They pulled Phillip's DD-214. Refrigerator repairman in Nebraska. Even if you let the Vietnam Vet stuff go as a misunderstanding, it's hard to let the " They spit on me when I got back" stuff go since he apparently never left. Well, except to go AWOL.
https://twitchy.com/brettt-3136/2019/01/23/when-is-andrew-gillum-going-to-take-down-this-tweet-honoring-refrigerator-mechanic-nathan-phillips/
This guy really sounds like he is milking his service and approaching a stolen valor type status. I will say I do find this part maybe plausible, outside the "when I got back". I do believe it is possible that the spitting part happened, but obviously the "when I got back" part has to be false as he demonstrably never went away to get back according to his DD-214.
I was born in a Naval Hospital. Havelock(Cherry Point). My parents experienced an incident when I was very young, maybe 6 months or a year old. This would have been the very end of the actual Marines or any troops being over there. My father was carrying me and encountered "hippies" that cursed him, spit on him and called him a baby killer. My father was never deployed to Vietnam, he spent his entire service and the last few years of the Vietnam War in the US. Maybe they made this up, but I have no reason to believe that or why they would. This would have been just before or after Phillips was according to his DD-214 a Marine.
So yeah I think it might be possible he was harassed for being a Marine, or any service member during that time. Those harassers would of course most likely be the same type of people/from the same part of the political spectrum he seems to identify with and be one of today, so that seems a little strange, but yeah maybe could have happened.
Him claiming to have been in Vietnam obviously false. His getting in the face of the student, inexcusable, he was obviously the aggressor. I don't believe for one second he was trying to defuse anything.