Bearing Witness to Immorality

Bearing Witness to Immorality:

Poetry by Perpetrators and Victims of the Vietnam War

         Poetry from and about the Vietnam War is extensive and inexhaustible, with poems still being written about the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, DC, and the prolonged impacts of the war felt by those who served and those who remained home. It is well-established that poetry offers readers and writers a way to process trauma, guilt, conflict, and feelings of responsibility for inhuman acts of violence perpetrated during war; this paper continues to analyze this understanding of poetry while also incorporating historical analysis and digging into the moral and occasional legal impacts of war. While there are numerous scholarly conversations on the poetry of Vietnam, many of these conversations do not take the angle of analyzing the poems as historical documents or as having conversations on poetry as an act of witness and moral protest. Two contradictions to these aversions to engage in historical or moral conversation, and texts that will be greatly explored throughout this paper, are the books A Shadow on Our Hearts by Adam Gilbert and Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness by Carolyn Forché. Where this paper will expand the conversation on Vietnam War poetry is by considering the poems of American soldiers and civilians as they attempt to remember and debate the immoralities of a war that never “officially” took place. While these conversations on Vietnam poetry have been taking place for over fifty years, they are increasingly crucial to have as the world spirals into increasing states of chaos and conflict. By holding the themes of witness poetry to reflect on the moral conflict experienced and perpetrated by combatants, civilians, and governments while also reading the poems as historical documents, it is possible to read the poems of Vietnam as living reminders and warnings of a past that is still affecting us and may someday be repeated if forgotten. An element of Vietnam War poetry that is not often considered is that the conflict, death, and tragedy did not take place exclusively in South Asia; there was spillover within America. While it can feel controversial to call civilian protest poetry just as relevant to the social history of the war as that of veterans’ poetry, by holding them together, we as readers are granted a wider perspective of the war and can more accurately read the poems as an indictment of the violence and an everlasting record of the lives of those lost and the lives that will never be the same.

Soldier Poetry of Witness

         Poetry of witness and protest poems/poets have their individual uniqueness, but they also share enough similarities to be worth a deeper study, particularly when they share a major theme, such as the war in Vietnam. War poetry can be broken down into the categories of present in the war and external to the conflict. You cannot have one without the other; you need soldiers and civilians to tell the whole story of war. There is a distinct difference between how these types of poems comment on war while having enough similarities to easily lump all war poets, soldier and civilian, together. This paper will explore and delve into the benefits and uses of poetry to understand and process one of the most divisive conflicts in American military history. In order to have this hybrid conversation of civilian and soldier war poetry, two integral sources will be introduced. A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam by Adam Gilbert offers an exclusively combatant view of the conflict. Gilbert’s main aim in writing this book was to highlight how “As witnesses, victims, and perpetrators, these soldiers-turned-poets offer an experientially informed, aesthetically rich, and incredibly interesting perspective on the American military intervention” (2). What makes Gilbert’s addition to the conversation of wartime witness poetry so intriguing is that he takes more of a historian and sociologist’s perspective of the poetry rather than that of a poetic scholar. Gilbert— and this paper—are more concerned with the social impact and community than with historical fact or poetic form; it is the conversation that arises during war and how poetry acts as a bridge or tool for processing trauma, and how poetry can give us a more accurate account of history than mere “facts” ever could. Part of the reticence to use poetry as a form of historical artifact is that, as Gilbert states:

historians, perhaps deterred by the perceived difficulties, uncertainties, and subjectivities of employing a source material such as poetry, have rarely looked to verse for anything other than decorative epigraphs…Moreover, many frequently fail to contemplate war from the inside, from the perspective of its participants, and thus neglect the actual moral experience of war. (2)

          A Shadow on Our Hearts offers us this inside perspective of the war; we are taken into the jungle and shown atrocities that stateside civilians and protesters may have heard about but have no real connection with. Here is where poetry enters the gap of knowledge. The camera captured the visuals and sounds of war, bringing the conflict of Vietnam into the living rooms of American citizens for the first time. The book Memories of a Lost War: American Poetic Responses to the Vietnam War states that: “Vietnam was America’s first TV war, and although the media did not question the fundamental premises of US involvement, it did make the war and its attendant atrocity difficult to ignore” (Chattarji 41). And, while seeing the impacts of war was impactful and sparked worldwide protests of US involvement in Vietnam, it is the poems and young poets on the ground that allowed the true scope of war’s horror to be expressed.

             The war in Vietnam had one of the greatest impacts on popular culture in America; it sparked numerous iconic mentions in media, from Apocalypse Now to the main character backgrounds of Magnum P.I. and Simon and Simon, to countless songs and books. Another less-known thing to spring from the conflict was poetry. “It is important here to stress the immensity of the poetic production—no other event in the American past has elicited as much poetry as the war in Vietnam” (Gilbert 3). It may seem surprising, or at least mildly unexpected, but it is important to remember that the conflict lasted over twenty years and claimed more than three million lives. For Gilbert, one of the explanations for the surge in poetry among soldiers is that it offered a way for the combatants to “bear unflinching witness to their war and offer a powerful moral rejection of the conflict’s process of injuring and killing” (6). W.D. Ehrhart, who served thirteen months in Vietnam as a sergeant in the Marine Corps, is one of the most well-known and prolific veteran voices in Vietnam war poetry; his poem “Beautiful Wreckage” takes ahold of the witness aspect of poetry and asks questions of morality and memory. Beginning with four painfully brutal lines, the first stanza is an uncomfortable testament to the questionable nature of war and the reality that civilian casualties are not always accidental, no matter how much we may wish them to be: “What if I didn’t shoot the old lady / running away from our patrol, / or the old man in the back of the head, / or the boy in the marketplace?” There is nothing heroic about this first stanza or about anything this poem will later include. This is something distinct about Vietnam soldier poetry; while there are plenty of poems from other wars that deal with the brutal and dehumanizing aspects of war, the parts that are not necessary for the victory of the greater good in the conflict, Vietnam soldier poetry almost exclusively looks at the unnecessary violence and loss of life that war includes.

         Ehrhart takes a microscopic analysis of the lives that did not need to be lost in a war that many believed should not have been fought. With the final four lines, Ehrhart asks four poignant questions: “What if none of it happened the way I said? / Would it all be a lie? / Would the wreckage be suddenly beautiful? / Would the dead rise up and walk?” This doubting, questioning, deep regret and turmoil of a conflict that lasted twenty years is not a question posed by a singular poet or combatant; the very nature of war makes telling an accurate history challenging and, at times, impossible. Would “Beautiful Wreckage” cease to be a poem of witness to the war in Vietnam if the events did not take place exactly as described? If Ehrhart did not shoot the old lady, man, or child, would the poem be any less true, in a sense, would the old women and men not have died; would the child arise to play again? Ehrhart, Gilbert, and the creator of the term poetry of witness Carolyn Forché would disagree; a perfectly accurate account of history is impossible; the closest to accuracy that poets and historians can achieve is to recount the “truth” of history. Ehrhart remarks:

Time may play tricks with human memory. Scholars and politicians, journalists and generals may argue, write and re-write ‘the facts.’ But when a poem is written, it becomes a singular entity with an inextinguishable and unalterable life of its own. It is a true reflection of the feelings and perceptions it records, and as such, it is as valuable a document as any history ever written. (Gilbert 9)

         Forché writes in her book Against Forgetting: Twentieth Century Poetry of Witness that, particularly through times of war and great human loss, sometimes the only record of an event is what was transcribed by a witness. While many of these poets and witnesses have not survived “their works remain with us as poetic witness to the dark time in which they lived” (29). It may be tempting to disregard poetry as being a credible historical source, particularly when eyewitness accounts are known for their inaccuracy. However, Forché offers a strong argument for why this skepticism is misplaced. According to Forché, poetry of witness must be judged “by its consequences, not our ability to verify its truth,” therefore, while Ehrhart may not have been perfectly accurate in the details of his poem, the words may be “our only evidence that an event has occurred: it exists for us as the sole trace of an occurrence” (31). Using this understanding of poetry of witness, the verifiable accuracy of a poem’s story is irrelevant; its value comes from the spoken “truth” and the contextual evidence it provides.

            There is another equally important reason to rely on poetry of witness beyond its textural use as a recorder of history. Forché’s book Against Forgetting is aptly titled, for it is only through our remembrance of past wars and atrocities that we have any chance at preventing the repetition of such failures of humanity. The Vietnam wartime correspondent turned prolific poet Yusef Komunyakaa’s poem “Thanks” touches on both the remembrance and the chronicling responsibility of war poetry. When a historic event as ugly, distressing, and haunting as war occurs, there is a natural urge to forget, to purge it from our collective social memory as an escape from the pain of remembering our complicity in the conflict. The poetry of soldiers is our reference against this apathy of memory as “these poems will not permit us diseased complacency. They come to us with claims of that have yet to be, as attempts to mark us as they themselves have been marked” (Forché 32). These “claims” can be remembrances yet to be acknowledged or lessons learned that have yet to be implemented. Komunyakaa’s simple lines of thankfulness become something headier in this light: “Thanks for the tree / between me & a sniper’s bullet. / I don’t know what made the grass / sway seconds before the Viet Cong / raised his soundless rifle.” Yes, on the surface this poem is merely thanking a twist of fate that perhaps saved the life of Komunyakaa or someone he knew, but deeper, it is challenging us as readers to enter into the jungle of memory, to walk along the roads in Vietnam and acknowledge the fickleness of fate that controls life or death.

          Poetry of witness can take on its own edge when dealing with emotionally deep topics such as war and loss. When we read “Thanks” and experience the vividness of danger and fear, when we acknowledge our own mortality as Komunyakaa does when he writes, “Thanks / for the vague white flower / that pointed to the gleaming metal /reflecting how it is to be broken / like mist over the grass, / as we played some deadly /game for blind gods.” For Carolyn Forché, poems such as these are themselves “an event, a trauma that changes both a common language and an individual psyche, it is a specific kind of event, a specific kind of trauma” (33). And, perhaps most importantly and distinctly from war, to experience a poem in the impactful way it is intended, it must be entered willingly, “Unlike an aerial attack, a poem does not come at one unexpectedly. One has to read or listen, one has to be willing to accept this trauma” (33). It is this acceptance that allows us to take part as witnesses, despite the years and miles between us and the war in Vietnam, we can and must serve as perpetual witnesses to the events recorded through poetry. So that even when, as the Beat poet Charles Bukowski writes, we are born “Into these carefully mad wars,” we are able to call upon poetry as the last and sometimes only form of defiance as we stare into the void of human-wrought destruction, we will bear witness and testament to the losses, sacrifices, mistakes, and triumphs of humanity.

Civilian War Protest Poetry

         The term “Homefront” is usually used to describe the support combatants received from those who stayed at “home” during war and were responsible for completing essential work not only related to the war effort but in regard to maintaining the operation of the nation. However, the term takes on a decidedly less patriotic and wholesome connotation when you consider the military level of force being used to subdue and disperse protesters against the war. Just as Gilbert mentions the predominance of war poetry, there is also a boom in antiwar poetry as well. Author Subarno Chattarji of Memories of a Lost War makes a claim that “At no other comparable period in American history, not even during the Civil War…was poetry such a major mode of protest” (40). The reason for protest goes beyond Vietnam being considered an unpopular war by the American people, part of the reason for the heavy protests over US involvement was due to the fact that legally, Congress had never declared war, thus making the whole conflict protentional unconstitutional:

The lawyers’ argument was simple: this nation’s wars can only be started – as a constitutional matter — with a formal declaration by Congress, and there was no such action before hundreds of thousands of troops were sent to war in South Vietnam and wave after wave of planes were sent on bombing raids over North Vietnam. (Denniston)

The constitutionality, or lack thereof, of Vietnam, only inflated the reasons for protest; civilians were being drafted into a war that lacked justification by their government, and when they protested their country’s involvement that claimed the lives of hundreds of thousands, they faced their own front to the conflict stateside as well.

         During 1969 and 1970, violence against anti-war protesters became especially potent. The 1969 November 15^thMoratorium protests and march against the escalating war soon became the largest protest of the time; half a million people of all ages, races, and identities gathered to peacefully march to and around the White House (The Learning Network). While the vast majority of the demonstrations were peaceful and saw no significant amount of violence leveled against them, Denise Levertov writes in her poem “At the Justice Department November 15, 1969” of a break-away section of the march that was brutally gassed:

Brown gas-fog, white

beneath the street lamps.

Cut off on three sides, all space filled

with our bodies.

Bodies that stumble

in brown airlessness, whitened

in light, a mildew glare,

that stumble

hand in hand, blinded, retching.

While there is little information on the breakaway faction of the November 15^th protest that Levertov describes as being gassed in her poem, the size, and scope of the protest march is still highly impressive and could certainly lead to isolated pockets of violence as Levertov describes. There is another angle to Levertov’s poem that should be considered: when lawsuits and conversations over the constitutionality of the Vietnam conflict arose, the Justice Department would counter that “For the Supreme Court to take on such a case, the government argued in one of its briefs in the Supreme Court, the Justices themselves would have to take on the task of ending a war it had found to be invalid” (Denniston). The Justice Department even went so far as to issue a brief stating that “The court might have to set up its own office of military affairs and supervise the vast and intricate process of military disengagement.  It might have to provide officials to carry on diplomatic discussions with the North Vietnamese and other governments” (Denniston). This flippant rebuttal by the Justice Department only added to the feeling that the government as a whole was forcing the continuation and escalation of the war for their own machinations and gains, deliberately going against the will of the American people and forcing young men of draft age to pay the price.

Clip from the Ken Burns documentary:

         Though the happenings of Levertov’s poem may not have been perfectly factual, the same conventions of witness poetry can be applied as we do to soldier poems; therefore, lenience for straying from the perfect factual truth should be granted to Levertov’s poem, and it read as a testament of truth rather than fact. This leniency can be given in part because of the very real occurrence of violence against civilian demonstrators during the Chicago protest of 1968. While the footage of the 1969 march in Washington, DC, appears quiet and peaceful, the footage of the Chicago protest is anything but. Disturbingly vicious images and videos were taken that share concerning parallels with Levertov’s poem. Protestors are seen being gassed and beaten back with billy clubs, often, men and women are seen sprawled across the ground as blows reign down upon their prone bodies, while still others are shown in torn clothing being forced into the back of police cars (Burns & Novick, Chicago).

         Saying that there was another front of the Vietnam War may feel dramatic when the casualties are primarily composed of arrests and injuries suffered by police brutality. Comparatively, the intensity of violence occurring on the “Homefront” versus in Vietnam can feel laughable; to even make such a comparison may even feel disrespectful to the hundreds of thousands of lives lost in Vietnam. However, this battlefield at home still claimed the lives of innocent people. On May fourth, 1970, another primarily peaceful gathering of college students protesting the war in Vietnam congregated on the Commons of Kent State University, only for another tragedy to ensue. However, unlike instances where facts can be blurred in poetry to shed clarity on the truth of an event, there are some circumstances to the Kent State Massacre that the witness poetry does not capture. While many sources, particularly those who reported soon after the shootings that claimed the lives of four and injured nineteen others, will report that the National Guard fired without cause on peaceful demonstrators, the reality is important to remember in conjunction with the protest poetry. If the poem, written by Kent State Dean Dr. M. J. Lunine for the funeral of protestor Allison Krause, is read in a vacuum, without more historical facts then the essence of the poem’s truth would still be accurate and doubtlessly important:

“Allison was radicle—if

being young and bright and

warm is radical.

“Allison was radicle—if

having a sense of justice and

a sense of humor is radical.

However, the Kent State Massacre and the poems that came from its tragedy do ask us to take a more critical view when using poems exclusively to capture the story behind an event. All information can be susceptible to bias, even poems. The fateful day of the fourth was the culmination of several days of discontented rumblings among the student body following the invasion of Cambodia and the subsequent escalation in the Vietnam War. On May first, “Fiery speeches against the war and the Nixon administration were given, a copy of the Constitution was buried to symbolize the murder of the Constitution because Congress had never declared war” (Hensley and Lewis). While there have been claims that all of the National Guard members fired into the crowd, the majority fired away from demonstrators, “However, a small portion fired directly into the crowd. Altogether between 61 and 67 shots were fired in a 13-second period” claiming the lives of four students: Allison Krause, Jeffrey Glen Miller, Sandra Lee Scheuer, and William Knox Schroeder (Hensley and Lewis). The poem in remembrance of Allison and all those killed or injured during the massacre concludes poignantly:

“Allison was radical—if

having an open mind and a

great thirst for all kinds of

ideas and opinions and points

of view is radical.

“Allison was radical—if

being full of love and full

of life is radical.

“Then, my God, may we

all be so radical.”

The difference in casualties between the “fronts” of the Vietnam War makes comparing them feel almost blasphemous, and to numerically compare them would be to miss the importance of their duality. What makes it so important to place soldier and civilian poetry together is that, in their different ways, they are both speaking to the same goal of calling attention to the immorality and the loss of humanity that has sprung from this Presidentially decreed war. However, any comparison or unity that might be found between these poets and their poems would be a long time in coming, and the reception faced by returning veterans would be anything but supportive.

Veterans Returning Home:

         Yusef Komunyakaa, besides writing extensively on the experience of being in Vietnam, also writes poems covering the continuation of the conflict; the pain, anguish, regret, and thankfulness he and other veterans felt returning home. In the opening sentence of “Facing It,” Komunyakaa perfectly sets the scene for the rest of the poem about the Vietnam War Memorial: “My black face fades, / hiding inside the black granite.” Black fading into black has so many interpretations, the obvious telling us that the poet is both a Vietnam veteran and a black man, and while this may seem, and is an obtuse observation, it sets the reader up to consider the differences, difficulties, and discrimination experienced by racially marginalized groups during the Vietnam war. Additionally, fading away into darkness captures the symbolism of the reality faced by veterans returning from Vietnam, who, at best, were often overlooked and ignored by society. Veterans have recounted instances—both substantiated and not—of abuse and insult they encountered upon their homecoming; William Outlaw remembers how “Like most other Vietnam Veterans, I returned home from the Vietnam War to an environment in the United States that viewed Vietnam Vets as possible “baby killers;” resulting from the aftermath of publicity surrounding horrible crimes at My Lai and other lesser known incidents” (Outlaw). Another veteran, Alan Cutter, writes that when he returned to America and “flew back to my family in Maine; they were glad to see me, but not even they said “thank you” or “welcome home.” Even if they had, I wouldn’t have known how to respond.” This slightly cold and uncomfortable homecoming story is repeated in several narratives of returning veterans and the significance of fading into the background of American history. Stories from veterans like Cutter and Outlaw underscore the importance of reading veteran poetry. When writing of the powerful ability of poetry to bridge the divide between veterans and civilians, James Dubinsky calls attention to Komunyakaa specifically, saying how “Either with his own poetry such as “Facing It” or by encouraging us to read other veterans’ poems, Komunyakaa explains that poetry has dual roles – to delight and to instruct.” This “instruction” can be tied back to Forché’s call for witness and remembrance, as readers of this poetry, we are called to action the same way these young men were when drafted, it is our duty and responsibility to hold the memories of Vietnam close lest they be forgotten and repeated.

         The next five lines and part of the sixth of “Facing It” take the reader into the personal, human side of this poem and act as a counterpoint to the slightly depersonalization of a face fading into stone. The theme and imagery remain the same, a man is losing himself within the imposing memorial while telling himself that he will not cry when faced with the thousands of names etched in the stone:

I said I wouldn’t

dammit: No tears.

I’m stone. I’m flesh.

My clouded reflection eyes me

like a bird of prey, the profile of night

slanted against morning. I turn

The synonymous stone and flesh imagery, coupled with the predatory, entrapping gaze of the reflection demonstrates the eternal and haunting effect the war will have on both the survivors and the families of those who never came home. The final portion of that last line is a bit of clever craftsmanship; as the poem says “I turn” the speaker is turning in the next lines, his reflections escaping the monument, “this way—the stone lets me go,” only to be trapped again within the memorial “depending on the light / to make a difference.”

            Komunyakaa is both exceedingly precise in the lines, “I go down the 58,022 names, / half-expecting to find / my own in letters like smoke,” and strategically inaccurate. Upon research, names are still being added to the memorial to this date, and there are still over 1500 Americans unaccounted for. Also, Komunyakaa expecting to see his own name on the wall is a poignant reminder that while many came home in body, they have been irrevocably changed, and the person they were before the war never returned. The second half of the poem begins to lose clarity, and while that can be frustrating when reading a piece of poetry, it holds a powerful symbolism for the confusion and abandonment veterans faced when they came home: the American people whom these veterans served by answering the call saw many people “walk away” both before they left and after they returned:

Names shimmer on a woman’s blouse

but when she walks away

the names stay on the wall.

Brushstrokes flash, a red bird’s

wings cutting across my stare.

These lines bring the reader back to the metaphorically rich remembrance that the monument is highly reflective; those names can reach out and whisper against a passing woman’s blouse, but they can never leave, they can only step out of the wall while a person remains before them. In the same thread, a flying bird (a classic metaphor for freedom) flits across the stone, briefly cutting the reflections before dashing off with the liberty that once drafted, the young men who were sent to Vietnam or who hid from the draft did not experience. The brief and slightly discordant line “The sky. A plane in the sky” may mean different things to different readers, if we read this section of “Facing It” through Adam Gilbert’s more historical lens references of the sky and planes speak to how Vietnam was also known as the “Helicopter War” (Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and Crewmember Monument) and how Medevac helicopters saved the lives of approximately 390,000 Americans (U.S. Army).

            The final few lines of a white veteran and a woman are somewhat muddled, I do find the line of how the vet’s eyes “look through mine” and how the speaker thinks “I’m a window,” wraps the poem back around to where it began where Komunyakaa’s black reflection fades into the black stone, and the stories of black service members have also faded from the narrative of the Vietnam War. While the white man’s reflection seems to erase Komunyakaa’s reflection, the final two lines: “a woman’s trying to erase names: / No, she’s brushing a boy’s hair” remind us all that this monument, as painful as it is to see, is a tangible remembrance to those who lost their lives, and that woman is not erasing the past, she is stroking the hair of a son, brother, loved one who never came home. This commemoration and understanding of the lost lives and those who returned changed forever is crucial; there is a great deal that is not known or misunderstood by the average American citizen when it comes to the tolls of war.

         The war in Vietnam will likely always be remembered as one of the most controversial military engagements the United States has ever entered. From start to finish, spanning the course of over twenty years, the conflict was grossly unpopular with the American people to the point where not only was there a divide between those who believed in its validity and those who considered it unconstitutional, but violence and death connected to the war found its way to cities across America. With fronts of the conflict in Vietnam and America, divisions and anger were at untenable levels; it is almost expected that so much poetry would erupt from these decades of active war as well as the decades to follow. Just as there were two fronts to the war, there are two strong ways of reading this poetry: as a historical piece of evidence that chronicles the stories and events few experience, and as a vehicle for protest and silent witness to the atrocities of war. These two stances are explored by Adam Gilbert and Carolyn Forché respectively, and when combined these two methods for reading war poetry, soldier and civilian protest, help not only to never forget the sacrifices and atrocities committed in and around war but also to process the inherited traumas so that we might continue living with those memories.

Works Cited

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Burns, Ken, and Lynn Novick. “The Vietnam War: Protests in Chicago, 1968.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, Aug. 2017, www.pbs.org/video/clip-episode-7-protests-dnc-uqzn7l/.

Burns, Ken, and Lynn Novick. “The Vietnam War: The Moratorium Protests, 1969.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, www.pbs.org/video/moratorium-protests-1969-ewcsig/. Accessed 4 Dec. 2024.

Chattarji, Subarno. Memories of a Lost War: American Poetic Responses to the Vietnam War. Clarendon Press ; Oxford University Press, 2001.

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Dubinsky, James. “How Veterans Who Write Poetry Can Help Bridge Divides.” PBS, Public Broadcasting Service, 8 Nov. 2019, www.pbs.org/newshour/arts/poetry/how-veterans-who-write-poetry-can-help-bridge-divides.

Ehrhart, William D. “Beautiful Wreckage.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, www.poetryfoundation.org/poems/52766/beautiful-wreckage. Accessed 8 Dec. 2024.

Forché, Carolyn. Against Forgetting: Twentieth-Century Poetry of Witness. W.W. Norton & Company, 1993.

Gilbert, Adam. A Shadow on Our Hearts: Soldier-Poetry, Morality, and the American War in Vietnam. University of Massachusetts Press, 2018.

Hensley, Thomas R., and Jerry M. Lewis. “The May 4 Shootings at Kent State University: The Search for Historical Accuracy.” Kent State University, 1998, www.kent.edu/may-4-historical-accuracy.

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The Learning Network. “Nov. 15, 1969 | Anti-Vietnam War Demonstration Held.” The New York Times, The New York Times Archives , 15 Nov. 2011, archive.nytimes.com/learning.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/11/15/nov-15-1969-anti-vietnam-war-demonstration-held/.

“Learning to Come Home from War: No One Said ‘thank You’ to Vietnam Vets | Alan Cutter.” The Guardian, Guardian News and Media, 13 Apr. 2013, www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/apr/13/vietnam-veterans-not-thanked-for-military-service.

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McElhinny, Greg. “Veteran Experiences: Vietnam Veterans.” National Veterans Homeless Support, 11 Oct. 2022, nvhs.org/veteran-experiences-vietnam-veterans/.

Outlaw, William. “The True Legacy of the Vietnam War.” VA News, 21 Dec. 2011, news.va.gov/5563/the-true-legacy-of-the-vietnam-war/.

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“Vietnam Helicopter Pilot and Crewmember Monument and Memorial Tree.” Arlington National Cemetery, www.arlingtoncemetery.mil/Explore/Memorial-Arboretum-and-Horticulture/Trees/Memorial-Trees/Vietnam-Helicopter-Pilots-Association-Memorial-Tree. Accessed 10 Dec. 2024.