officials, heads of veterans' groups, and state legislators, mobilized veterans on campus.
"Clearly, this is a national problem. We need to take away the focus from Ohio State and see how [the discrimination problem] is centered in academia," he said.
"Somebody has to be first to do this. Do we want to be number 412? Why don't we say we want to be first in the country to treat veterans correctly? It's a moral imperative for a public institution to do this.
"There are so many people who bought into the stereotypes along the way without even thinking about them. These are the people I think we can educate," he said optimistically.
Spinrad, who tries to teach "old values through Renaissance literature," isn't so confident.
"I can't afford to be optimistic. Optimism can lead to complacency. I am very disenchanted with the profession, but I do my part. I'm still here. I stay here to hold the line against the barbarians."
Guilmartin adds, "It may be naive for veterans to expect some kind of national reappraisal or even within the academic community. But my hard-nosed response is that the law says affirmative action. Either we obey because it is the law or because it happens to coincide with our personal or institutional political proclivities. We have to make up our minds.
"I don't think it's naive for the veterans to expect the law to be obeyed. I don't think that's naive at all."
Kovalcik points to the educational programs that he and the campus veterans' groups have attempted to date. Admittedly, they've had minimal success. Events expected to draw several hundred barely attracted two dozen. At the height of the Gulf War, a program the veterans thought could fill an auditorium drew only 75. But even that small turnout thrilled Kovalcik. Participation overall by veterans has been perhaps a tenth of that expected.
Adding to the disappointment is the way members of other federally protected minority groups have avoided veterans' activities.
Non-veterans have been non-existent at these sessions. Women and Blacks have been conspicuously absent, even though there are many women and Black veterans. Kovalcik believes the competition between minority groups for affirmative action program support prevents cooperative efforts with the veterans.
In spite of his lack of success, however, he still plans more programs.
"I can tell you my commitment now is solely to get something done that is correct for veterans here. And I'm not the only one who thinks that way.
"It's not going to die."
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Earle Holland is editor of Quest.