Women Served There Too: Enlisted Women in the Vietnam War by Mandy Oviatt

Author:Mandy Oviatt [Oviatt, Mandy]
Language: eng
Format: azw3
Published: 2014-09-21T04:00:00+00:00

Ignorance and Influence

So, I have looked at the demographics of the women who served in Vietnam and I have relayed a few stories of their time in Vietnam and discussed morale amongst WAC members. After returning from the war, friends and family did not want to hear the war stories of women, and they were “brushed off” by friends, male veterans, and the Veteran’s Administration (VA).[93] This section explores why it is important to study the stories of these women, how they have been ignored as Veterans and their value as rear echelon soldiers.

The WACs in Vietnam proved that they could work efficiently in a war-zone and work professionally alongside male soldiers. While General Bailey believed that American society would never accept the idea of women training for and participating in combat, service in Vietnam proved that women could serve in dangerous areas.[94] Jurgevich certainly believed that her soldiers in Vietnam contributed to the war effort.[95] Whether they were typing secret crypto messages like Marilyn Roth, preparing intelligence documents like Doris Allen, or taking dictation from officers to detail orders to the troops, all of the women performed their roles admirably.[96] Gen. Engler felt that the WAC service in Vietnam was “superb” and further explained:

[The WACs] handled clerical and management assignments in headquarters Vietnam in an outstanding manner. It would have been a serious mistake not to use their skills. The decision to employ WAC’s in Vietnam was correct.[97]

Gen. Engler, who requested the WAC detachment of stenographers, only considered the performance of the clerical workers and not the intelligence workers. The jobs all the women did were important, just as the jobs performed in the rear-echelon by non-combative male soldiers were important; the non-combative forces were support for the focus, the fighting forces.

While investigating the possible ramifications of women in the military for the ERA, a senate Judiciary report stated that women “have demonstrated that they can perform admirably in many capacities in the armed forces” and that women and men would “not [be] required to serve where not fitted.”[98] Vietnam proved that women could serve in combat-areas.

Air Force Cadet Farr’s lack of identification with the women’s rights movement fit the scholarship of women’s rights and the military during the 1960s. A disconnect occurs when studying women’s rights and the armed forces. Very few of the women who the military recruited during the Vietnam era seem to have identified themselves with the women’s liberation movement. Goldman theorized that women in the military simply “[were] not attached to the militant women’s liberation movement.”[99] In Peace Now! Rhodri Jeffries-Jones explained that while women initially supported the war because of “gender-specific ideological reasons,” American women have generally “been more antiwar than American men.[100] Jeffries-Jones also explained, “in the sixties . . . most women preferred not to be involved in feminism or other radical causes.”[101]

Books on the women’s rights movement also shows a disconnect between women and the military. In her book No Turning Back: The History of Feminism and the Future of Women, Estelle B.

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