Vietnam Veterans of America

The Vietnam War enlarged existing mainstream veterans' organizations in the United States and produced many new veterans' associations, among them the Vietnam Veterans of America (VVA). These newer organizations sprang up in part because many of the more than 2.5 million soldiers, sailors, and airmen who served within the borders of Vietnam (and nearly a million more who were stationed in the Southeast Asian theater of operations) felt more comfortable working with groups that better reflected their generation's outlook. The “founding principle” of the Vietnam Veterans of America makes this point crystal clear: “never again shall one generation of veterans abandon another.” The organization seeks “to promote and support the full range of issues important to Vietnam veterans, to create a new identity for that generation of veterans, and to change public perception of Vietnam veterans.”

Vietnam veterans experienced several outwardly novel situations that seemed to require the creation of supportive organizations to service both traditional wartime problems as well as distinctively Vietnam-related difficulties. Along with such customary troubles as physical disabilities and family or career adjustments that returning veterans of earlier wars faced, Vietnam veterans also had to deal with a host of dreadful, apparently unique circumstances: a lengthy, unpopular war that the United States lost; accusations of widespread atrocities committed by American soldiers upon Vietnamese civilians; a popular perception that large numbers of these soldiers were drug addicted and socially dysfunctional; war-induced psychological damage labeled post-traumatic stress disorder; physical maladies resulting from improper handling of such toxic substances as Agent Orange; ecological devastation; and numerous media images that clearly demonstrated the horrors of that war.

Television coverage of the Vietnam War provided graphic, ghastly, and immediate images that media in prior wars could not convey. Although similar terrible consequences occurred in past wars, the media's ability to chronicle combat had vastly improved by the time of hostilities in Vietnam. Photographs or footage of self-immolated monks, summarily executed Viet Cong, a napalmed girl, and swaths of denuded jungle captured war as it really is, not as it was typically presented in Hollywood recreations, which by the 1960s had become America's chief purveyor of the popular history of previous conflicts. Perhaps the media of earlier, more popular military campaigns were willing to downplay, delay, or overlook reportage of negative incidents, thereby diluting or eliminating their impact. In Vietnam such imagery became defining, damning representations of that Cold War conflict. And all of those images reflected on Vietnam veterans, whom the VVA hoped to redeem.

Bobby Muller formed Vietnam Veterans of America in 1978. It was chartered by Congress in 1986 and claims a membership of more than 50,000. Headquartered in Silver Spring, Maryland, it is managed by a national board of directors. It is funded exclusively by private contributions (cash, household goods donations, etc.) and organized as a not-for-profit corporation. The VVA has 43 state councils and 525 local chapters, and publishes The VVA Veteran and several guides to veterans' benefits. VVA Service Representatives are available throughout the nation to assist Vietnam veterans in need. The VVA also engages in nonpartisan research topics “pertaining to the relationship between Vietnam-era veterans and the American society, the Vietnam War experience, the role of the United States in securing peaceful coexistence for the world community and other nations …”.

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