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Steve Sober: Coming Home, Crossing the Military-Civilian Divide

1 Steve Sober, "Crossing the Military Civilian Divide," interviewed by Dr. Jason A. Higgins, Jan. 25, 2023, Williamsburg, VA. "Crossing the Military-Civilian Divide" project is part of a 4-VA Collaborative research project by Dr. Jason A. Higgins, postdoctoral fellow in digital humanities, and Andre Taylor, oral historian at the College of William and Mary. Special thanks to our three research assistants Leena Alsayab, Madison Cholewa, and Gabrielle Wells, who are undergraduate students and recent graduates of Virginia Tech.

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Coming Home
"Landing, when the plane hit the ground, everybody was up on the seat[s], jumping up and down. The stewardesses, 'forget it, there is nothing we can do about this.' I will never forget that."

"[We] got on buses to Fort Lewis. Went through some of the training grounds at Fort Lewis and machine guns [were] going off and training . . . everyone was holding onto their seats. We know we are home but — I never forgot that either."
Veterans coming back from Vietnam had a very different experience than other veterans coming back to the States in prior wars. With tours of duty usually lasting a year, when one soldier was returning from Vietnam, another was shipped off to fight. Paired with the unpopularity of the Vietnam war, there were few welcome home parades.

Sober's description of arriving home highlights the reality that many Vietnam veterans faced — the excitement of being home followed by the fact the war was still ongoing — and the effects the war had on them: while they had left Vietnam, Vietnam hadn't left them.