Vietnam, Protest, and Counterculture 479all corners of American life, including the military. Perhaps the most important
antiwar forces, in fact, were soldiers and veterans. From the big buildup of
American troops in Vietnam in the mid 1960s onward, there were always seri-
ous problems inside the armed forces, making it so much harder to effec-
tively fight against the enemy, and these issues are often neglected in studies
of the war. But in fact there were significant issues regarding class, race, drug
use, morale, and dissent that acted like a plague on the military in Vietnam.
Many scholars have called Vietnam a “working-class war.” Among soldiers
in Vietnam, there was also a clear connection between class, and education,
and their chances of survival. Draftees were far likelier to get killed or wound-
ed than enlisted men. Soldiers who had not graduated from High School had
casualty rates 3 times higher than those who had a diploma, while young men
whose families had incomes in the $4-7,000 range [around $30-50,000 today]
were 3 times more likely to die or be hurt than those with incomes over
$17,000 [over $125,000 in 2014 dollars]. African American casualty rates were
higher as well—25 percent of the U.S. total between 1965-1968 and 13 per-
cent for the entire war, and the average combat rifle company, soldiers more
likely to fight, was over 50 percent Black and Hispanic. White soldiers from
southern states, the poorest in the country, also had much higher casualty rates
than the norm. Along with the class divide among Vietnam soldiers, there was
serious racial conflict. Many Black soldiers saw the contradiction, or hypoc-
risy, of being sent to Vietnam to fight for “democracy” while many American
political leaders were fighting against civil rights at home. Leslie Whitfield, an
African American soldier, wondered “why can we be... fighting for this
country... and then go back and we can’t take advantage of opportunities
that were offered us by the Constitution?”
Such sentiment became more common and Black soldiers began to iden-
tify with each other along racial lines, wearing black arm bands, offering black
power salutes, and giving the “dap,” an intricate handshake, to other “bloods”
in their unit. At the same time, racial tension between Black and White sol-
diers was growing worse. In some units, African American and Caucasian
troops would not communicate with each other. Similar to Black solidarity,
Chicano and Puerto Rican soldiers began to identify and associate with each
other. Miguel Lemus, who served in Vietnam in 1967, explained that “in my
company we had to protect each other ‘cause no one else was going to protect
us.” By 1967, incoming Black and Chicano soldiers could not avoid noticing