Homecoming [antikvár]

Preface First, a word about how this book came about. For years I had been hearing stories that when American troops returned home from Vietnam, they were spat upon by anti-war protesters. The stories were usually very specific. A soldier, fresh from Vietnam duty, wearing his uniform, gets off the plane at an American airport, where he is spat upon by "hippies. "For some reason, in the stories it is always an airport where the spitting allegedly happened, and it is always "hippies" who allegedly did the spitting. In recent years, as we all know, there has been an undeniable shift in the public's attitude toward the men who fought the Vietnam War. The symbols of this new attitude are many— the Vietnam Memorial in Washington is the most dramatic, but the box-office successes of such movies as Platoon and Full Metal Jacket also are testimony that, while the nation may still be divided over the politics of the war, the soldiers themselves are finally being welcomed home with warmth and gratitude. Yet even while the country has begun to tell the Vietnam veterans that they are loved and respected, the stories have continued to circulate: when those veterans returned from 1