"I hate to think what my life would have been like if I hadn't had Brenda to come back to after Vietnam. I'd read about Kent State and the antiwar upheavals that spring- at Oberlin, my sister Ruth had organized a workshop to make placards for demonstrations. I'd also heard about antiwar protestors spitting on soldiers. I'd made up my mind even before coming home that I'd punch out anybody who spit on me. Luckily, no one did. But one day that fall, I stopped at a mall in Virginia after work wearing my green uniform. I walked into a department store, and salespeople and other shoppers glared at me. I paid and left as quickly as possible, but getting into the car I thought, "I am in the nation's capital, wearing the uniform of the United States Army, and the people around me see me as some kind of monster!" The mood of the country had turned ugly."
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Original Language: English
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Sources
Norman Schwarzkopf, Jr., It Doesn't Take a Hero (1992), p. 176
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Vietnam_War
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Vietnam War
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