A Soldier and a Woman by Gerard J.De Groot C Peniston-Bird

Author:Gerard J.De Groot, C Peniston-Bird [Gerard J.De Groot, C Peniston-Bird]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, General
ISBN: 9781317876441
Google: vr8eBAAAQBAJ
Publisher: Routledge
Published: 2014-07-30T16:06:35+00:00

Guardians

'The French ate away at our souls', Due Hoan recalled, 'but the Americans threatened to destroy the very body of our country. During the French wars women could choose to resist, and many did. But during the American war, women had no choice.' As the feminist scholar Cynthia Enloe has noted, 'It takes a lot of power to turn a man into a soldier and a woman into the wife or mother of a martyr'.13 It takes even more power to militarize a woman, especially in a conservative society that places a woman's ultimate power and well-being squarely within the domestic arena. But when Ho Chi Minh urged the entire population of the North to fight the Americans in 1966, most of his people needed little convincing that they had to play their part if they wanted to save their neighbourhoods and villages from obliteration. The bulk of Vietnamese women contributed to the war effort by taking on men's roles at home. Women kept agricultural and industrial production at pre-war levels and took their turn in the militia and anti-aircraft defence teams. Even though an estimated 1.5 million women never left home, the war profoundly altered their conceptions of gender and work and their future place in society.

It is difficult to capture accurately the spirit that prevailed in North Vietnam during the early years of the American War, since the requirements of socialist realism dictate the form of so many wartime narratives. Yet oral histories taken from the late 1960s yield clues to how women linked their wartime service with their future hopes. Gerard Chaliand's encounters with farmers in North Vietnam in 1967 aimed to tell the world of the patriotic vigour of the Vietnamese. He recorded several women's stories. A militia woman, for example, noted that she and her teammates felt physically small in the face of big clumsy guns, but, after five days of training, they managed to bring down a US plane. A nurse, who was put in charge of a heavy machine gun team, expressed disdain for the old men 'who don't measure up to us. They can't see well and they aren't agile. So it is the young girls who are in charge of the heavy 37mm anti-aircraft guns.' Another young woman boasted that her team of women shot down four US aircraft and predicted that their expertise will surely liberate them from traditional social constraints:

There is certainly complete equality between men and women today. I'm not married, but when I do get married I shall choose my own husband. True, men and women were officially equal even before the attacks started. But the spirit which women have shown under fire has won them far more respect than they enjoyed before. Men's attitudes have changed.14

This youthful enthusiasm makes sense in light of the responsibilities young women assumed; they not only took charge of defence but village government and production teams as well. But their hopes that war work would bring them equality in the future seem almost tragic in light of later disappointments.

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