Unlike other American armed conflicts that had their beginnings in a clearly defined event (such as Pearl Harbor in World War II), the American involvement in Vietnam was incremental; a series of events that eventually resulted in a full-scale commitment of American forces.
Following World War II, the same feelings of nationalism that had motivated resistance to the Japanese occupation in Asia now caused native peoples to seek independence from their prewar colonial masters. In Indochina, the Viet Minh (later, the NLF) agitated for independence from France, a struggle that rapidly degenerated into a guerilla war.
In May of 1950, President Harry S. Truman, concerned by the loss of China to Communist forces, and fearing a domino effect that could lead to Communist domination in the region, authorized a modest amount of military and economic aid to the French in Indochina. With the defeat of the French forces at the Battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, and France’s abdication as a power in the region, Vietnam was partitioned into two countries: a Communist Vietnam north of the 17th parallel, and the Republic of South Vietnam south of the parallel.
President Dwight D. Eisenhower sent military advisors and the CIA to assist the newly formed government of South Vietnam on 12 February 1959. Later, the newly elected Democratic president, John F. Kennedy, secretly sent four hundred Special Forces advisors to Vietnam in 1961 to train South Vietnam forces in counterinsurgency measures. He also sent two thousand conventional advisors.1
Women who served in Vietnam experienced many of the same common combat problems as their brothers-in-arms: they came under enemy fire, endured the stress of being far from the comforts of home, and suffered from social and psychological isolation from their peers stateside. Returning to the United States, they suffered from dislocation, posttraumatic stress disorder, and the effects of Agent Orange. However, women who served in Vietnam also faced additional problems specific to their gender, particularly because women were a minority in the war in Vietnam. Their movements were restricted—both by location and curfew—and they were required to be accompanied by armed guards when leaving the base. They often lived in guarded and fenced-in compounds, although women in Saigon enjoyed greater freedom than those stationed at Long Binh.2
Some annoyances were strongly resented by the women, such as the PX carrying nylons, but not tampons, or the shortage of female latrines. Others were potentially life threatening, such as flak vests and helmets that were not configured to the female form, or having to sandbag their barracks against nighttime mortar attacks because the military would not allow the possibility of scantily clad women in the bunkers with the men.
One nurse, Wendy Weller, tells a story that defies belief. Weller arrived in Vietnam in February 1969 and, while staying temporarily in the nurses quarters of the 93rd Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh, she experienced the following: “That night, the hospital came under fire. We were told to lie on the floor in our flak jackets and helmets . . . then I heard small arms fire. Flares lit up the whole area.” After the attack, she thanked the Soldier who had stood guard at the entrance armed with an M-16. “Thank you for guarding us,” I said. “I really felt safe with you here.” She remembered that he got a funny look on his face, and replied “Well, ma’am, I wasn’t here to protect you. Actually, we were to shoot the nurses if we got overrun.”3
It was a contradictory existence. One nurse described it as the unwritten rule that “Men protected women, women comforted men.” Another recalled being “valued as professionals yet exploited as women.” They were both: adored and harassed, admired and minimized.
Although the largest percentage of the women in Vietnam served in the medical field (doctors, nurses, medical technicians), many women were WACs employed in a wide variety of positions, including air traffic controllers, photographers, air reconnaissance interpreters, and intelligence analysts, as well as those who served more traditional roles in supply, communications, transportation, and administration.
By the early ’70s, what the U.S. government had considered “the light at the end of the tunnel” was acknowledged to be an illusion, and plans were initiated for a gradual withdrawal of U.S. forces from Vietnam. Concurrently, the strength of the WAC detachment decreased. In February 1970, 136 women were assigned to the WAC detachment. No WACs were requisitioned to replace WACs rotating out. By the end of December 1970, the WAC detachment numbered seventy-two. By 31 December 1971, only forty-six WACs remained in Vietnam.4
When a unit was deactivated in Vietnam, the event was called a stand down. The last commander of the Long Binh WAC detachment, Capt. Constance C. Seidemann, the first sergeant, 1st Sgt. Mildred E. Duncan, and the twelve women remaining had a stand-down party on 21 September 1972.5 On that date the WAC detachment at Long Binh was closed, and the remaining WACs were moved to Saigon. By the end of December, two WAC officers and seventeen enlisted women remained in Saigon. By the end of March 1973, all the WACs had left Vietnam.6
Vietnam was the longest deployment (1961–73) of American military forces to a hostile environment in the history of the United States. It is estimated that 2.7 million servicemen and servicewomen served in Vietnam (543,400 at its peak in April 1969) with approximately 1.6 million serving in combat and 58,000 killed or missing.7
1. Chambers, John Whiteclay II. Oxford Companion to American Military History. New York: Oxford University Press, 1999, pp. 758–9.
2. Norman, Elizabeth. Women at War: The Story of 50 Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1990.
3. Powell, Mary Reynolds. A World of Hurt: Between Innocence and Arrogance in Vietnam. Chesterfield, OH: Greenleaf Ent., 2000, pp. 143–4.
4. Ibid.
5. Vietnam Women Veterans Inc. website _http://www.terrispencer.com/vwv/history.htm http://www.terrispencer.com/vwv/history.htm.
6. Monthly Rpts, WAC Det, USARV, to WAC Staff Adviser, Mar 70, Jan 71, Jan 72, ODWAC Ref File, Vietnam, CMH; Morden, Col. Bettie J. The Women’s Army Corps during the Vietnam War: Special Series by Office of the Chief of Military History. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990.
7. Staff Adviser, USARPAC, Historical Rpts, 1972 and 1973, ODWAC Ref File, USARPAC, CMH. The last two WAC officers to leave Vietnam (Mar 73) were Maj. Georgia A. Wise and Capt. Nancy N. Keough.
The first U.S. WAC officer to serve in Vietnam was Maj. Anne Marie Doering (1962–63), who was assigned to the MAAG in Saigon as a plans officer in the G-2 intelligence section.1 She was uniquely qualified for the position.
Born and raised in the port city of Haiphong, French Indochina (North Vietnam) to a French engineer and his German wife, Gertrude, Doering was fluent in French, German, Chinese, Japanese, English, and several dialects of Vietnamese. In addition, she was a decorated veteran of World War II.
After Doering’s father died, when Doering was six, her mother married Earl Solomon, an American working for Standard Oil. She was educated in Catholic schools in French and Chinese until the age of fourteen, when she traveled to Dayton, Texas, to live with Solomon’s sister. There, in a large extended family, she learned English well enough to graduate salutatorian at the local high school. Doering graduated from Southwestern University in Georgetown, Texas, in 1931. Following graduation, she moved to New York City, where she worked in the National Library and studied with the Metropolitan Opera (she sang alto). Doering was in New York when the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor.
On 14 May 1942, the bill to establish a Women’s Army Auxiliary Corps became law and Oveta Culp Hobby, wife of the former governor of Texas, was named director. Doering was one of the first to volunteer for the New Women’s Corps. Her niece, Anne, recalled, “Her blood ran red, white, and blue. Once when I was twenty, I considered buying a car that wasn’t American made. In military style she gave me her opinion. Yikes!”
Doering was selected for officers training at Fort Des Moines, Iowa, after which she was sent to the Pacific Theater of Operations. Her first assignment was to the Philippines, assigned to General MacArthur’s headquarters in Manila, where she supervised telephone operations. She recalled the general’s first words to her: “about time somebody got here that spoke English.”
From the Philippines, Doering was sent to Hollandia, New Guinea. She remembered it as “miserable.” It rained all day, every day, so it was impossible to keep things dry. In addition, she recalled frequently coming under enemy artillery and small-arms fire.
It was in New Guinea that Doering was awarded the Bronze Star with a “V” for valor. “If you asked her why (she was awarded the medal) she would laugh and wave you away. If you persisted, she would say she only sat on a guy who was starving. What happened was that somebody came to Anne Marie—an officer—and said they witnessed a Japanese soldier in their camp. She and another WAC officer found that an unarmed Japanese soldier had broken into the mess hall. They fought him, subdued him, and called for assistance. So, yeah, Anne Marie, in all her 100 pounds, sat on a starving guy and was awarded a Bronze Star. But the sobering fact was that Anne Marie was close enough to big trouble not only to get shot at but close enough to encounter enemy personnel.”2
Following VJ Day, Doering did duty in occupied Japan, again assigned to MacArthur’s headquarters in Tokyo. She left the Army a captain, but reentered at the start of the Vietnam War, taking command of the WAC detachment at Fort Hood, Texas, under the command of Gen. Bruce Clark. Later, she went to Orleans, France, where her knowledge of French and German assisted her in her duties as billeting officer. From France, she was sent to Saigon, the first American WAC in country, serving from 1962–63. It was her second war.
After returning from Vietnam in 1963, she retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel, and spent her last years at the Air Force Retirement Village in San Antonio, Texas. She stated at her retirement that she was “an American by choice,” but that serving her country was “the proudest period of (her) life.”
1. Morden, Col. Bettie J. The Women’s Army Corps during the Vietnam War: Special Series by Office of the Chief of Military History. Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1990.
2. Bob and Anne Jamison, informal interviews by Scott Baron, November 2005.
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Bob and Anne Jamison were informally interviewed by Scott Baron in November 2005. Photo courtesy of USA
In March 1964, when Lt. (jg) Ann Darby Reynolds, NNC, arrived in Saigon, Vietnam it was not considered a hardship post, nor was it yet perceived as especially dangerous. American advisors had been in country since 12 February 1955 when President Eisenhower sent the first advisors to assist in training the infant South Vietnamese Army. But the situation in Vietnam was in transition in 1964.
Reynolds had received orders to Vietnam just prior to the previous Christmas, while home on leave.1
“I didn’t know where Saigon was,” Reynolds recalled. “We got the encyclopedia out and looked it up. My family said ‘Oh, that’s where they are burning all the Buddhists.’”
Reynolds was sent to the West Coast, and departed by air from Travis Air Force Base in California. “There were two other females on the plane going over there. I was very nervous. Most of the folks were Army and there were very few Navy. They were carrying their rifles and their bags. That was my first exposure.”
She traveled to Vietnam via Hawaii and Guam, and arrived at Tan Son Nhut Air Base, Saigon, in March 1964, still wearing her dress blues in the tropical heat. “(Saigon) had a very distinct odor. I can’t really describe it. Something rotten. With the humidity, there was just this very pungent odor. We all got out and dispersed, and I was met by my Chief Nurse.”
Because of conflicts between Catholics and Buddhists, the city was under martial law and battle-dressed ARVN troops patrolled the streets. Tanks and armored vehicles sat parked at major intersections.2 It was a world away from the one in which Reynolds had grown up.
Ann Darby Reynolds was born in Dover, New Hampshire, on 12 September 1939, the older of two daughters of Frank and Annie Hawkins Reynolds. Her father, a Navy Seabee during World War II, worked at the Naval shipyard at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, and her mother stayed at home. The holidays were filled with family.
Inspired by an aunt who was a nurse, Reynolds entered the nursing program at St. Anselm College in Manchester, New Hampshire, shortly after graduating from Dover High School in June 1957. Four years later, in June 1961, she passed her state boards and graduated.
“I was in a very small nursing class. The recruiters from all the branches of the service came to talk to us. They all interested me, but I fell in love with the Navy uniform. But, I also chose the Navy because they were stationed along the coast and had large hospitals.”
After completing the physicals and interviews in Boston, she gained practical experience working as a nurse at the Wentworth Hospital in Dover while she waited to be called up. In January 1962 Reynolds was sent to the Women’s Officer Indoctrination Program at Newport, Rhode Island, after which the newly commissioned Ensign Reynolds reported to her first duty station, Pensacola Naval Air Station, Florida, in March 1962.
Reynolds remained at Pensacola for almost two years, except for brief service at Camp Lejuene during a flu epidemic, and attendance at a Mass Casualty Management Course at the Army Field Services School, Fort Sam Houston, Texas, before her transfer to Vietnam.
After arriving in Vietnam, Reynolds attended two or three days of orientation, which included classes on personal safety (travel in pairs, avoid bicycle taxis because of their vulnerability to hand grenades); security (demonstration protocols, off-limit areas); and some basic Vietnamese phrases, Reynolds reported for duty at the Naval Station Hospital, Headquarters, Support Activity–Saigon. “It was an old apartment building that had been converted to a hospital. We had the elevator which was right in the middle of it . . . it never really worked most of the time.” Reynolds was assigned quarters at the Brink, a junior officer BOQ.
Fighting had escalated in all sectors around Saigon by Easter 1964. On 2 May, the cargo ship USNS Card was blown up while moored in Saigon Harbor. With the start of the build-up in the number of American troops in July 1964, the number of demonstrations and attacks on Americans only increased.3
“We had mostly Army patients. They would bring them right in from the field. In the beginning of my tour, it was not that hectic. But, I would say that as time went on, the fighting escalated and we got more patients. We would get them for a day or two and then we would medevac them and take them out. At that time, we were one of only two hospitals. They had the Army 8th Field Hospital which was up at Nha Trang. We were the Naval Station Hospital in Saigon.”4
Christmas 1964 was an exciting time for the nurses. Bob Hope was visiting Saigon, and security was tight. On Christmas Eve, Reynolds was in her billet, at the French doors, watching to make sure her maid safely exited the compound, when there was an explosion.
“I had my face pressed right up against the glass . . . I was right close to it. The explosion went off. The door blew in on me and the glass shattered on my face. It shattered right on my face and onto my body. The only thing that saved my life was the fact that I was so close to the door that the glass did not have time to penetrate.”
A Viet Cong terrorist had driven a jeep loaded with two hundred pounds of plastique into the underground parking area and detonated it. Two officers in the apartment next door were killed, and another fifty-eight were wounded.5 Although injured themselves, Reynolds and three other Navy nurses quartered at the Brink rushed to the hospital to perform triage and work on the wounded throughout the night. Bob Hope and Jerry Colonna came over to visit with the wounded. A day or two later, officials announced that everyone injured at the BOQ would be awarded the Purple Heart.
“They had a debate. They didn’t know what to do with (us) because they did not want word going out that the females had been injured. They wanted to keep it quiet.”
On 8 January 1965, three lieutenants—Barbara Wooster, Ruth Mason, and Frances Crumpton (hospitalized)—and Lieutenant Reynolds were awarded the Purple Heart Medal. They were the first American women to receive the award for service in Vietnam.6
“My tour was almost up, and I was ready to think about getting out. I was really having mixed feelings about the military. They were going to give us the (medals) in our summer blues. I said ‘No. We are all nurses and we are going to get this award in our nurse’s uniforms.’”
Reynolds remained in the Navy, returning from Vietnam in February 1965 and reporting to the Naval Hospital at Portsmouth in April. A number of stateside postings followed, including recruiting for nurses in Boston and earning her master’s in nursing at California State University–Fresno. She retired from the Navy on 30 September 1988 with the rank of captain after twenty-six years of service, and returned to Dover, where she currently lives.
1. Ann D. Reynolds, interview by Kate Scott, 19 August 2004, transcript, The Women’s Memorial Arlington, Va.
2. Hovis, Bobbi. Station Hospital Saigon: A Navy Nurse in Vietnam, 1963–1964. Annapolis, Md.: Naval Institute Press, 1992, pp. 17–21.
3. Ibid.
4. Ann D. Reynolds, interview by Kate Scott.
5. Horne, Al. N.H. “Navy Nurse Tells of Viet Raid,” Boston Record American, 9 January 1965.
6. Ibid.
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Ann Darby Reynolds was interviewed by Kate Scott in Arlington, Virginia, on 19 August 2004. The tape and transcript are deposited at The Women’s Memorial in Arlington. Lt. (jg) Ann Darby Reynolds, USN, shown receiving Purple Heart medal for injuries received in the Christmas Eve bombing of Brink Bachelor Officers Quarters, Republic of Vietnam. Photo courtesy of NHC
As a child, Sheron Lee Green wanted to be a missionary. In 1966, Green left a good position as a legal secretary and enlisted in the U.S. Army for many of the same reasons young men of her generation were enlisting. Like many children of the ‘60s, she said, “I was looking to redefine myself.” And like countless generations before her, she was looking to “do something personal and noble, make a difference.”1
Born in Seattle, Washington, on 10 March 1942, Green was the oldest of three children of Rexford and Dorothea Green. After her parents divorced, she moved to California with her mother and siblings and graduated from Norte Del Rio High School near Sacramento in June 1960. After several successful years as a legal reporter, she decided to change her life, and enlisted in the U.S. Army at Oakland, California, on 4 May 1966.
Green was sent to Fort McClellan, Alabama, on 23 May, for ten weeks of basic training, which at the time was gender-segregated. She remembered it as “very regimented” and “the same training as men received.” The women recruits carried weapons on field exercises, but received no small-arms training and never fired on the range. “They were basically props,” she recalled. She also had one other additional obstacle; “The prettier you were, the more you were picked on by cadre.”
After basic training, she was promoted to Private E-2 on 23 September and E-3 on 15 December 1966, and remained at Fort McClellan assigned to HHC of the WAC training center where she served as a legal clerk. On 27 October 1967, she reported to the Naval Justice School, Newport, Rhode Island, for a ten-week Military Justice Course. Qualified as a court reporter, she returned to Fort McClellan where she was assigned to the Staff Judge Advocate.
In April 1967, she was ordered to D.C.; there she interviewed for a stenographer’s position with the DoD. She was selected, and assigned to the office of the Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara.
Promoted to E-4 on 8 May 1967 and granted a “secret” security clearance, Green worked for the JCOC tasked with investigating and clearing celebrities and prominent civilians for tours of NORAD facilities. Her primary duty was acting as a courier of documents. Her next assignment was to Headquarters—OJCS as a stenographer, stationed at Fort Meyers, Virginia, but working at the Pentagon.
On 14 August 1967, Green was reassigned to the WAC Detachment, 4th Army at Fort Sam Houston where she received training in and was covertly tested on her psychological response to stress and isolation. After graduating from the Counter-Insurgency Ambush and Evasion Course, which was an eighteen-hour POM/POR qualification course for Vietnam, Green was asked where she’d like to be assigned next. Green chose Vietnam. “If I was going to put in the time, I was going to make it count. Colonel Hoisington (the WAC Director) was determined not to put WACs in harm’s way. That didn’t bother me. I needed to do that, to do something worthwhile.”2
Green went into “casual” status, en route to USAPAC-Vietnam on 11 March. She arrived in Vietnam on 5 April 1968 and was sent to the 1st Aviation Brigade at Long Binh. She was assigned as secretary to Col. Michael Lynch, Chief of Staff-Aviation. Like most women in Vietnam, she worked twelve hours a day, six days a week. Although she dressed in fatigues, she worked in an air-conditioned office processing correspondence and coordinating logistics and intelligence reports on aviation assets. For recreation, she would occasionally grab a pizza at the EM club, but most nights would dine with the sergeant major and the headquarters drivers. “We ate very well,” she recalled.
Green was still adjusting to her new life and work in Vietnam when, on 9 June, she was returning by air from a courier mission to Nha Trang, flying in a U6-A Beaver piloted by “a light colonel who just wanted out of the office.” They were flying low along the coast south of Phan Rang when they came under small-arms and antiaircraft fire.
“It was the monsoon season, and we were flying low, about 1,800 feet, when we came under fire from antiaircraft guns. I could hear them come up through the fuselage. We were partially protected by seat armor.”
Despite the armor, Green sustained shrapnel wounds all along the left side of her body. The pilot was untouched. “When you’re shot, you’re not aware of it. There was a loud explosion in my head, but I had nothing to relate it to. My head was searing like it was being pressed by a branding iron. I felt a wetness, but I was dazed.”
The pilot saw the blood and flew her to the nearest medevac, a small Marine base at Phan Thiet.
“After we landed, a Capt. Murad removed the larger pieces, but they had no X-ray unit, so we returned to Long Binh, where the medical officer ordered X-rays, and they got most of it. I still carry some [shrapnel] in me.”
An official report of the incident stated Green “was struck by fragments yesterday when an enemy round penetrated the floor of the aircraft in which she was riding. It went through her parachute and seating, spraying fragments. These imbedded in left shoulder, upper back on left, left side of neck, left cheek, lateral to the left eye, forehead and left temporal scalp.”3
On 3 July 1968, Green became the first WAC to be awarded the Purple Heart in Vietnam.
On 11 July, Green requested a transfer to Saigon and MACV headquarters, but instead was assigned to USAHAC, located on a walled-in plantation on the outskirts of Saigon, where she served as secretary to Gen. Irzk. For administrative purposes, she was carried on the roster of the 716th Military Police, and was billeted at Tan Son Nhut, on Vo Than Rd.
“Saigon was hot, a lot more dangerous than Long Binh. There was a large cadre of VC in the city. I shared quarters with an Air Force sergeant, Marti McAllister, on the air base at Tan Son Nhut, the most secure place in Saigon. Still, they would grenade or machine-gun the billets.”
Like many military women who served in Vietnam, Green volunteered her off-duty hours assisting at an orphanage. She remembers it as a Buddhist orphanage, and recalls that America only supported the Catholic orphanages. “Catholic orphanages were connected with the French and upper class. Vietnamese put their children there so they would be well taken care of; Buddhist orphanages were connected to the common people, and did not get the support of our agencies in Vietnam.”
“Four of us would drive out in a jeep. It was about a half hour out in the country, and we’d often ignore curfew to go out there. It was run by two Vietnamese nuns and was home to about 500 mixed race children of American Soldiers. The VC resented any American help and came in one night and killed both the nuns and all the children. It wasn’t only a war of North and South. It was also a war of Catholic versus Buddhist.”
In Saigon, Green also worked part-time at the U.S. Embassy, where she filled in for Evelyn Canastia, the secretary to the U.S. Ambassador, Ellsworth Bunker.
“Because I was the only U.S. military female in Saigon with the clearance for high-level meetings, I filled in for the ambassador’s secretary. It was good duty. I was picked up by an Embassy car in the morning, and I worked out of uniform. I developed friendships with military attaches from Allied countries and South Vietnam. I handled and worked with protocol matters.”
Green extended her tour of duty for two months, and departed Vietnam en route to the CONUS on 21 June 1969, flying out of Saigon to Travis AFB in California, with a stopover in Hawaii. She was honorably discharged at Oakland on 3 July. Besides the Purple Heart, her awards included an Army Commendation Medal, a Good Conduct Medal, and other awards for her service in Vietnam.
“I had mixed feelings about coming home. Part of me didn’t want to come home. I even extended two months. At first, any loud noise put me on edge. Most people didn’t understand. We were expected to ‘get on with it.’”
After leaving the Army, and after the end of a short marriage that produced a daughter, Green moved to Apple Valley, California, where she developed a friendship with Roy Rogers, hosted a TV show, and worked in real estate. During a visit to Montana in 1991, she fell in love with the area, moved there in 1993, and has been living there ever since. She has worked to raise awareness on the importance of communities working together to create solutions and has received numerous awards for her work.
1. Sheron Green, interview by Scott Baron, 13 November 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va.
2. Ibid.
3. Chronological Record of Medical Care (SF600) dated 10 June 1968, Surgeon, 1st Aviation Brigade, APO SF 96384.
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Sheron Lee Green was interviewed by Scott Baron on 13 November 2005. The tape and transcript are deposited at The Women’s Memorial in Arlington. Photo courtesy of Sheron Green Collection
On 20 January 1970, Spc5 Karen Irene Offutt, a twenty-year-old farm girl from Pine Bluff, Arkansas, was off-duty in her quarters at the Medford BEQ off Vo Tanh Street, Saigon, when she smelled smoke. After alerting the other women on her floor, she observed where the fire was coming from:
“We were on the second floor of an old hotel. Across the alleyway were a series of Vietnamese shanties, made of beer cans and thatch roofs. A bamboo-type awning extended across all the houses. That awning was on fire, and [Vietnamese] were running around trying to salvage their things. I ran down and pulled some women and children out. I was barefoot and burned my feet. I don’t remember much. Eventually, the fire department showed up.”1
Offutt doesn’t feel she did anything especially heroic, and remembers with more clarity that she wrote home about the incident, and her mother organized churches and neighbors to collect clothes and send them to Vietnam for the children. Offutt was surprised when she was called to MACV and informed that the Hamlet Chief had written a letter commending her for saving numerous lives, and that she was to be awarded the Soldier’s Medal. Then, on 24 January, officials told Offutt that women were not awarded Soldier’s Medals; instead, Offutt was presented with a Certificate of Achievement for Heroic Action. “I wasn’t really upset at not getting it [the Soldier’s Medal] because I did what anybody should have done anyway.”2
Karen Irene Offutt was born in Pine Bluff, Arkansas, on 26 October 1949, the daughter between two sons. Her older brother died at a young age, and her younger brother suffered from poor health. They were extremely poor and moved around a lot, trying to find a good climate for her brother’s health. She attended Quartz Hill High School, near Lancaster, California, where she was an outgoing and popular student. She was student body vice president, ran track, and belonged to many clubs. She graduated in June 1967 at the age of seventeen.
She entered the California Hospital School of Nursing in Los Angeles, but quit in her second semester, feeling “academically overwhelmed.” She had planned to enlist after nursing school, but one day in June 1968 she passed the recruitment trailer at the employment office and, on an impulse, enlisted.
“I’d always been super patriotic, always had chills from [hearing] the ‘Star-Spangled Banner.’ My uncle had served in the Army, but not my father, and my brother wouldn’t be accepted with asthma, so I guess I wanted to represent the family.”
Offutt enlisted in the Army, and chose training as a stenographer with the promise of assignment to Fort Benjamin Harrison, Indiana, after basic training. She reported to Fort McClellan, Alabama, in July 1968. “It was like a women’s prison. I’d never been cursed at before. And it was hot!”
After completing basic training, Offutt received orders to report for communications training at Fort Benning, Georgia. “I was really surprised because the recruiter had made promises. If you gave your word, that was it.”
She went to her sergeant to tell her she’d received the wrong orders. “I was told to write my congressman,” she remembered. “I left, but then returned. I don’t know who my congressman is,” she informed her sergeant.
“Then write the president,” she was told.
“So I did! I sent a long letter to President Johnson,” recalls Offutt.
A week before her transfer to Fort Benning, she was called to the dayroom. There was a call for her from the Pentagon. They advised her that President Johnson had read her letter, and had directed them to be sure she was sent to Fort Benjamin Harrison. For her remaining time at Fort McClellan, she caught “every crappy detail.” “My sergeant asked me, ‘Why did you do it?’ I said, ‘You told me to.’ ‘Yes,’ came the reply, ‘but I didn’t mean it.’ I was scared, because I knew that all eyes were on me, and I had better do well.”3
Offutt reported to Fort Benjamin Harrison in September 1968 for sixteen weeks of training as a stenographer; she graduated second in her class with the ability to take 140 words per minute dictation. She was selected for duty at the Pentagon.
“I was stationed at Fort Meyers, where the Old Guard is quartered. I would see coffins pass my quarters every day, en route to Arlington, but I never connected them with Vietnam. I was a kid.”
By 1968 protests against the war were becoming more common and even young Soldiers insulated on military bases were starting to question American involvement. “I was working in logistics at the Pentagon, and it seemed everyone was protesting and I wanted to find out the truth. There was no way to know until I went. I knew many high-ranking officers, and I bugged them until I got assigned [to Vietnam].”
Offutt flew into Bien Hoa, Vietnam, on 19 July 1969, the only female on the plane. She was surprised to hear cheers as they deplaned, and was warmed by the welcome. Later, she learned that the men were cheering because their arrival meant others were going home. She was supposed to be assigned to Saigon, but instead was placed on a bus and taken to the WAC detachment at Long Binh.
“We were mortared that first night. It was the worst night of my life, and I wondered if I’d make it out.”
Making it out of Long Binh proved almost as tricky. The Unit at Long Binh seemed reluctant to send Offutt to her duty station in Saigon. “They had me filling in, doing odd jobs, and I didn’t even have fatigues, and felt out of place. I finally called MACV headquarters, and a sergeant major showed up from Saigon. They didn’t want to release me and I was afraid he’d leave without me. He must have seen it in my eyes because he yelled at me to get my gear and get in the car. That’s how I got to Saigon.”
Offutt was quartered at the Bedford BEQ, on the outskirts of Tan Son Nhut, where like most, she worked six-and-a-half days a week, twelve to fifteen hours a day, and volunteered her free time at a Catholic orphanage. Her quarters were fronted by a high chain-link fence, complete with grenade catcher, and guarded by ARVN soldiers; however, she never felt safe.
“I never felt protected. There were rocket attacks, they blew up jeeps, we were shot at by snipers while on the roof on New Year’s Eve. I never felt safe . . . we were told they would booby-trap the children!”
Offutt worked first in logistics for generals under Gen. Creighton Abrams, dealing with matters as diverse as air strikes, relations with Vietnamese generals, and day-to-day correspondence. She remembers that life was regimented in Long Binh, but that in Saigon, “you were more on your own.”4
Following the award of her Certificate of Achievement on 24 January Offutt finished her tour of duty, and returned stateside in June 1970, a few weeks earlier than planned in order to be present for surgery her mother was having. Offutt was temporarily assigned to Fort MacArthur, California, and was honorably discharged as a Spc5 on 16 September 1970.
While at Fort MacArthur, Offutt met a man whom she married after they had dated for three weeks. The marriage ended sixteen years later in divorce, leaving her with three children. Of her marriage, she’ll only say “I wasn’t thinking when I got back.”5
Coming home was a difficult transition for Offutt. Outgoing before the war, she became reclusive and more private afterward. “I cried the whole way back. America didn’t seem normal when I got back. Everyone seemed worried over inconsequential matters . . . foo-foo crap. . . . Vietnam really affected my life. It’s been very difficult afterwards. Holidays are difficult. Anniversary dates of in-country events are difficult. I didn’t believe it before; I do now.”6
Offutt later returned to school and earned her RN in 1984. Offutt also became active in veteran’s affairs. She testified in Congressional hearings regarding the effects of Agent Orange, because her three children suffer from cancer, epilepsy, and ADHD, which she traces to her exposure to Agent Orange. Offutt also networked with other Vietnam vets via the Internet, and as skeptical veterans learned her story, they lobbied on her behalf.
On 7 April 2001, at Medard Park, east of Tampa, Florida, Karen Offutt was finally presented the Soldier’s Medal she had earned thirty-one years earlier in Vietnam. A guest speaker at The Moving Wall, she was presented the medal in a surprise ceremony by a representative of Congressman Mike Bilirakis (R-Fla). The official citation reads:
(Then) Specialist Five, United States Army for heroism not involving actual conflict with an armed enemy: Specialist Karen I. Offutt, Women’s Army Corps, United States Army, assigned to Headquarters Military Assistance Command Vietnam, J47, distinguished herself by heroic action on 24 January 1970 while in an off-duty status.
Observing a fire in Vietnamese dwellings near her quarters, she hurried to the scene to provide assistance. Without regard for her personal safety and in great danger of serious injury or death from smoke, flames, and falling debris, she assisted in rescuing several adults and children from the burning structures. Without protective clothing or shoes she repeatedly entered the buildings to lead children that had reentered their homes to safety. She continued to assist the Vietnamese residents in removing personal property and livestock, although danger increased until fire-fighting equipment and personnel arrived. Specialist Five Offutt’s heroic action reflects great credit on herself, the United States Army, and the United States mission in Vietnam.
Time has not softened the memories of her Vietnam experience for Offutt. She continues to suffer from post-traumatic stress disorders. “People keep saying, ‘Why don’t you forget Vietnam?’ I don’t think I’ll forget Vietnam because it changed my trust in people . . . it isolated and changed me. The babies I took care of, babies with their legs blown off and shrapnel wounds. I felt so helpless and the guilt of having seen what I had . . . I’d like to forget about it, but I think about it every day.”7
1. Karen Offutt, interview by Scott Baron, 18 November 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va.
2. Steinman, Ron. Women in Vietnam: The Oral History. New York: TV Books LLC, 2000, p. 254.
3. Karen Offutt, interview by Scott Baron, 18 November 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va.
4. Steinman, Ron. Women in Vietnam: The Oral History. New York: TV Books LLC, 2000, p. 260.
5. Karen Offutt, interview by Scott Baron, 18 November 2005, transcript, The Women’s Memorial, Arlington, Va.
6. Ibid.
7. Ibid.
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Karen Irene Offutt was interviewed by Scott Baron on 18 November 2005. (Spc5 Karen Irene Offutt, USA, shown receiving a Certificate of Achievement for Heroic Action, Vietnam, 24 January 1970. Photo courtesy of USA
