"Clearly the average PC vet will be as restless as a Congo native, and will be in no shape to be turned loose on the American public without an intensive orientation program. "Our organization intends to set up Displaced Peace Corpsmen camps. To wean them away from the thatch hut architecture the veterans have grown to love, the DP camps will be composed of split-level ranches and Cape Cod houses located on gently curving streets.
Art Buchwald writes: The Returning Volunteer - From The Volunteer Newsletter March 1962
The Returning Veterans
Art Buchwald
New York-Nobody realizes it, but by next year many Peace Corps volunteers who have served their time abroad will be returning to the United States to be given honorable discharges. If the Peace Corps veterans are anything like other American vets, they will present a problem and we finally met a man who has been worrying about it.
Mr. Marvin Kitman, a writer, has formed a nonprofit organization of volunteers called the Peace Corps Veterans Administration. Mr. Kitman told us his organization is prepared to help Peace Corps veterans find their way back to the American way of life.
"We're not concerned about them finding jobs," Mr. Kitman said, "After all, Peace Corpsmen will have been working for two years at salaries ranging from $60 a month in Nigeria to $182 a month in Tanganyika. There are plenty of jobs in the United States in that pay range. "The problem the Peace Corps veteran will face is readjusting to America again. For two years he has lived like a native, eating their foods, living in their huts, doctoring himself with native medicines, and sleeping on straw mats.
The Flabby Americans
"By the time they come back to the States, nine out of ten PC vets will despise the flabby Americans they will find in their homes, their schools, and the churches of their choice. "What is even worse, they will feel we don't understand them, and since they've been speaking Swahili, Tagalog, Urdu, and Twi for two years, we probably won't.
"Clearly the average PC vet will be as restless as a Congo native, and will be in no shape to be turned loose on the American public without an intensive orientation program. "Our organization intends to set up Displaced Peace Corpsmen camps. To wean them away from the thatch hut architecture the veterans have grown to love, the DP camps will be composed of split-level ranches and Cape Cod houses located on gently curving streets.
"The primary job of the DP camps will be rehabilitation. They will have to be taught how to use knives and forks again, how to sit on chairs, how to knot a tie, and how to write something besides an inflammatory postcard to their friends back home."
Value of Money
Mr. Kitman said one of the most urgent problems the DP camps would deal with was to make the PC veteran understand the value of American money.
"Sargent Shiver has said the Peace Corpsmen will receive a bonus on return to the States, depending on the number of months he has spent overseas. In most cases it will amount to around $1800.
"If the veterans get the money outright, some of them, used to living in the bush, could make this sum last eight years. They would knock the hell out of the entire American economy. "Therefore the DP camp will show nothing but television commercials to get the veteran to start spending his money again at the same rate as his fellow-Americans."
Mr. Kitman said his organization, like all veterans' organizations, intends to have a Peace Corps Veterans Day at which time Peace Corps vets will hold parades in depressed areas all over the United States.
Legal Aid
"The PCVA will also provide legal assistance for vets who have been arrested for trying to work 16 hours a day and week ends, as they did in the Sierra Leone. No country that's talking about a five-hour-day can allow people to work that long without putting them in jail." We asked Mr. Kitman how he got interested in the Peace Corps Veterans Administration, and he told us. "I have a friend in the Peace Corps and he came home on a short leave and we were walking down 56"th Street one afternoon and he saw a hole dug by Consolidated Edison, so he stopped, grabbed a shovel and started filling it in. It was such a reflex action that I said to myself, "Some day these boys are going to need help." Copyright, New York Herald Tribune
