The era from roughly 1965 to 1975. The folklore of the Vietnam War included both older
ongoing traditions of the U.S. military and new folklore generated in the unique context
of the war. Folk naming, slang and jargon, superstitions, jokes, songs, proverbs, graffiti,
and narrative forms firom the older stream of Army lore remained in active circulation,
much of it learned in basic training as the informal education of new soldiers into the
group. Terms like Jeep (from GP—general purpose vehicle), slang like “shit on a
shingle” (creamed chipped beef on toast), beliefs like the “three on a match” taboo,
sayings like “Military intelligence is a contradiction in terms,” cadence calls like “I
wanna be an airborne ranger” or those involving “Jodie,” the civilian who in the soldier’s
absence gets his girl and/or car—all this older Army lore persisted into the Vietnam era.
As the war developed, new folklore emerged. Technical slang evolved, such as “lurp”
(for LRRP, long-range reconnaissance patrols) and “huey” (for UH, utility helicopter).
One famous term came from the radio alphabet letters for V and C—“Victor” and
“Charlie”—the faceless Viet Cong enemy thus becoming the personalized “Charlie,”
while “dink” and “slope” evolved as racist epithets for all Vietnamese people.
Vietnamese words and terms became part of the soldiers’ slang as well—sin loi (sorry
about that), didi mau (go away), di wee and chum wee (lieutenant and captain), and a
pidgin scale of good and bad (number one and number ten respectively) were very
common. “Taxi girl” became the generic term for a prostitute, though the Saigon-based
reference didn’t apply to “the bush,” that is, to (rural areas). The slang term for the
United States was “the world,” as in “I’ll be back in the world in fifty-four days.”
The soldiers cycled into and out of the war individually in one-year assignments radier
than as units. This created a great emphasis on their DEROS (date of estimated return
from overseas) and on their “short” (as in a small number of days remaining) status,
leading to quips like “I’m so short I trip over rugs.” Xeroxed “count-down calendars,”
with one section to be colored in each day for 365 days, were ubiquitous. These depicted
such things as maps of the United States, naked “round-eyed” [non-Oriental] women, or
the word HOME. Superstitions surrounded “short” soldiers; it was considered good luck
to be around anyone who was a “two-digit midget” or less.
A common form of verbal lore was a set of combat corollaries to Murphy’s Law. The
first was usually “Murphy was a’grunt’ (infantryman), and others were wry or cynical
comments on combat, military bureaucracy, or the building frustration of being in a war
with no clear mission. Some examples: “Remember, your weapon was made by the
lowest bidder”; “The easy way is always mined”; “No inspection-ready unit ever passed
combat”; “All five-second fiises last three seconds”; “The only thing more accurate than
incoming fire is incoming friendly fire”; and “Peace is our profession—mass murder is
just our hobby.”
Traditional narratives circulated widely, often in the form of rumors—of large-scale
confrontations with the NVA (the regular army of North Vietnam), of mass troop
movements down the Ho Chi Minh Trail, of the entry of the Chinese into the war, of
MIG aircraft in use by the enemy (a rare but deadly occurrence), or of large groups of
defectors forming villages in Cambodia or Laos. Legends circulated too—about CIA
(Central Intelligence Agency) operations, about the generals and politicians running the
war (President Lyndon B.Johnson and General William Westmoreland were favorite
topics), about the tunnel complexes under Cu Chi and the Black Virgin Mountain, Nui Ba
Din. A common theme of folk anecdotes was the lucky wound or the self-inflicted wound
that got a soldier out of combat.
As the body count grew, the 1960s counterculture emerged full blown, and opposition
at home to the war became more vocal—especially after the January-February 1968 Tet
Offensive in which 3,895 U.S. troops were killed—and graffiti, Xeroxlore, sayings,
jokes, anecdotes, and folk narratives in Vietnam began to reflect these changes. Peace
symbols on helmet liners, as tattoos, or as necklaces proliferated; anecdotes emerged of
soldiers who stopped carrying weapons, even into combat; the elaborate embroidery done
by Vietnamese “mama-sans” on fatigue jackets began to state new themes—“Another
soldier for peace”; “Black man killing yellow man for white man”; and “Killing for peace
is like fucking for virginity” all appeared beside the older motifs of “Proud American”;
“I’ve been to Hell”; or “Semper Fi” (Semper Fidelis, always faithful, the Marine Corps’
motto). Numerous belief tales about what protesters back in “the world” were doing to
Vietnam vets found wide circulation.
A distinct folklore of the Vietnam vet also emerged as increasing numbers of soldiers
returned to find themselves having great difficulty readjusting to civilian life. Jokes about
vets cussing obsessively at dinner, much to grandma’s dismay; anecdotes about vets
strangling their wives when awakened without warning; and the use of the “crazed
Vietnam vet” as villain in both folk and popular narratives—added to the extensive but
deeply ambivalent folklore of America’s longest and most confusing military venture.
The novels of Tim O’Brien about the war give an accurate and detailed picture of the
performance context of much of the folklore enumerated here.
Thomas E.Barden
References
Dewhurst, C.Kurt. 1988. Pleiku Jackets, Tour Jackets, and Working Jackets: “The Letter Sweaters
of War.” Journal of American Folklore 101:48–52.
O’Brien,Tim. 1973. If I Die in a Combat Zone. New York: Delta.
——. 1979. Going after Cacciato. New York: Delta.
——. 1990. The Things They Carried. New York: Penguin.
Vietnam. 1989. Journal of American Folklore (Special Issue) 102:No. 406.