I read this link last night before I posted, only about 5 pages in, but actually not many recollection from soldiers during that time in these pages. I thought this post did a nice job of summarizing things.

Ok, I think we can agree that, do to lack of news coverage, there probably was no regular, and likely no instances at all, of groups lining up and spitting at returning soldiers. However, we cannot discount the possibility, the likelihood, that individual acts of spitting did occur. Some of the accounts likely have been conflated...individuals relating bad treatment including spitting even though it didn't actual occur (when telling stories to relate a general principle, such as bad treatment of vets, individuals will often include as happening to them incidents they had heard from others). For example, I served in Desert Storm, returned to Germany afterwards and personally was not present at any parades or celebrations, but when talking about general treatment of troops it wouldn't be dishonest of me to say that "after Desert Storm we were greeted with parades" because such parades did occur and "we" meaning returning vets were greeted with them, even though I personally did not participate. So even a few isolated incidences could be honestly spread so that it appears to be more.

If such incidents were common police would have made a habit of being there to arrest and kick the shit out of anti-war protesters, the FBI would have made sure of it. We would have a nice public record of the assault charges against the anti-war demonstrators and this kind of thing would have gotten big media coverage.