Questions to Ask a Vietnam Veteran, and What to Avoid
The service is only half of what this generation carries. The other half is what happened when they got back, and it is the part nobody asks about.
Everything in our general guide to asking a veteran about their service applies here, and there is one thing specific to this generation that changes where you should start.
Men who served in Vietnam came home to a country that had made up its mind about them, often to no welcome at all, sometimes to open hostility, and almost always to an instruction to say nothing about it. Many took that instruction and kept it for fifty years. So with this generation the silence is frequently not about what happened overseas. It is about what happened at the airport.
Where to start
1. How did you end up going?
Why it works. Draft, enlistment, a number, a decision made at nineteen. It is the most answerable question there is and it starts the story before he leaves the country.
How to ask it. Ask what his friends did. That situates him among people rather than in a policy.
What it opens up. The draft lottery, a recruiter, a father's expectation, or a deliberate choice.
2. What was your job?
Why it works. The overwhelming majority of men who served were not in sustained combat, and the assumption that they were is itself a barrier. Asking about the job lets him tell you what he actually did.
How to ask it. Ask him to explain the work properly. Let it take a while.
What it opens up. Real expertise, and relief at not having to correct an assumption.
3. What was the country itself like?
Why it works. It asks him to be an observer of a place, and many men who served there developed a real affection for it that they have had almost no opportunity to express.
How to ask it. Ask about the heat, the rain, the smell, the landscape.
What it opens up. Warmth, detail, and encounters with civilians that he values and rarely mentions.
4. Who did you write to, and what did you tell them?
Why it works. It reaches the relationship between him and home, which is where much of this generation's difficulty actually sits.
How to ask it. Ask whether the letters still exist. Often they do, in somebody's attic.
What it opens up. What he protected people from, and what that cost him to carry alone.
The question that matters most
5. What was it like coming home?
Why it works. For this generation this is frequently the real story, and it is the one almost nobody has ever asked. It is also askable without touching anything that happened in country.
How to ask it. Ask about the specific day. Where he landed, what he wore, who was there, what the first week was like.
What it opens up. The reception, the silence afterwards, work, and how long it took before he told anybody anything.
6. When did you first talk about it to anyone?
Why it works. It acknowledges the silence directly and treats it as a fact rather than a failing.
How to ask it. Ask who it was and what made it possible.
What it opens up. Frequently a wife, another veteran, or a moment decades later, and it is often deeply affecting.
7. What do people get wrong about it?
Why it works. He has lived alongside a caricature for fifty years. Being asked to correct it, by family, is a genuine offer of respect.
How to ask it. Offer a lazy assumption for him to knock down, and then let him talk without interrupting.
What it opens up. His actual view, which is almost always more complicated than any version the family had.
8. Who would you most want to find again?
Why it works. It names the men without requiring any account of what they went through together.
How to ask it. Get names and units written down properly. Reunions and registries do exist and this has worked for people.
What it opens up. The friendships, and sometimes a search that gives him something back.
Practical notes for this generation specifically
Men who served in Vietnam are now in their seventies and eighties, which changes the practicalities as much as the tone.
- Do it in short sessions. Forty minutes, repeatedly, over months. Long sessions tire everybody and the fourth conversation is reliably better than the first.
- Write down units and place names carefully. Vietnamese place names are frequently misspelled in family records, and a correct spelling is what lets a grandchild find the location on a map later.
- Ask about the whole tour, not just the deployment. Training, the journey out, the base, the return. Many men find the surrounding material far easier to start with and it leads inward on its own.
- Expect it to come in the wrong order. He will jump from 1969 to a story about his father to something that happened last year. Do not steer. Sort it afterwards.
If he has never talked about it to anyone
Fifty years of not talking about something is a practised habit, and it will not turn over in one afternoon because a grandchild asked nicely. Two things help, and neither is a technique so much as a posture.
Give him a reason that is not about him. Men who will not talk for their own sake will frequently talk so that a grandchild has it, and saying that out loud, plainly, is often the thing that unlocks it. The other is to make clear that you are prepared to hear the parts that are not heroic, and then to actually do it without flinching or reassuring when he tests you with something small.
And if the answer stays no, let it be no. Write down what he is willing to give, which is usually more than the family expected, and leave the rest. A record with acknowledged silences in it is honest. A record obtained by pressure is not worth what it costs.
What to avoid
- Do not ask whether he killed anyone. It is the one question every veteran has been asked by somebody thoughtless, and asking it marks you as that person immediately.
- Do not ask him to justify the war. He was nineteen and he did not set the policy. Conflating the two is exactly what happened to him at home.
- Do not offer repeated thanks through the conversation. It is well meant and it works as a full stop every time.
- Do not correct him from something you read. His account is the primary source. Yours is a book.