Military and Oral History Conference:
Between Memory and History
“The Goal was to Leave”: An Examination of the Individual Soldier’s
Experience in the Vietnam War
Kelly E., Crager, Oral History Project at the Vietnam Center and Archive, Texas Tech University
American military veterans of the Vietnam War have often struggled to adjust to life in the United States in the years following their service in Southeast Asia. Many have expressed bitterness and disillusionment regarding the war, focusing on faulty American military strategy, undue political interference in military matters, and society’s treatment of veterans returning from the conflict. A sense of societal isolation developed among many Vietnam veterans, and they looked to protect themselves from what they believed to be a society that did not try to understand them, and that would not understand them even if it tried. For years, these veterans chose to deal with the legacy of the war in their individually specific ways, shutting out others and not speaking about their wartime experiences. As more veterans have begun to speak about their experiences over the past several years, however, it is becoming apparent that the relationship of the individual to the larger group—in this case, the soldier to his squad, platoon, or company—had a vitally important impact upon the individual’s wartime experiences. In this study, I will examine the experiences of American service personnel regarding their time in Southeast Asia during the war. Through the use of in-depth oral history interviews, one finds the inescapable theme of individuals searching for the camaraderie and understanding of a larger group in an effort to come to grips with their wartime experiences, and how for years during and following the war, they could not find this security.