I Volunteered: Canadian Vietnam Vets Remember

J.L. Granatstein, distinguished research professor emeritus of history
at York University, is the author of Who Killed Canadian History? and
co-author of The Canadian 100: The 100 Most Influential Canadians of the
20th Century and the Dictionary of Canadi

Most Canadians will almost certainly be astonished to learn that
thousands of their compatriots fought with American forces in Vietnam.
Estimates range from 3000 to 50,000, with the actual number likely in
the middle. How is it that there are no accurate figures? The answer
suggested by Tracey Arial is that U.S. recruiters knew there was
difficulty in enlisting foreign nationals and, anxious to meet their
quotas, gave fictitious U.S. addresses to Canadians. What we do know is
that more than 200 died in the fighting and others distinguished
themselves.

Arial’s book is no piece of scholarship. There are curious rank
designations (Corporal lieutenant, for example) and historical slips
aplenty, but there is also much information. The Vietnam vets have been
denied membership in the Legion, which seems puzzling for an
organization desperately in need of younger members. It took years to
get the Department of Veterans Affairs to honor a reciprocal agreement
with the United States to look after “each other’s” veterans, with
Ottawa creating unnecessary obstacles that barred vets from care. And
even erecting a memorial in Ottawa to those who served ran into repeated
roadblocks erected by bureaucrats. This is all puzzling. Opinion polls
show that during the war Canadians supported the U.S. efforts, despite
the protests that led to university teach-ins and demonstrations before
American consulates across the country. But the Vietnam War’s unhappy
ending, its unrelenting savagery, and the feeling that all who served
were “baby killers” or My Lai perpetrators presumably have had their
effects in Canada as well as in the United States.

What Arial does not really answer is why so many Canadians wanted to go
into the American forces. Why were the Canadian Forces insufficient for
them? Why did so many francophones enlist? This is a subject worth
further examination.