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You are a Vietnam Era Veteran but not a Vietnam War Veteran
Florence Green
No particular individual defined the term. A veteran, in this sense, means someone who served in a particular conflict, Vietnam in this case.
Anyone regardless of rank, branch of service, or jobspeciality, who served in country or in the waters off the coast and were awarded a Vietnam campaign ribbon indicating that they did so is a Vietnam veteran, regardless of the job they performed. The guy who was a chaplain's assistant, cook or clerk typist etc, who served there is a Vietnam veteran just as the combat veteran.
The novelist Compton Mackenzie, born in 1883, claimed in his memoirs that he had sat on the knee of a Waterloo veteran as a child.