War Stories: False Atrocity Tales, Swift Boaters, and Winter Soldiers—What Really Happened in Vietnam
by Gary Kulik, Potomac Books, 2009
Although he was a conscientious objector, Gary Kulik came from a military family and “loved being a medic in a war zone.” After serving in Vietnam, Kulik earned a Ph.D. in history. His book had its origins when he began collecting “war crime stories” that seemed just too hard to believe. His research took him to the stunning conclusion that Vietnam was the first war in which men lied about committing war crimes they did not in fact commit. These false war crime stories are at the heart of War Stories.
In his first chapter, “Framing the War,” Kulik examines the war’s presentation in popular literary and film works. Michael Herr’s popular 1978 book Dispatches portrayed the war as senseless and without meaning. Kulik points out this might be a surprise to American soldiers who understood they were fighting to defend South Vietnam against communism. He then writes that much of Dispatches is fictional, even if Herr neglected to say so in his book. The Vietnam veteran as psychological cripple is a theme in the movies Taxi Driver, Coming Home and Apocalypse Now. The notion that “guilt gnawed at the souls of Vietnam vets” is prevalent in the literature, and Kulik traces the idea of widespread survivor guilt to two “antiwar” psychiatrists, Robert Jay Lifton and Chaim Shatan. Lifton, Shatan and other therapists refused to consider that the veterans they treated were lying to them, no matter how bizarre their war stories, a triumph of empathy over verification. Their efforts led the way to have Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) recognized as a disorder by the American Psychiatric Association.
Kulik includes a critique of Lynda Van Devanter’s Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam, the most popular such account. He finds her gripping tales of danger, gore and overwork are unsupported by others who served with her or by the documentary record. Her book, contends Kulik, makes up with passion what it lacks in accuracy. A nurse who served with Van Devanter called it “a trashy form of fiction.” According to Kulik, exaggerated accounts such as this have crowded out more honest works by other nurses.
In his chapter “Spit-Upon Veterans,” Kulik tackles one of the most contentious of all Vietnam War stories and concludes these tales are more metaphorical than real. Although there were no such accounts in early memories and reportage, the “spit upon vet” notion became common in the 1980s. Although it is impossible to prove that such incidents never happened, it is possible to refute and cast doubt on many of these accounts. These stories served the interests of veterans who wanted to blame the antiwar movement for what they perceived as abandonment of the troops.
The author also zeroes in on the 1971 Winter Soldier investigations, which attempted to blame the U.S. government for atrocities, and not the individuals who actually committed them. Kulik discusses why some of the incredulous atrocities mentioned in Wallace Terry’s popular book Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans were told—and why they were believed.
“The reason to expose fake atrocity stories,” Kulik writes, “is so we can retain our outrage at true atrocity stories.” Left unchallenged, false war stories feed into the widespread belief that atrocities defined American conduct in Vietnam. Kulik’s War Stories is about men and women who choose to deceive, men and women all too ready to believe those deceptions, and how the politics and beliefs of the deceivers and deceived were able to trump easily gathered evidence. An end to deception will go a long way toward an understanding of why we fought, how we fought, and what the war means to veterans and to the country.
Originally published in the April 2010 issue of Vietnam. To subscribe, click here.
