From: jewell@mace.cc.purdue.edu (Larry Jewell)
Newsgroups: soc.veterans,soc.men,soc.women,alt.war.vietnam
Subject: The Women Who Served
Date: 7 Oct 92 16:58:58 GMT
Followup-To: soc.veterans
Distribution: usa
Organization: Purdue University

Repost from VWAR-L:

From VWAR-L@UBVM.cc.buffalo.edu Wed Oct  7 11:51:33 1992
From: Lydia Fish <FISHLM@SNYBUFVA.BITNET>
Subject:      The Women Who Served

For Kim

*******************************************************************

                 THE WOMEN WHO SERVED IN VIETNAM

     More than ten thousand women served in Vietnam.  They served
as cryptologists, nurses, drivers for the "bigwigs," clerk
typists, photo interpreters, air traffic controllers, and
logistic specialists.  Civilian women served with the State
Department, the Department of Defense, the U.S. Agency for
International Development, the U.S. Public Health Service, the
C.I.A., the American Red Cross, the U.S.O., and various church
groups that sponsored hospitals and missions.  Who was the
typical woman who served in Vietnam?

     She was the WAC who served at the Communications Center in
     Long Binh in 1969 working twelve hour shifts, distributing
     surveillance and casualty reports and on her off time
     assisting at orphanages.  She was the Red Cross woman in Phu
     Bai who provided recreational programs to troops in isolated
     areas.  She was the Red Cross woman at the military hospital
     in Pleiku who sent emergency communications to the families
     of the wounded and ill.  She was the Marine who served at
     the Military Assistance Command in Saigon in 1967.  She was
     the Navy nurse who received casualties on the Hospital Ship
     Repose and at the Naval Hospital in DaNang.  She was the Air
     Force Nurse on the malaria wards at Cam Ranh Bay or
     attending the wounded on air evacuation flights.  She was
     the intelligence Analyst at Tan Son Nhut.  She was the woman
     maintaining the U.S.O. Center at Can Tho.  She was the woman
     at the American Friends Service Committee Rehabilitation
     Center at Quan Ngai caring for Vietnamese children and
     civilian casualties.  She was the nun in charge of
     orphanages.  She was the Army nurse working triage, sorting
     the wounded at Cu Chi, [at] Intensive Care at Dong Tam, [and
     at] the operating rooms in An Khe.  She was the dental
     hygienist, the logistics officer, the flight attendant, the
     doctor.

                         Diane Evans
                         Vietnam Veterans Memorial
                         September 17, 1986

     She was also the woman who gave her life.  The names of
eight women, all military nurses, are on the Vietnam Veterans
Memorial.

2d Lt. Carol Ann Drazba                 Panel 5E, line 46
3rd Field Hospital, near Saigon
February 18, 1966

2d Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones              Panel 5E, line 47
3rd Field Hospital, near Saigon
February 18, 1966

1st Lt. Hedwig Diane Orlowski           Panel 31E, line 15
67th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon
November 30, 1967

Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander           Panel 31E, line 6
85th Evacuation Hospital at Qui Nhon
November 30, 1967

2d Lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan           Panel 53W, line 43
85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon
July 8, 1968

Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham              Panel 48W, line 12
91st Evacuation Hospital in Tuy Hoa
August 14, 1968

1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane                 Panel 23W, line 112
312th Evacuation Hospital at Chu Lai
June 8, 1969

Capt. Mary Therese Klinker              Panel 1W, line 122
10th Aero-Medical Evacuation Squadron
Travis AFB
April 9, 1975

     Three Red Cross women also died in Vietnam, as well as a
photojournalist who stepped on a land mine and several civilian
women.  Capt. Klinker, who died in a plane crash while helping to
evacuate Vietnamese children, was among the last Americans to die
in Vietnam.  One of the MIA's is a woman--Dr. Ardel Vietti, who
went to Vietnam as a surgeon with the Christian and Missionary
Alliance in 1958, was taken prisoner in 1962 by Viet Cong
guerrillas and was last heard of in 1969.

     How is it possible that I remember
          not one name on this tragic wall?
     How is it possible?
     After all, there are ten tall panels
          that represent the year I spent in Nam.

     Too many names...names like Smith
          and Herman and O'Brien and Siciliano...
     I know you...your faces are forever
          seared into my brain.

     You were little more than children
          when you came under my care,
     With wounds and illnesses that
          no human should ever endure.

     My God, I hated to see you so hurt,
          so frightened and so sick.
     How is it possible that I cannot
          remember any of you dying?

     In nightmares you reproach me
          for making you live when you were
          determined to die...
     And you curse me for being so slow
          to help your best buddy...

     "There are others I must tend
          to before him," I say in my dream...
     Sweat covered, I awake and wonder just
          how far my mind will go to absolve
          me of your buddy's death.

     My God, it was terrible to be so responsible...
     I was too young and too inexperienced a nurse
          to make such wrenching decisions.

     No matter what I did it was never enough...
          and no matter what I did, it will never
          have been enough,
     For there are too many names forever etched
          on this wailing wall.

     I grieve for you my nameless patients.
          and I grieve as well for your loved ones.
     I also grieve for myself, for I will
          never be free of tormenting uncertainty...

     What should I have done
          and what could I have done
     To keep you from joining
          this heart-breaking roster of the dead?

                         Duff, 1/Lt USAF NC RVN 69-70
                         Left at panel 24W, Memorial Day, 1987

                                           From The Last Firebase
                                                 Lydia Fish, 1987

-- 
#L.W. Jewell Moderator at the Veterans Information Site (veteran@cc.purdue.edu)#
#& WWII-L Listowner: "Sunday's horoscope is note worthy because of its strange,#
#sudden and wholly unpredictable and inexplicable occurrences, affecting all   #
#phases of life." "Your Horoscope" L.A. Evening Herald Express, Sat, 12/06/41  #