Question: How many female soldiers were serving in Vietnam by 1973?
About the article "Vietnam War", section "American nurses".

Candidate passages:
Women in the Vietnam War.
American nurses.
During the Vietnam War, American women served on active duty doing a variety of jobs.
Early in 1963, the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) launched Operation Nightingale, an intensive effort to recruit nurses to serve in Vietnam.
Most nurses who volunteered to serve in Vietnam came from predominantly working or middle-class families with histories of military service.
The majority of these women were white Catholics and Protestants.
Because the need for medical aid was great, many nurses underwent a concentrated four-month training program before being deployed to Vietnam in the ANC.
Due to the shortage of staff, nurses usually worked twelve-hour shifts, six days per week and often suffered from exhaustion.
First Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the only female military nurse to be killed by enemy gunfire during the war, on 8 June 1969.
At the start of the Vietnam War, it was commonly thought that American women had no place in the military.
Their traditional place had been in the domestic sphere, but with the war came opportunity for the expansion of gender roles.
In Vietnam, women held a variety of jobs which included operating complex data processing equipment and serving as stenographers.
Although a small number of women were assigned to combat zones, they were never allowed directly in the field of battle.
The women who served in the military were solely volunteers.
They faced a plethora of challenges, one of which was the relatively small number of female soldiers.
Living in a male-dominated environment created tensions between the sexes.
While this high male to female ratio was often uncomfortable for women, many men reported that having women in the field with them boosted their morale.
Although this was not the women's purpose, it was one positive result of the their service.
By 1973, approximately 7,500 women had served in Vietnam in the Southeast Asian theater.
In that same year, the military lifted the prohibition on women entering the armed forces.
American women serving in Vietnam were subject to societal stereotypes.
Many Americans either considered females serving in Vietnam masculine for living under the army discipline, or judged them to be women of questionable moral character who enlisted for the sole purpose of seducing men.
To address this problem, the ANC released advertisements portraying women in the ANC as "proper, professional and well protected."
(26) This effort to highlight the positive aspects of a nursing career reflected the ideas of second-wave feminism that occurred during the 1960s–1970s in the United States.
Although female military nurses lived in a heavily male environment, very few cases of sexual harassment were ever reported.
In 2008, by contrast, approximately one-third of women in the military felt that they had been sexually harassed compared with one-third of men.
In the early days of the regiment female members of the Royal Military Police accompanied patrols when available to enable female suspects to be searched.
There were never enough of these RMP searchers so in 1973 an act was passed in Parliament to recruit women into the regiment.
On 16 August 1973 a regular army officer from the Women's Royal Army Corps, Major Eileen Tye, took up the post of "Commander Women" at HQUDR.
By September 352 women had been enrolled and the first enlistments were carried out at 2 UDR's HQ in Armagh on the 16th.
This use of women as an integrated part of the regiment preceded similar usage in the regular army by 20 years, and paved the way for the disbandment of the Women's Royal Army Corps in 1992.
The only available clothing was mostly ATS surplus from WWII.
Many women were unhappy with the semi-formal skirts and knee length boots they had to wear in all weathers.
Eventually the regulations were relaxed and by the time of the merger women were wearing full combat uniform.
The women soldiers also wore a silk cravat in their battalion colour.
A team of WRAC instructors led by WO2 Brooker was assigned to train the women in a one week course consisting of drill, army organisation, map reading, searching of women and vehicles, radio procedure and basic first aid.
Their assignment finished after one year when Greenfinches with the relevant experience were assigned to take over as instructors.
The first recruits were largely from the executive and professional classes.
Some were wives of serving UDR soldiers and others were married to soldiers on long-term (accompanied) posting to Northern Ireland, including the wives of some commanding officers.
Some soldiers (male and female) were inclined to settle in Northern Ireland after their time in the army was finished and for ex-female soldiers and the wives of ex-male soldiers being a Greenfinch seemed to be an attractive and familiar career.
The country and border battalions welcomed the use of women as essential in the searching of women and children but the city based battalions were slower to see the advantages and to some extent resented the presence of Greenfinches at first.
In the short-term all came to appreciate the value of having females with patrols.
Through time the role of women was expanded as it was realised that their higher pitched voices were more suited to radio transmission than men.
Tasked to relieve RMP women at the Belfast city centre segment gates they learned how to accept abuse from the public and how to avoid traps that could be set for them while they searched other women; i.e., razor blades placed in pockets.
Some women were trained in the use of "Sea Watch" radar to assist seaborne patrols in those battalions with fast boats.
Initially a part-time female officer was appointed in each battalion to supervise the women soldiers but through time the women came under command of the Officer Commanding (OC) of the company they were assigned to.
In later years some women became battalion adjutants or company commanders and a few were attached to brigade staffs throughout Northern Ireland.
Accommodation for changing and toilet facilities was another problem faced early on and it took several years for the all male environments of UDR bases to adapt to suit female needs.
The name "Greenfinch" applied to the women's UDR comes from the system of radio "appointment titles" (codewords) used by the army to identify certain people or branches of the service.
Male soldiers in the regiment were identified as "Greentop" and women were given the codeword "Greenfinch" with female commanders being referred to as "Goldfinch".
This became their working nickname.
It is still applied today to women in the Royal Irish Regiment.
The recruitment of women soldiers peaked in 1986 with 286 permanent cadre and 530 part timers but the establishment never dropped below 700 from 1978 onwards. 
The Ruc people, when first encountered by North Vietnamese soldiers during the Vietnam War, were hunting-gathering tribes, living in caves in eastern "Quang Binh" province.
Since then, the government has made many attempts to relocate them. 
 As France Goes.
1957 Casebook of a Southern Senator.
1963 Vietnam: How We Got In, How To Get Out.
1968 The Three Lives of Charles de Gaulle.
1968 The New Israelis.
1973 Triumph in Paris: The Exploits of Benjamin Franklin.
1976 Soldiers of the Night.
1980 America Inside Out.
1984 Maquis: The Story of the French Resistance.
1990  
The Medal of Honor was created during the American Civil War and is the highest military decoration presented by the United States government to a member of its armed forces.
The recipient must have distinguished themselves at the risk of their own life above and beyond the call of duty in action against an enemy of the United States.
Due to the nature of this medal, it is commonly presented posthumously.
The President of the United States, in the name of the United States Congress, has awarded 3,471 Medals of Honor to the nation's soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and coast guardsmen since the decoration's creation in 1861.
There were no military awards or medals in use at the beginning of the Civil War (1861–1865)—as the only award available during this conflict, almost half of all Medals of Honor presented-to-date were awarded for actions in the four years of the Civil War.
The citations highlighting these acts resided in archives, some for more than 100 years and were only sporadically printed.
In 1973, the U.S. Senate ordered the citations compiled and printed as Committee on Veterans' Affairs, U.S. Senate, Medal of Honor recipients: 1863–1973 (Washington, D.C.: Government Printing Office, 1973).
This book was later updated and reprinted in 1979.
The first Army Medal of Honor was awarded to Private Jacob Parrott during the American Civil War for his role in the Great Locomotive Chase.
The first African American recipient for this award was William Harvey Carney who, despite being shot in the face, shoulders, arms, and legs, refused to let the American flag touch the ground.
The only female Medal of Honor recipient is Mary Edwards Walker, a Civil War surgeon.
Her medal was rescinded in 1917 along with many other non-combat awards, but it was restored by President Jimmy Carter in 1977.
While current law, (), beginning in 1918, explicitly state that recipients must be serving in the U.S. Armed Forces at the time of performing a valorous act that warrants the award, exceptions have been made.
For example, Charles Lindbergh, while a reserve member of the U.S. Army Air Corps, received his Medal of Honor as a civilian pilot.
In addition, the Medal of Honor was presented to the British Unknown Warrior by General Pershing on October 17, 1921; later the U.S.
Unknown Soldier was reciprocally awarded the Victoria Cross, Britain's highest award for gallantry, on November 11, 1921.
Although being a U.S. citizen is not a prerequisite for eligibility to receive the medal, apart from a few exceptions, Medals of Honor can only be awarded to members of the U.S. armed forces.
Sixty-one Canadians who were serving in the United States armed forces have received the Medal of Honor; most received it for actions in the American Civil War.
Since 1900, only four have been awarded to Canadians.
In the Vietnam War, Peter C. Lemon was the only Canadian recipient of the Medal of Honor.