History is the version of past events that people have decided to agree upon.
—Napoleon Bonaparte
I was in high school during the final years of America’s involvement in the Vietnam War. My father worked at Penny Saver Market in downtown Berkeley at the time, and I recall his telling about watching the clashes between protestors and National Guardsmen, as they exchanged volleys of tear gas and rocks, back and forth on Shattuck Avenue, in front of the store.
A majority of Americans supported the war effort in its early years, but as the first “televised war,” that support waned as graphic images of casualties and nightly body counts were repeated, night after night. After the Tet Offensive in1968, turmoil at home became the norm. People argued about the war, and “peace” marches and anti-war protests occurred at college campuses across the country. Anarchist groups like the Weathermen and the SDS sprang up, using their so-called opposition to war as a pretext for violence. From the era of Kennedy, to Johnson, to Nixon, the central, substantive issue in America, was the war in Vietnam.
As public opinion about Vietnam was largely affected by the media coverage at the time, a valid question is: Just how objective was the reporting? Did the cameras show what really happened, or was their focus directed by some agenda, consciously or otherwise? After Saigon fell in 1975, the opinions of Americans about Vietnam continued to be shaped, no longer by the press however, but by Hollywood. Starting with The Deer Hunter in 1978, Apocalypse Now in 1979, Platoon, Full Metal Jacket, and Born on the Fourth of July in the 1980s, and ending with Forest Gump in 1994, the stage was set for negative stereotypes of Vietnam veterans that still exist today. Vietnam veterans are portrayed in these films as everything from rapists to murders, drug dealers and addicts, deserters, suicidal crazies, and just plain stupid.
What did the soldiers who served in Vietnam do to deserve such treatment? The men and women who served there answered their country’s call, just as previous generations had, albeit in a war that was horribly mismanaged by the politicians in Washington. And regardless of stories and movies to the contrary by the profiteers of misinformation, like Oliver Stone, the factual record conclusively shows that the vast majority of those who served in Vietnam did so honorably, and then they came home to become productive, law abiding, tax paying citizens.
Several months ago, an extraordinary man named Bruce Cowee, a retired Western and Delta Airlines pilot who served in Vietnam, came to ALIVE bearing a manuscript he had been working on for 20 years. It was a collection of true, historic accounts from 35 other men who had also served in America’s “un-popular” war. After reading several of the stories, I knew this was an important work that needed to be published.
Cowee’s book, Vietnam to Western Airlines, presents an oral history of the war in Vietnam. It includes the stories and photographs of more than 30 pilots and several ground-force Marines, all of whom served honorably in Southeast Asia. Every man featured in the book is the “real thing;” their 
stories spanning a nine-year period from1964 to 1973. The book is about a group of young men in their 20s, thrust into situations of incredible excitement and danger, given an awesome amount of responsibility, and responding with performances that defy any measure you could come up with to evaluate them, only to return to an unappreciative and often hostile home front.
Vietnam to Western Airlines is a long-overdue tribute to the brave men who served in America’s most misunderstood war. In telling their stories, Cowee’s hope is to not only to honor them, but to change the stereotypes of these heroic veterans, as portrayed in books and by Hollywood, opening a fresh dialogue as we welcome back a new generation of young men and women from their service in the Middle East.
The best way to know the truth of history is to learn from those who actually lived it. Reading Vietnam to Western Airlines will allow you to do that.
Vietnam to Western Airlines is available at www.vietnamtowesternairlines.com
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