I was in my mid-teens at the peak of the protests. I wore the armbands, marched in the marches, attracted frowns from my high school teachers. Even at that age I had my doubts about the real reasons for the war; the domino theory sounded as plausible as any slippery slope argument. And I will admit that not wanting to get shot at figured in there somewhere. A few of my classmates a year older than me died over there, er, here.

But at no time then nor for years later did I ever hear anything about protestors "spitting on" or otherwise attacking returning soldiers. Not once that I can recall did I ever hear anything but that the Americans engaged in that awful war were just as much victims of anticommunist paranoia as the Vietnamese people. I would have spoken up as shrilly as I could manage had I ever heard anything like that. I've heard from people I have no reason to doubt that such things did happen, but not even hanging out with beret-wearing Galois-smoking protesters did I ever hear such things.