More on Pleiku Jackets in Vietnam

Abstract

I would like to remark on the interesting article on souvenir jackets worn by some Americans in Vietnam (C. Kurt Dewhurst, Pleiku ackets, TourJackets, and WorkingJackets: 'The Letter Sweaters of War', JAF 399:48-52). In particular I would like to caution that such jackets were seldom purchased by combat soldiers, and therefore say something about a subculture within the military, not about all American personnel in Vietnam. Readers should note that such jackets were sold primarily to rear echelon personnel with little exposure to war. Those personnel had much greater access to souvenir stores and tailors than did combat veterans, and perhaps sought to dramatize their service. Dewhurst takes too seriously the almost universal slogan on tour jackets, When I die I'll go to heaven, because I've spent my time in hell, followed by the city in which one served and the years of one's tour. The irony apparent to a Vietnam veteran is that Danang, Pleiku, Saigon, and the other cities commonly found embroidered on such jackets were generally extremely safe. Soldiers whose tours might be described as hellish did not, in my experience in 1967-68, turn to the self-dramatization of such slogans. Dewhurst notes that tour jackets served as statements of group (p. 49). In contrast, combat soldiers employed material statements of their individual identities. The personalization of combat uniforms, tolerated in proportion to the soldiers' involvement in combat, works in an opposite direction to the tour jackets' affirmation of identity within a military unit. The combat soldier's modifications affirmed his essential self-image as a civilian. Soldiers penned slogans on cloth helmet covers and flak jackets that were either antimilitary (peace symbols or F.T.A., for fuck the Army) or overtly civilian (e.g., declarations of being short, i.e., having little time left before one's tour was up). Some combat soldiers personalized their gear with the nicknames they used in Vietnam, perhaps a gesture toward preserving their civilian name and nature: the self that was in Vietnam was not John Smith but Smokey or Motown or Cowboy.