Memory and Vietnam

When U.S. president Dwight D. Eisenhower introduced the “domino theory” and the containment of communism in 1954, it would soon lead to the involvement of the United States in a war spanning from 1965-1975, ending with the fall of Saigon. The Vietnam War was an extensive conflict with over 485,600 U.S. military personnel deployed and events such as the Tet Offensive, the massacre at My Lai, and the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. having intersected and contributed to political tensions with public opinion supporting withdrawal from the war was best.¹ Still, 50 years after the conflict the history of the Vietnam War has continuously been debated by groups such as the New Left and Revisionist. Although the war has been interpreted through the context of military strategy, nationalism, and political turmoil which has shed light on certain issues and debates, these interpretations ultimately obscure the individual experiences of soldiers that had a hand in the conflict. Which raises an important question, who gets to decide how the Vietnam War is remembered? Rather than focusing on military or political interpretation on the war, it’s important to understand how soldiers constructed their memory of the war.

In order to understand how people remember the Vietnam War this project uses the framework of collective memory. As defined by Ron Eyerman et al. “The term collective memory refers to the selective and cumulative process through which collectivities, from groups to nations, make use and meaningful sense of the past.”² Built upon Emile Durkheim’s social theory that identity is built around traditions and ritual practices and Maurice Halbwach’s theory that the past is filtered based on the present needs of the collective in order to keep social solidarity, Eyerman further expands on these ideas and connects it to Cultural Trauma. He explains that collective memory goes hand in hand with identity formation in which nations actively go through significant events leading to a core narrative. This core narrative uses “agents of memory” to define an image of a collective to create “the political community that is the nation” and in doing so constructs this narrative by highlighting and forgetting certain core events that a nation uses to define who they are.

Collective memory is used in the process of making an identity in which various social forces compete to reconstruct an identity for the nation. However it’s important to make collective memory distinct from history, since history’s aim is to give factual truths. Collective memory does not just remember the past but actively shapes its meaning.³ That is why this project will instead focus on individual experiences, through letters, oral histories, and among other ways that offer a different understanding of the war and reveal how individuals processed the conflict through humor, fear, disillusionment, among other ways within the structure of the war. This research essay will also aim to explore the antiwar sentiment and how soldiers resisted and opposed the war while serving, how they handled disillusionment, etc. This will be achieved by analyzing forms in which they resisted using tools such as humor, poetry, photography, substances, etc. By focusing on individual memory, this essay aims to show that historical meaning isn’t just singular but rather shaped by lived experiences.

Starting in the earlier years of 1942–1944, Hollywood was able to play an active role in portraying World War II and U.S. democratic values, with one third of Hollywood’s films “promoting morale and projecting a positive image of the war”.⁴ Despite the lack of television coverage on WWII, the American public received a portrayal of the war that expressed what it meant to be American and promoted ideals such as honor, egalitarianism and faith in the American way of life. As noted by Albert Auster and Leonard Quart, “In fact, the war was made almost attractive, films presenting a world of camaraderie and courage where war’s usual quota of horrors and tragedies were kept under control.” They use Lewis Milestone’s The Purple Heart (1944) and Objective Burma (1944) to point out how these films reinforced the public’s opinion on Americans being indomitable people, the hatred for Japanese, and the representation of the enemy as evil, vile, and totalitarian needing to be destroyed.⁵

During the Cold War, these films shifted into political and ideological warfare and started to present anticommunism to the people, emphasizing military action and foreign policy into interventionism. Films such as Iron Curtain (1948), Walk East on Beacon (1952), and Big Jim McLain (1952) were used in order to propagandize foreign enemies invading the country, often presenting communist as “emotionally disturbed innocents or ruthless schemers and killers”.⁶ While, the “good guys” were presented as brave and virtuous; These films presented simple yet aggressive anticommunist messages while emphasizing the democratic and heroic image of the US. However in the coming of Vietnam, The Ugly American was released in 1963 and depicted a clash between this narrative.

The Ugly American (1963), according to Albert Auster and Leonard Quart, tried to support a Third World country’s desire for independence but at the same time contradicted itself framing “neutralism as naively playing into Communist hands”.⁷ The film pushes the belief that the US has no problem with neutralism but Communists can use this to their advantage in order to dominate and take control. As noted by Albert Auster and Leonard Quart, “the film is clearly pessimistic about the viability of the neutralist position” and “was perfectly in tune with a Kennedy cold-war foreign policy that talked about Third World independence and neutrality and the moral struggle against ignorance, hunger, and disease while at the same time doing everything possible to undermine and corrupt such political movements”.⁸

The message these films were sending American people was that if they failed to listen to these warnings there would be a political upheaval. These moments and films put together show how US involvement was understood with WWII and Cold war films showing a constructed narrative of American Patriotism. However, following The Ugly American (1963) this narrative would soon fracture and suggested that while the US portrayed itself as a supporter of independence and neutralism it contradicted itself and undermined such political movements. This contradiction became more apparent as the Vietnam War went on. As explained by Ron Eyerman et al. soldiers entered the war, “shaped by subtle and not so subtle forms of indoctrination—including the carrot of military supplied job training and social mobility as well as the stick of the draft law”. Together with these films, poor and the working class Americans of the 1960s believed their country to be of good intention and helping “weaker people resist an invading aggressor” and in turn this created an official narrative that influenced how the public perceived Vietnam. However this would soon be challenged with the progression of the Vietnam War.

In Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War, Specialist 5 Harold Bryant, a Combat Engineer in the 1st Cavalry Division of the US Army stationed in An Khe from February 1966 – February 1967, reflects on his understanding of the war and how it changed. He states that when he first arrived, “I thought we were helping another country to develop a nation. About three or four months later I found out that wasn’t the case.” Instead he found out, “we were just in another phase of their civil wars”.⁹ He explains how before getting to Vietnam he “didn’t know anything about the country, about the people” and how his operation felt pointless, having to repeatedly fight for territory only to abandon it and retake it months later, which resulted in unnecessary deaths.

He also points out the exaggeration of the body count explaining, “If we killed 7, by the time it would get back to base camp, it would have gotten to 28. Then by the time it got down to Westmoreland’s office in Saigon, it done went up to 54. And by the time it left from Saigon going to Washington, it had went up to about 125. To prove we were really out there doing our jobs, doing, really, more than what we were doing.” Furthermore he calls out Stars and Stripes, a daily American military newspaper, when recalling a combat operation in Ashau Valley stating “Stars and Stripes said we had a body count of 260 something. But I don’t think it was true.”¹⁰ His firsthand account clashes with the narratives propagated by the WWII, Cold War, and early Vietnam films and shows how the heroic image of the US was detached and misleading.

Furthermore, reflecting on his experience after the war he recalls showing his son thirteen hours of a film documentary about the Vietnam War, “so he could have an understanding of what war really was about.” and how he had to explain that he had killed, “to keep myself alive.” When explaining that he would not want his son to fight a similar conflict, he challenges the idea that war was a noble cause, stating “I wouldn’t want him to go and fight an unpopular war like I did. I wouldn’t want him to go down to El Salvador. And if that means that I would have to pick up me and my family baggage and move somewhere out of the country, then I would do that.” However in the same reflection he reveals a complex tension among many American GIs as he believes, “America should have won the war. But they wouldn’t free us to fight. With all the American GIs that were in Vietnam, they could have put us all shoulder to shoulder and had us march from Saigon all the way up to the DMZ. Just make a sweep. We had enough GIs, enough equipment to do that.” revealing the contradictory ways in which soldiers understood the war.¹¹

As opposed to WWII, The Vietnam war is largely known as the televised war. However, in Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War, Private First Class Reginald “Malik” Edwards, a Rifleman in the 9th Regiment of the US Marine Corps stationed in Danang from June 1965 – March 1966, criticizes popular films such as Apocalypse Now (1979). When recalling the film he states, “I don’t like movies about Vietnam ’cause I don’t think that they are prepared to tell the truth. Apocalypse Now didn’t tell the truth. It wasn’t real.”

He calls out the unrealistic depiction of war such as an helicopter attack on the village and music blaring from within, “Fuckin’ ridiculous. You couldn’t hear music comin’ out of a helicopter. And attacking a beach in helicopters was just out of the question.” He also criticizes the chaotic portrayal of soldiers within the film and states, “By making us look insane, the people who made that movie was somehow relieving themselves of what they asked us to do over there. But we were not insane. We were not insane. We were not ignorant. We knew what we were doing. I mean we were crazy, but it’s built into the culture. It’s like institutionalized insanity.”¹² He challenges the perception that soldiers were unstable, allowing the government to shift blame to the individual soldier.

Soldiers understood the violence they participated in but he emphasizes the conditions they were in which provoked these actions and he pushes back on this agency placing blame. He redirects the “insanity” away from the soldier and instead onto the structure and culture of the war. The “institutionalized insanity” would have been the expectation placed on soldiers, violence, and broader political agenda by a system which normalized and even required “extreme” behavior while at the same time denying responsibility.

Although the contrast between public films and the narrative they were portraying to the public become very apparent from the oral histories provided by Veterans such as Bryant and Edwards, when taking a closer look at veterans’ individual experiences it shows us a more personal perspective of the war and how soldiers processed it. For example, throughout his oral interview, Aldo Stephen Panzieri, a member of the US Air Force 12th Reconnaissance Intelligence Squadron stationed in Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho; Vietnam from 1966–1969, talks about homesickness and the role that music had in shaping his perception.

When asked about his feelings towards the war he says, “Well, Nancy Sinatra had a big hit with ‘boots’ and California dreamin’ was on the pop charts which made me very homesick.”¹³ Nancy Sinatra’s These Boots Are Made for Walkin’ promoted women standing up for themselves in their relationships with men, which was one aspect of the growing women’s rights movement in Western culture. While The Mamas & The Papas California Dreamin’ was a big hit with the Counterculture and Hippie movement and reflected the youth’s dissatisfaction with mainstream American life and aligned with the growing Counter Culture movement that questioned traditional institutions and nonconformity.

Historians Doug Bradley and Craig Werner discuss John Martinez, a Chicano musician who was part of musical group Ruben and the Jet and who served as a machine gunner in the 1st Air Cavalry at Qui Nhon. John Martinez similarly recalls hearing California Dreamin’ while being drafted stating, “I was in the first wave of draftees, a lot of people from East L.A. were being drafted. When I knew I was going to go to Vietnam, feeling sad in my bunk, I heard the Mamas and Papas’ ‘California Dreamin’. I’d always hated the song, but at that moment it was soothing. It wasn’t the California I knew, but it was about California, and it took me back home.”¹⁴

While in Vietnam he got exposed to music through the American Forces Vietnam Network (AFVN), jukeboxes, and records sent from home. “The letters and the music were what got us through…We’d come in from the field, hang around, music would always be there…I was going to the place the guys hung out and had drinks, the base bar. They had a jukebox in there, so we dropped in some nickels. I heard Jefferson Airplane’s ‘White Rabbit,’ and then I’m listening to AFVN. The number one song is ‘Light My Fire’ and, I’m thinking, ‘What the hell is this?’.”¹⁵

He later learned the political meanings behind such songs and gradually got involved with the peace movement and the antiwar movement. In this way it shows how memory is tied to the cultural environment of the 1960s and shows that GIs were not cut off from home (entirely). It also shows how multimedia culture shaped soldiers’ emotional experiences of the war and influenced the political identities of some Veterans after the war.

Additionally another important theme discussed in Aldo Stephen Panzieri’s oral interview was his opinion on the war. He states, with an ironic tone, “You know, I would imagine they got it narrowed down to one guy, who was entitled to have an opinion.” He critiques the authority of who was “allowed” an opinion on the war and explains how people would tell him, “Well, you don’t have a right to have an opinion about the war, you’ve never been in the service” and then when he was in the service they would say, “Well, you don’t really have a right to have an opinion cause you haven’t been in Vietnam”, and it reveals many soldiers frustrations that would enforce them to express their disillusionment in different ways.

His statement points out how his personal experiences outright clashes with official/hierarchical narratives which would enforce soldiers to protest their disillusionment in subtle ways, such as dark humor.

Throughout his interview he highlights various humorous experiences, which one could argue is a tool that allows him to describe fear and violence without becoming overwhelmed. For example, he explains that many soldiers including himself used sadistic humor as a way to get through the times and “try to stay mellow”. He recalls how for entertainment, wounded soldiers would bet on new incoming soldiers making it to the bathroom, lining up in wheelchairs with money on the floor out in front of them as a result of enemas given to soldiers to clean out their colon before surgery.

Additionally, there are many more instances where he uses humor and it reveals a lot about soldiers’ mindsets. For example, he talks about how during a Monsoon he saw 2 fellow GIs come running naked holding a bottle of Jack Daniels with their thumb in the bottle and jump in a bunker that by that point had flooded and he describes, “these hands coming out of the water still holding the bottle of booze with their thumb in the top”, and thought to himself, “they got their priorities right”.¹⁶ In this statement he reveals their constant use of humor to describe dangerous events and it shows the fatalistic attitudes soldiers had, which is also reinforced throughout the interview when he described the war as, “10% war and 90% terror”.¹⁷

Furthermore he talks about race in the army and describes the area/state of Mountain Home Air Force Base, Idaho; Vietnam as, “extremely racist”, with it being, “the only state that did not have any civil rights legislation”. He talks about Black soldiers being treated unfairly, stating, “They’re racist, they would taunt them” and he describes an incident of a riot by the NCO club.

He also tells us, very quickly, that he bunked with a black soldier because nobody else wanted to and that during his end time there, because he got along with fellow black GI soldiers, they moved his name down the list of people going home. So on his last day in Vietnam he was alone, with the rest of his squadron leaving before him. This could be argued as resistance to the military hierarchy and racial injustices. His actions show that resistance doesn’t have to be outright protest but rather through everyday actions. This also reflects the fracture in the Vietnam War with its goal to unify South and North Vietnam while having division back home in the fight for civil rights.

Finally when looking at the interview as a whole, he chooses to remember humorous memories rather than spend too much time on negative events. This gives us some indication of what kind of narrative he would rather associate with Vietnam, or, what he would have others associate with Vietnam. The same also appears when he talks about contact with his family. When he looks back at letters he wrote, he says, “I read some of them and I’m amazed at how little I actually wrote. Well it’s warm here, and the food’s pretty lousy”. When asked what was the thinking behind his letters, he admits he didn’t want to alarm his family.

Thus revealing how veterans choose to communicate those experiences with others and how they tried to protect their families from emotional burden. His oral history reveals how their individual memory opposes official or simplified historical narratives of the war and it was indeed more layered and complex.

Furthermore the official narratives portrayed by these films do not take into account how soldiers actually dealt with the war. When examining individual experiences we find that films often portrayed heroism or chaotic portrayals of soldiers that didn’t capture the reality of everyday soldiers, especially the way soldiers coped with the war.

For example in his oral history, Specialist 4 Richard J. Ford III, a LURP in the 25th Infantry Division of the U.S. Army stationed at Hill 54 from June 1967–July 1968, reveals his mentality and the use of drugs in order to face the war. He recalls a smoking game with opium that soldiers would participate in stating, “They would smoke this opium. They’d put a plastic bag over their head. Smoke all this smoke. See how long you could hold it. Lot of guys would pass out.” and the use of marijuana.

It wasn’t simply recreational but used in order to confront the realities and violence of the war. Additionally, he talks about the structure of the war out on the field. He explains that if a close friend was killed in the field “They put a poncho around you and send you back” and would tell everyone “to keep moving”.

He compares it to a civilian job where you might be given time to grieve, stating “If I’m working on the job with you stateside and you’re my friend, if you get killed, there’s a compassion. My boss say, “Well, you better take a couple of days off. Get yourself together.” But in the field, we can be the best of friends and you get blown away.“¹⁹ Which would result in the use of morphine, with soldiers carrying on with the little room for emotional processing.

“We had a medic that give us a shot of morphine anytime you want one. I’m not talkin’ about for wounded. I’m talkin’ about when you want to just get high. So you can face it.”²⁰ He also reveals soldiers’ sense of dark humor as another way to deal with the war, describing a dark prank involving grenades.

He describes being in the rear and “[dumping] the gunpowder out, [breaking] the firing pin. Then you’ll go inside one of them little bourgeois clubs. Or go in the barracks where the supply guys are, sitting around playing bid whist and doing nothing. We act real crazy. Yell out, “Kill all y’all motherfuckers.” Pull the pin and throw the grenade. And everybody would haul ass and get out. It would make a little pop sound. And we would laugh. You didn’t see anybody jumpin’ on them grenades.”²¹

In his oral history he also reveals the internal racial dynamics within the war. Although racism and discrimination still existed, the conditions the war put soldiers in rewrote the norms of that time–in this specific context–and created a mutual dependence. As stated by Richard J. Ford, “In the field, we had the utmost respect for each other, because when a fire fight is going on and everybody is facing north, you don’t want to see nobody looking around south.”

His experience shows us a more complex and layered understanding of racial dynamics during Vietnam with the backdrop of the Civil Rights Movement happening back at home. He goes on to explain “Matter of fact, the whites catered to the blacks in the infantry in the field” and referring to another black soldier, “They respected him, and they knew if you [needed] fire cover or need help, he right there.”²²

However, he also goes on to note that although racism itself wasn’t apparent it was rather masked by crude humor. He recalls racial comments/remarks and describes a conversation with white soldiers including his captain and stated “It wasn’t funny if he said it in the stateside. But all of ’em bust out laughing.” This included a phrase by a fellow soldier named Davis which Ford referred to as “Creole talk” where “Everybody laughed” in response.²³

However the tension also grew more complex when Fords described a broadcast from, “this lady by the name of Hanoi Helen…on the radio” (possibly referring to Hanoi Hannah). He describes how after the death of Martin Luther King and “rioting back home” the broadcast was aimed at black soldiers. “She was saying, “Soul brothers, go home. Whitey raping your mothers and your daughters, burning down your homes. What you over here for? This is not your war. The war is a trick of the Capitalist empire to get rid of the blacks.”, and after a while he started to believe it.

“I really thought-I really started believing it, because it was too many blacks than there should be in infantry.”²⁴ Noticing the disproportionate numbers of black in the infantry with the combination of propaganda and racial inequity back home and in the field created a sense of doubt and internal conflict.

This is further shown when he describes the Montagnards, an indigenous minority in Vietnam. Stating, “The brothers considered them brothers because they were dark.” and “The people in Saigon didn’t have anything to do with Montagnards. It was almost like white people in the States didn’t have anything to do with blacks in the ghetto. So we would compare them with us.”²⁵ His individual experience shows us how the racial dynamics impacted black soldiers and shaped how they understood the war, reflecting the complex and layered reality that was the war.

Additionally, he also reveals emotional struggle and the use of religion for dealing with the war. Ford recalls the night a fellow soldier died which caused another to cry stating, “The night after Louis got killed, Taylor just broke down. I mean just boohoo and cry. Crying is kind of contagious. When one guy starts crying, before you know it, you got a whole platoon of guys just sobbing.”²⁶, which reflected the emotional struggle soldiers went through when processing loss and fear.

He goes on to explain that the soldier that was killed “was suppose to go home in a week” and how that affected Taylor. “Taylor was just messed up. He would keep saying he couldn’t take it no more.” He describes a later moment with Taylor who was singing religious hymns. “He was always singing old hymns. I had him carrying 200 pounds of ammo once, and when I got to the hill to set up for the night, I said, “Taylor, where’s my ammo?” He said, “Man, you know that song about loose my shackles and set me free? I had to get free about a mile down the road. I got rid of that stuff in that stream. Them chains of slavery.”²⁷

Taylor’s decision to “give up the chains up slavery” says a lot about the black soldier’s perspective of the war. His rejection of the use of ammunition reflects a broader sense of disillusionment that also reflected “the war within the war” where black soldiers fought in Vietnam and the injustices of racial inequality.

Lastly, Ford finished his oral history after the war where he reflects on a moment where he broke down in a church. The pastor had called him up to say a few words “But we got up there to talk, and we couldn’t do nothing but cry. My wife cried. My children cried. The whole church just cried. I thought about Louis and all the people that didn’t come back. Then, people that wasn’t even there tell us the war was worthless. That a man lost his life following orders. It was worthless, they be saying. I really feel used. I feel manipulated. I feel violated.”²⁸

These moments show how soldiers’ memories are centered on racial dynamics, manipulation, guilt, and loss and show how their individual experience goes against the public’s perception of Vietnam.

Furthermore the official narratives of Vietnam fail to account for the experiences of Veteran Women. Once the war began to be remembered Vietnam was “reconstructed as a story of universal victimization”. As stated by Jayne Werner and Luu Doan Huynh, “Embracing the notion that everyone suffered and no one is to blame for what happened in Vietnam has been a way for this country to avoid facing the truth about the war and the challenges which defeat poses to our most basic assumptions about ourselves and the world.”²⁹

As this victimization around Vietnam occurred women were often not included or simply portrayed as victims. Werner and Huynh reference Joan Bethke Elshtain who notes that portraying women as victims was “another way of ignoring the more complex reality of who such women were, what they did, and what it meant.” The collective memory prioritized the rebuilding of a nation’s identity rather than including the lived experiences of all individuals involved. Without the individual experiences of all involved the reality of Vietnam’s historical meaning isn’t captured when the lived experiences of those who shaped the outcome are not included.

For example one nurse stationed at the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai describes her experience with the emotional trauma that came within her first three months in Vietnam. She would write letters home describing what she had seen and cry but after some time she realized she “couldn’t keep allowing [herself] to be open to that kind of emotional trauma” and states “I pulled up the barriers around myself. I stopped crying and I stopped writing letters home. I really numbed out.”³⁰

Additionally, she also talks about “a sense of tremendous helplessness” when referring to Vietnam, stating “That’s what was so devastating. I saw this stupid thing happening, and there wasn’t anything I could do to make it change. All I was doing was picking up the pieces.”³¹ Her experience shows the emotional and psychological burden of Vietnam and demonstrates how Women were far beyond the simplified image of passive victims.

Werner and Huynh go over a study of women’s experiences in Vietnam and the after effects (1982) which included symptoms such as anxiety, depression, insomnia, nightmares, war flashbacks, and thoughts of suicide. Many women reported feeling alienated and an inability to trust others with “sixty-five percent [feeling] alienated from the government, and 57 percent [feeling] they had been used by it.”³²

Reflecting how individual experiences continued to shape the understanding of the war and institutions involved far after their involvement. Reported also, was ongoing symptoms such as “alienation; hypersensitivity to issues of fairness, justice, and legitimacy; cynicism and mistrust of government; and ideological changes and confusion in value systems.”, with one nurse from the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi stating, “I don’t believe anything I’m told by the government now”.³³

Women’s experience cannot be excluded from the memory of the Vietnam War or portrayed as simple victims. Without the voice of Women and their individual experience which played a part in shaping the war it takes away from the complex and layered reality of the meaning of the Vietnam War and without their voices it is incomplete. As stated by Gregory A. Daddis, “This impulse to quite literally reconstruct the memory of a lost war rested upon deep anxieties”.

As Americans attempted to recover from the Vietnam War and its loss, he argues that framing the postwar narrative in a certain way served, “as an effective means for men to regain power, both in private and public spheres. The payment for this chronicling came in the silencing of women’s voices.”³⁴

All in all, although the war has been interpreted through the context of military strategy, nationalism, and political debates these interpretations ultimately obscure the individual experiences of those that had a hand in the conflict. The Vietnam War cannot be understood solely through political debates, political narratives, or Hollywood portrayals. When looking at individual experiences it reveals a much more complex reality filled with fear, disillusionment, humor, drugs, and much more.

The oral histories of Veterans and all involved in the War, through their letters, oral histories, and personal memory challenge the narratives that portrayed heroic and morally sound archetypes of the “Citizen Soldier”. Instead their personal memory reveals contradictions and challenges the narratives and institutions that support it.

When we look at the early WWII and Cold War films we find it produced an image of a heroic, moral, and patriotic soldier. We find popular 1960s archetypes such as John Wayne who romanticized the image of a patriotic soldier fighting for freedom who represented masculinity and the ideal soldier. Enforcing a cultural narrative towards the public and young Americans entering Vietnam, shaping their understanding of the war.

However when we look at individual memory and oral histories we find this romanticization is fractured. Veterans oral histories show how many arrived with this influenced expectation of the “Citizen Soldier”, only to find that it was not the case.

Specialist 4 Richard J. Ford III, recalls arriving in Vietnam and soldiers “would want to look like John Wayne” loading themselves with excessive gear. “I want a 45. I want eight grenades. I want a bandolier. I want a thousand rounds ammo.”³⁵ Yet, soon all soldiers realized the physical reality of the jungle and terrain. “The ammo was just too heavy. I threw away the ammo going through the river. I said it got lost. The terrain was so terrible, so thick…”.³⁶

This reflects what historian Robert O. Self focuses on with the Vietnam War and masculinity, in which he argues Vietnam “helped shake apart traditional American concepts of masculinity, embodied until then in the ideal of the citizen soldier.”³⁷ Vietnam fractured the image of the “Citizen Soldier” and patriotic idealism with individual experiences exposing the realities of war.

Oral histories like Richard J. Ford III’s reveals how soldiers embodied the ideals associated with John Wayne and shows how it all came crashing down. Vietnam shattered the image of the citizen soldier and transformed it “into a deeply ambiguous one”, as Robert O. Self states, “the ideal of the American fighting hero [was] in disrepair” and with it the “emblems of masculine power.”³⁸

Rather than embodying this “John Wayne Citizen Soldier” archetype, individual memory throughout this essay reveals soldiers dealing with homesickness, disillusionment, fear, racial tensions and coping with drug use, dark humor, emotional breakdown, and protest. Soldiers remember emotional, chaotic, and morally complicated memories of Vietnam that go far beyond simplified narratives of the War.

Additionally the lived experiences of Women that are often excluded from official narratives or portrayed as simple victims reveal the limitations of its historical meaning. Their exclusion or passive portrayal ignores the active role that Women played in the Vietnam War and the physical and psychological burdens that came with that. As discussed early many Women left with feelings of “alienation” and “mistrust of government”, showing how the war continued to shape their political opinion after its ending.

In conclusion, the reconstruction of individual experiences in The Vietnam War offers a different understanding other than the simple narratives excluding personal memory. The reality is far more layered and complex with individual memory contradicting official narratives and challenging the “Citizen Soldier” archetype in addition to patriotical idealism. When we question, “Who gets to decide how the Vietnam War is remembered?” The exploration of individual memory reveals that historical meaning isn’t just singular but rather shaped by the lived experiences of all those involved.