From the introduction:
“….we pursue a hunch that the tensions between POWs were rooted in the disparate socioeconomic backgrounds of the antagonists. The privileged backgrounds of the SROs were in sharp contrast with the modest origins of war resisters. It’s a hunch triggered by clues scattered by Craig Howes in his 1993 book
Voices of the Vietnam POWs, and reinforced in Milton Bates’s 1996
The Wars We Took to Vietnam. We use newly available biographical and oral history material to show that class disparities extended into the SRO ranks. Objections to the war voiced by two of the most senior officers, Gene Wilber and Edison Miller, got them banished by their peers. Just as “class” designates an objective social position with implications for wealth and income and values derived from its material realities, it also connotes the subjective evaluations that members of one class make of others. Modifiers like “upper” and “lower” class imply character and even moral judgments that are then arranged, even if unwittingly, into hierarchies for assigning social standing and status.”