2. For a longer treatment of this subject, see Scott, Vietnam Veterans Since the War: The Politics of PTSD, Agent Orange, and the National Memorial.
3. David W. Dunlap, “Wall to Honor City’s Veterans of Vietnam,” New York Times, May 30, 1984.
4. Minutes, Executive Committee Meetings, series 1, subseries 1, file Oct. 16, 1984, box 1, April 13, 1983–Feb. 7, 1985, New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission Papers, 1983–89, New York City Municipal Archives.
5. Denis Hamill, “Heroic Viet Vets Plan Major March,” New York Daily News, May 4, 2005.
6. Jane Gross, “New Yorkers Roar Thanks to Veterans,” New York Times, May 8, 1985.
7. “Vietnam Veterans Give Ex-comrades a Hand Up,” New York Times, Aug. 11, 1985.
8. Terry Martin, An American Sunrise: The Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program: A History of ACTION’s Three-Year Veteran’s Initiative: Technical Report (Washington, D.C.: ACTION, 1984), 67, 68, 69–72.
9. Hagopian, Vietnam War in American Memory, 217–18.
10. Gene Gitelson to Robert M. Sellar (IBM), March 11, 1987, Rockefeller Archive, Collection DLM a, series 2.2, projects, box 185, folder 1713, Vietnam Veterans Leadership Program, Gene Gitelson, 1986–92; “Vietnam Veterans Give Ex-comrades a Hand Up.”
11. “Vietnam Veterans Give Ex-comrades a Hand Up.”
12. Gitelson to Sellar, March 11, 1987.
13. Ibid.
14. Hagopian, Vietnam War in American Memory, 218.
15. Minutes, Executive Committee Meetings, series 1, subseries 1, box 2, file Oct. 7, 1986, New York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission Papers, 1983–89, New York City Municipal Archives.
12. TWONESS: HERBERT SWEAT
1. W.E.B. Du Bois, The Souls of Black Folk: Essays and Sketches (Chicago: A. C. McClurg, 1903), p. 4.
2. George N. Katsiaficas, The Imagination of the New Left: A Global Analysis of 1968 (Boston: South End Press, 1987), 141; “Pentagon to Crack Down on Deserters,” Gettysburg Times, Sept. 16, 1970.
3. Whitney M. Young Jr., “A Report from Vietnam (Fourth of Four Articles),” New York Amsterdam News, Sept. 10, 1966.
4. Soldiers of Misfortune, Homeless Veterans in New York City (Research and Liaison Unit, Office of the Comptroller, City of New York, 1982).
5. Bernard Edelman to Ed Koch, Feb. 5, 1988, Mayor’s Office of Veterans’ Affairs, image 00029, roll 41129, Koch Papers, New York City Municipal Archives.
6. “U.S. Opens a New Center for Homeless Veterans,” New York Times, May 15, 1988.
7. “Nation’s Homeless Veterans Battle a New Foe: Defeatism,” New York Times, Dec. 30, 1987; Robert Rosenheck and Peggy Gallup, “Vietnam Era and Vietnam Combat Veterans Among the Homeless,” American Journal of Public Health 81, no. 1 (May 1991): 643–46.
8. “Man Fatally Stabbed in Homeless Shelter,” New York Times, Aug. 9, 1993.
13. LONG ROAD HOME: NEIL KENNY
1. Leslie Roberts, “Vietnam’s Psychological Toll,” Science, July 8, 1988, 159–61.
2. “Mayor Announces 3 Housing Projects; Gets State Rebuke,” New York Times, June 14, 1943.
3. “Contracts Signed for City Housing,” New York Times, March 27, 1945; “Low-Rent Housing Project Planned for Lower East Side,” New York Times, Feb. 25, 1948.
4. John Prados and Ray W. Stubbe, Valley of Decision: The Siege of Khe Sanh (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1991), 505–6.
5. Kenny knows that Ratliff’s official records indicate that he was killed on July 3, 1968. He is, however, firm in associating the death with the fourth, possibly because what took place on the third in Vietnam took place on the fourth in the United States.
6. “Headquarters U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam—Monthly Summary: December 1968–February 15, 1969,” box 02, folder 01, Glenn Helm Collection, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University, accessed April 21, 2012, www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=1070201007.
7. “Command Chronology, December 1, 1968,” folder 060, U.S. Marine Corps History Division Vietnam War Documents Collection, Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University, accessed April 21, 2012, www.vietnam.ttu.edu/virtualarchive/items.php?item=1201060223.
8. Staff Study, New York City’s Financial Crisis: An Evaluation of Its Economic Impact and Proposed Policy Solutions, Joint Economic Committee of the Congress of the United States (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, U.S. 1975, accessed April 21, 2012, http://fraser.stlouisfed.org/docs/historical/jec/1975jec_nyfinanc.pdf.
9. William Clayton Wray, private first class, L Company, Third Battalion, Twenty-Sixth Marines, First Marine Division, III Marine Amphibious Force, U.S. Marine Corps, Plattsburgh, New York, June 2, 1948, to Sept. 23, 1968, accessed May 19, 2012, www.virtualwall.org/dw/WrayWC01a.htm.
10. Workman tells his story in Jeremiah Workman with John R. Bruning, Shadow of the Sword: A Marine’s Journey of War, Heroism, and Redemption (New York: Ballantine Books, 2009).
14. LEADERSHIP: VINCE MCGOWAN
1. Monica Surfaro, “Veterans Caught in City Welfare Battle,” New York Times, Oct. 13, 1974.
2. Dean, Shook Over Hell.
3. U.S. Department of Labor, Bureau of Labor Statistics, Middle Atlantic Regional Office, New York City in Transition: Population, Jobs, Prices, and Pay in a Decade of Change, Regional Report 34, July 1973, Robert F. Wagner Documents Collection, box 060278, folder 18, Wagner Archives, accessed Jan. 11, 2011, www.laguardiawagnerarchive.lagcc.cuny.edu/FileBrowser.aspx?LinkToFile=FILES_DOC/WAGNER_FILES/06.021.0058.060278.18.PDF.
16. LIVING MEMORIALS
1. U.S. Department of Interior, The National Parks Index, 2009–2011, 8, accessed May 19, 2012, http://www.nps.gov/history/history/online_books/nps/index2009_11.pdf.
2. David Glassberg, Sense of History: The Place of the Past in American Life (Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2001), 29.
A NOTE ON METHOD
1. Jerome Bruner, “Life as Narrative,” Social Research 71, no. 3 (2004): 691–710.
2. Dan P. McAdams, “The Psychology of Life Stories,” Review of General Psychology 5, no. 2 (2001): 100–22.
3. The literature about narrative life history research is large and growing. For an overview, see D. Jean Clandinin, Handbook of Narrative Inquiry: Mapping a Methodology (Thousand Oaks, Calif.: Sage, 2007).
4. Annette Wieviorka, The Era of the Witness (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2006), 132.
5. Alessandro Portelli, “What Makes Oral History Different,” in The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories, 51.
6. Maynes, Pierce, and Laslett, Telling Stories, 41.
7. See also Nigel C. Hunt, Memory, War, and Trauma (Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 2010); and Abrams, Oral History Theory.
8. See, for example, Ashok Jansari and Alan J. Parkin, “Things That Go Bump in Your Life: Explaining the Reminiscence Bump in Autobiographical Memory,” Psychology and Aging 11, no. 1 (March 1996): 85–91; and Alison Holmes and Martin A. Conway, “Generation Identity and the Reminiscence Bump: Memory for Public and Private Events,” Journal of Adult Development 6, no. 1 (1999): 21–34.
9. James R. McDonough, Platoon Leader (Novato, Calif.: Presidio Press, 1985), 1.
RECOMMENDED READING
VIETNAM WAR, GENERAL
Anderson, David L. The Vietnam War. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005.
Bradley, Mark Philip. Vietnam at War. New York: Oxford University Press, 2009.
Hagopian, Patrick. The Vietnam War in American Memory: Veterans, Memorials, and the Politics of Healing. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2009.
Hess, Gary R. Vietnam and the United States: Origins and Legacy of War. Boston: Twayne, 1990.
Hynes, Samuel Lynn. The Soldiers’ Tale: Bearing Witness to Modern War. New York: Penguin Books, 1998.
Karnow, Stanley. Vietnam: A History. New York: Viking, 1983. 2nd ed., New York: Penguin, 1997.
Lawrence, Mark Atwood. The Vietnam War: A Concise International History. New York: Oxford Univer
sity Press, 2008.
Logevall, Fredrik. The Origins of the Vietnam War. New York: Longman, 2001.
MacPherson, Myra. Long Time Passing: Vietnam and the Haunted Generation. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1984.
Prados, John. Vietnam: The History of an Unwinnable War, 1945–1975. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 2009.
Schulzinger, Robert D. A Time for War: The United States and Vietnam, 1941–1975. New York: Oxford University Press, 1997.
Summers, Harry. On Strategy: The Vietnam War in Context. Novato, Calif.: Presidio, 1982.
Vuic, Kara Dixon. Officer, Nurse, Woman: The Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2010.
Westheider, James. Fighting in Vietnam: The Experiences of the U.S. Soldier. Mechanicsburg, Pa.: Stackpole Books, 2007.
Wiest, Andrew. The Vietnam War, 1956–1975. Oxford: Osprey, 2002.
Young, Marilyn B. The Vietnam Wars, 1945–1990. New York: HarperCollins, 1991.
VIETNAM VETERANS
Bonior, David E., Steven M. Champlin, and Timothy S. Kolly. The Vietnam Veteran: A History of Neglect. New York: Praeger, 1984.
Boulanger, Ghislaine, and Charles Kadushin. The Vietnam Veteran Redefined: Fact and Fiction. Hillsdale, N.J.: L. Erlbaum, 1986.
Brende, Joel Osler, and Erwin Randolph Parson. Vietnam Veterans: The Road to Recovery. New York: Plenum Press, 1985.
Dean, Eric T. Shook Over Hell: Post-traumatic Stress, Vietnam, and the Civil War. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1997.
Hunt, Andrew E. The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War. New York: New York University Press, 1999.
Lifton, Robert Jay. Home from the War: Vietnam Veterans: Neither Victims nor Executioners. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1973.
Moser, Richard R. The New Winter Soldiers: GI and Veteran Dissent During the Vietnam Era. New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
Nelson, Deborah. The War Behind Me: Vietnam Veterans Confront the Truth About U.S. War Crimes. New York: Basic Books, 2008.
Nicosia, Gerald. Home to War: A History of the Vietnam Veterans’ Movement. New York: Crown, 2001.
Palmer, Laura. Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrances from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. New York: Random House, 1987.
Polner, Murray. No Victory Parades: The Return of the Vietnam Veteran. New York: Holt, Rinehart and Winston, 1971.
Scott, Wilbur J. Vietnam Veterans Since the War: The Politics of PTSD, Agent Orange, and the National Memorial. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2004.
Shay, Jonathan. Achilles in Vietnam: Combat Trauma and the Undoing of Character. New York: Atheneum, 1994.
Starr, Paul, Ralph Nader, James F. Henry, and Raymond P. Bonner. The Discarded Army: Veterans After Vietnam: The Nader Report on Vietnam Veterans and the Veterans Administration. New York: Charterhouse, 1973.
The Vietnam Veteran in Contemporary Society: Collected Materials Pertaining to the Young Veterans. Washington, D.C.: Department of Medicine and Surgery, Veterans Administration, 1972.
VIETNAM WAR, ORAL HISTORY
Appy, Christian G. Patriots: The Vietnam War Remembered from All Sides. New York: Viking, 2003.
Baker, Mark. Nam: The Vietnam War in the Words of the Men and Women Who Fought There. New York: W. Morrow, 1981.
Engelmann, Larry. Tears Before the Rain: An Oral History of the Fall of South Vietnam. New York: Oxford University Press, 1990.
Fawcett, Bill. Hunters and Shooters: An Oral History of the U.S. Navy Seals in Vietnam. New York: W. Morrow, 1995.
Gioglio, Gerald R. Days of Decision: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors in the Military During the Vietnam War. Trenton, N.J.: Broken Rifle Press, 1989.
Lehrack, Otto J. No Shining Armor: The Marines at War in Vietnam: An Oral History. Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1992.
Marshall, Kathryn. In the Combat Zone: An Oral History of American Women in Vietnam, 1966–1975. Boston: Little, Brown, 1987.
Maurer, Harry. Strange Ground: Americans in Vietnam, 1945–1975, an Oral History. New York: H. Holt, 1989.
Santoli, Al. Everything We Had: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. New York: Random House, 1981.
______. Leading the Way: How Vietnam Veterans Rebuilt the U.S. Military: An Oral History. New York: Ballantine Books, 1993.
Terry, Wallace. Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. New York: Random House, 1984.
Tollefson, James W. The Strength Not to Fight: An Oral History of Conscientious Objectors of the Vietnam War. Boston: Little, Brown, 1993.
Willenson, Kim. The Bad War: An Oral History of the Vietnam War. New York: New American Library, 1987.
MEMOIRS AND FICTION BY VETERANS INTERVIEWED FOR THIS BOOK
Flanagan, John. Born in Brooklyn … Raised in the CAV! Bloomington, Ind.: Xlibris, 2001.
German, Ed. Deep Down in Brooklyn. Bloomington, Ind.: AuthorHouse, 2011.
O’Neill, Susan. Don’t Mean Nothing: Short Stories of Vietnam. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 2004.
ORAL HISTORY, THEORY
Abrams, Lynn. Oral History Theory. New York: Routledge, 2010.
Frisch, Michael. A Shared Authority: Essays on the Craft and Meaning of Oral History and Public History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1990.
Gluck, Sherna Berger, and Daphne Patai, eds. Women’s Words: The Feminist Practice of Oral History. New York: Routledge, 1991.
Grele, Ronald J., ed. Envelopes of Sound: The Art of Oral History. New York: Praeger, 1991.
Maynes, Mary Jo, Jennifer L. Pierce, and Barbara Laslett. Telling Stories: The Use of Personal Narratives in the Social Sciences and History. Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 2008.
Perks, Robert, and Alistair Thomson, eds. The Oral History Reader. New York: Routledge, 1998.
Portelli, Alessandro. The Battle of Valle Giulia: Oral History and the Art of Dialogue. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 1997.
______. The Death of Luigi Trastulli, and Other Stories: Form and Meaning in Oral History. Albany: State University of New York Press, 1991.
Thomson, Alistair. Anzac Memories: Living with the Legend. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1994.
Tonkin, Elizabeth. Narrating Our Pasts: The Social Construction of Oral History. Cambridge, U.K.: Cambridge University Press, 1992.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I would like to thank the following individuals for taking the time to speak with me about this project, whether officially as interviewees or in other capacities. These people generously gave me hours of their time and energy. Many are veterans, some are not. Several have passed away in the years it took to complete this project. Without them this book simply would not exist: Carol S. Aljets, Barbara Allier, Frank Arce, James Bacolo, Mauro Bacolo, Barry Berger, James Best, Jason Bianco, Edward Blanco, Louis H. Blumengarten, Larry Boyken, James Bradley, Thomas Brinson, Thomas Brooks, Henry Burke, Kevin Burns, Don Buzney, Victor Candelaria, John Canney, Frank Careccia, Larry Cary, Joe Casal, Lucylee Chiles, Michael Chirieleison, Arthur Chitty, James Clark, Grant Coates, Anthony Cochran, Stuart Cohen, Lee Covino, Anthony D’Aleo, Ken Dalton, Ed Daniels, Rudolf Dent, Frank DeSantis, Paul DeSaro, Martin V. D’Giff, Thomas Dimitry, John Di Sanza, Carl Dix, Isaac Dweck, Charles Eaddy, Bernard Edelman, Richard Eggers, Emile Ercolino, Francisco Esquilin, Gerald Faulk, Joseph Ferrandino, Paula Fichtner, Barry Fingerhut, Israel Fishman, Sandy Fishman and Elisa Andrews, John Flanagan, Dominick Florio, Tom Fox, Frank Freeman, Danny Friedman, Joan Furey, Jim Gabe, Robert Garguilo, Thomas J. Garvey, Bruce Geiger, Ed German, Joseph Giannini, Karen Gleeson, Tom Glenn, David Glick, Stephen M. Gluck, Mike Gold, Steven Gombas, Jose Gonzalez, Robert Gratz, Richard Green, Robert Greene, William Gribben, Wayne Griffith, Martin Grosso, Pat Gualtieri, Mike Guerin, Hector Guzman, Herman Guzman, Jerome Hall, Robert Hall, John and Denis Hamill, Thomas Harnisher, Richard Harris, William Harris, Alex Heitlinger, Allen Higgins, Samuel Himmelstein, Michael Hipscher, Boyce Holt, Benjamin Homes, Mike Horan, Matthew Ioca
velli, Joanne Izzo, William Jacob, Ron Jensen, Peter Katopes, Kenneth Katta, Milton Katz, Joseph Kearney, Ann L. Kelsey, Jack Kenigsberger, Neil Kenny, Bruce Kessler, Michael King, Rita King, Paul Knox, Jerome Krase, Walter Kudlacki, Fred LaVentua, Christopher Leach, Carmine Lengua, Hector Leon, Gary Levine, Louieco G. Lewis, Philip Lockit, Joseph M. Logan, Fred Louis, Peter Mahoney, Andrew Manicone, Louis Marcello, James J. Markson, Nancy Martin, Peter Martin, Wade Martin, Luigi Masu, Nick L. Mazzella, Sue McAnanama, William A. McCloud, Vince McGowan, Jim McKee, James McMillan, Brian J. McPadden, Peter Meloro, Ray Mesk, Denney Meyer, Victoria Miano, Joy Molfetto, Edward Molineaux, Patrick Mooney, Joel Murov, Kathy Mussen, Manny Napolitano, Stephen Neftleberg, Tin Nguyen, Joseph Nigro, Yuri Niyazov, Lana Noone, Bridget Nowicki, Denis O’Keefe, Robert Oliva, Laurence Olivo, Paul O’Neill, Susan O’Neill, Pippin Parker, Alexander Pas, David Pereplyotchik, Glenn Petersen, Joseph Piazza, Andrew Pietri, Anthony Pinkard, John Platania, Ronald Powers, Robert Ptachik, Angel Ramirez, Juan Ramos, Dorothy Ratigan, Daniel Rice, Ernesto C. Rigby, John Rinaldi, Ray Robertson, Joseph M. Rup Jr., Andy Salimury, Joe Sanchez Picon, Robert Santos, John Sartorius, John Scarimbolo, Auggie Scarinio, William Schank, Barry Schechter, Susan Schnall, James Schrang, Leonard Sciascia, Paul Sheridan, Richard Sheridan, Barbara M. Simmons, Gerald Singer, Albert Singerman, Philip Skolnick, John Slater, Ron Sleeis, Jay Small, Carrie Spearman, Jack Squeo, Mary Beth Stack, William D. Stack Jr., Amadeo Stephanelli, Christopher Strunk, Herbert Sweat, Ralph Testa, Rudy Thompson, Pastor Toro, Kristin Tsafos, Kristina Vaskys, Lucian Vecchio, Anthony Velez, Carlos Velez, Anthony Wallace, Allen E. Walters, Ed White, Arnold Willence, Van Wilson, David Woodrow, and Michael Yates.
The following individuals, who were at one time students of mine, collected interviews and transcribed and offered assistance, for which I am grateful: Christine Sciascia, Eric Smith, Suella Vainstein, Matthew Gherman, Ruben Valencia, Claire Heitlinger, Nicole Lebenson, Rebecca McIvor, David Imparato, Yakov Herman, Linda Schwartz, Brant Levin, Kemile Jackson, Ancil Richardson, and Nathan Wilson.
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