Courageous Women of the Vietnam War

by Kathryn J. Atwood

  The corruption Iris Mary encountered in her CORDS job continued to sicken her, especially people running orphanages who helped themselves to donations meant for the children in their care. But she continued to try to make a difference, staying in Vietnam until the end of 1971.

  Before she left, she received a letter of commendation from Brigadier General James A. Herbert, deputy acting commissioner of CORDS, which stated, in part: “In sum, here is a totally honest, courageous, perceptive, gracious, tough, understanding and tender lady. She has been of great service to the Vietnamese ‘little’ people and a great help to the US Mission in the field of Social Welfare Assistance. Her departure will be a great loss; her splendid efforts will be remembered.”

  After leaving Vietnam, Iris Mary worked in Australia as director of several geriatric care facilities, then as the coordinator of a family shelter, before working for one year in an Indian leper colony. When she retired, Iris Mary became a volunteer welfare worker for the Salvation Army.

  LEARN MORE

  Ba Rose: My Years in Vietnam, 1968–1971 by Iris Mary Roser (Pan Books, 1991).

  Part IV

  1969–1970

  RICHARD M. NIXON’S “PEACE”

  WHEN RICHARD M. NIXON was inaugurated as president of the United States on January 20, 1969, the majority of Americans considered the US involvement in Vietnam to have been a mistake. But these same Americans were divided on how to end that involvement. Some thought the United States should immediately pull out of Vietnam, whereas others felt that doing so would harm America’s international reputation and that the United States should strive for some sort of decisive victory to bolster its image.

  The new president was definitely in the latter category. Since the 1950s, while serving as Dwight D. Eisenhower’s vice president, Nixon had spoken out repeatedly about America’s need to defeat the international spread of Communism, implying that if the United States lost Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh, all of Southeast Asia would soon follow, eventually igniting a third World War. Indeed, Nixon’s anticommunist rhetoric had been partly responsible for creating a climate in which politicians, including Democrat presidents John F. Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson, feared being perceived as weak on this issue (especially since a Democrat president, Harry Truman, had been in office in 1949 when China had fallen to the Communists).

  But now, in 1969, on the verge of a new decade, the United States was still fighting an old war with which Americans had grown weary. Nixon knew this, and so the president was planning to show two faces. To his public, he would be the peace-loving leader who, later in the year, would begin to fulfill his promise to bring the US troops home from Vietnam.

  His other face would be that of a madman.

  Nixon was convinced that the only honorable way the United States could leave Vietnam was by first ensuring a stable South Vietnamese government capable of defending itself from the Communist North. And the only way that the Northern Hanoi government would give up, Nixon thought, would be if it was somehow defeated in a decisive military victory. Or perhaps through diplomatic threats.

  Henry Kissinger, Nixon’s secretary of state, was in Paris attempting to negotiate a peace settlement between representatives of the Vietnamese Communists and those of the Southern government. The talks, like the war itself, were in a stalemate, with accusations flowing as freely as the French wine provided for the diplomats’ luncheons.

  To speed things up, Nixon directed Kissinger to promote the “madman theory.” Kissinger was to imply, in private conversations with the Communist delegates, that the US president was so determined to win the war on his own terms there was no predicting how he might attempt to do so, including the use of nuclear weapons.

  But how to make the Communists believe the madman theory? In March, Nixon ordered the secret bombing of sanctuaries that the North Vietnamese Army (NVA) and Vietcong (VC) were using inside Cambodia’s border. These sanctuaries had been a boon to the Communist fighters but a thorn in the side of the American troops because they weren’t allowed to pursue their enemies into the officially neutral country.

  Nixon hoped the madman theory would have a quick effect, for he knew he had only months before news of the secret bombings leaked. When it did, there would certainly be backlash from American antiwar protestors. But even in this, the president had time: following the previous year’s Democratic National Convention, which had erupted into riots between protestors and police, most middle-class Americans had a low opinion of antiwar protestors.

  Then two different major news stories came out that gave Americans an even lower opinion of the war. On May 10 the Battle of Hill 937 began one mile east of the Laotian border when a search-and-destroy mission encountered an NVA stronghold on Ap Bia Mountain. The struggle for control of the mountain lasted 10 days. Because the fierce fighting resulted in hundreds of dead and wounded on both sides, the US media called the event the Battle of Hamburger Hill.

  Shortly after the Americans had driven out the North Vietnamese, they were ordered to abandon the site. The NVA moved right back in.

  When the popular Life magazine published an issue the following month showing on its cover the smiling faces of 241 young Americans killed within one week in Vietnam, many American readers mistakenly assumed that all 241 had been on Hill 937 (whereas 5 of the 56 Americans killed there actually appeared in the photograph).

  For many Americans, the Battle of Hamburger Hill—which would be the last major search-and-destroy mission US troops conducted—became a symbol of the war’s futility.

  Then in November 1969, the Associated Press broke a harrowing story: a company of US soldiers had slaughtered approximately 500 unarmed South Vietnamese civilians (many of whom they raped before killing them) in the My Lai hamlet. What made the My Lai Massacre particularly disturbing was not only the calm nonchalance with which it had been conducted—one witness reported that the soldiers took a lunch break during the murders—but also that the US military had covered up the atrocity for more than a year: the killings had occurred in March 1968.

  Antiwar activists, energized by the Hamburger Hill and My Lai Massacre stories, began to organize nationwide antiwar activities that average Americans could embrace, such as candlelight vigils and special church services. During one particularly powerful protest, people carrying signs, each with the name of one fighting man killed in Vietnam, walked single-file from Arlington National Cemetery past the White House and, one by one, placed the signs in a large coffin.

  The success of these protest events made Nixon realize the increasing difficulty of leading the country while maintaining open escalation in the war. And he knew the Hanoi government was aware of American protests. Indeed, Hanoi media outlets often published public letters supporting American antiwar protestors. So in Nixon’s continued determination to win the war on his terms, on November 3, 1969, he gave his “Silent Majority” speech, proving to the people of Hanoi—and the United States—that he would not be moved. In his lengthy speech, detailing the history of the war and his plans to end it, Nixon claimed that even now, most Americans, whom he called “the great silent majority of my fellow Americans,” were willing to end the war in the right way—that is, his way—even if it took more time.

  The right way, he said in the same speech, would include something called Vietnamization: the forces of South Vietnam would assume more responsibility for their defense as the American fighting men were gradually phased out. “The defense of freedom is everybody’s business, not just America’s business,” the president said. “And it is particularly the responsibility of the people whose freedom is threatened. In the previous administration, we Americanized the war in Vietnam. In this administration, we are Vietnamizing the search for peace.”

  But in the beginning of 1970 the peace talks were again at a stalemate. Nixon decided to make a bold move to bring the North Vietnamese diplomats back to the bargaining table. On April 30, 1970, he ordered the ground invasion of Cambodia. This expansion of the war wa
s no secret. He told the American people, in a speech broadcast over radio and television, of his plan to invade Cambodia “for the purpose of ending the war in Vietnam.”

  The American people wanted none of it. Congress immediately moved to severely limit Nixon’s ability to wage war. And protests erupted on college campuses nationwide. On May 4, 1970, after students at Kent State University in Ohio set fire to an Army Reserve Officers’ Training Corps building, the Ohio National Guard was called in, and they fired into a crowd of unarmed student protestors. Four students were killed and nine wounded. One was paralyzed for life.

  American frustration with the Vietnam War had reached new heights and the president’s approval rating a new low. Nixon turned his sights to his 1972 reelection, all the while stewing about the failure, in his opinion, of the American people to help him win the war.

  To take people’s minds off the war, he began to concentrate on improving relations with the Soviet Union and China, claiming in a televised address that America “might be on the threshold of a generation of peace.”

  Because both China and the Soviet Union were supporters of North Vietnam’s war against America and South Vietnam, Hanoi officials were quite alarmed at this possible thawing between the United States and its Cold War enemies. Indeed, North Vietnam’s allies were nearly as weary of the war as Americans were.

  But it was far from over.

  ANNE KOCH

  “I Knew in My Heart That I Had to Go”

  ANNE KOCH WAS RAISED BY two World War II veterans. Her father, George Koch, had been severely wounded while on a reconnaissance mission searching for Erwin Rommel, the commander of the German army in North Africa.

  After receiving immediate care, George was sent back to the United States via transport ship and admitted to the Walter Reed army hospital in Washington, DC. There he fell in love with the head nurse on the chest surgery floor, a woman named Helen Adams. They were married on June 4, 1944.

  George and Helen were determined to instill patriotism and an understanding of American history in their children. So the Koch family spent many summer vacations visiting sites of historic American battles—such as Lexington and Concord, in Massachusetts, and Valley Forge and Gettysburg, in Pennsylvania—as well as Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell, in Philadelphia.

  In middle school, Anne’s teachers often showed vocational films in class. One such film showed doctors at work. The girls in the class began screaming, “Ooh, blood!” Anne, however, found the film quite fascinating. In fact, from that moment on, she was determined to follow in her mother’s footsteps, and in 1966 she graduated from the Chester County Hospital School for Nursing.

  Anne at the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier, South Vietnam. Anne Koch Voigt

  Anne was working there on the men’s ward when an army nurse recruiter and her sergeant came to speak about the need for army nurses. Anne gave them her name and information.

  But her grandmother died shortly afterward, so Anne delayed her decision on whether to enter basic training. The army nurse in charge of recruits then gave Anne an ultimatum: either come to the July 1968 basic training at Fort Sam Houston, in San Antonio, Texas, or forget the whole thing. Anne’s sense of duty to her country kicked in, and she went.

  After basic training, she was ordered to San Francisco, where she worked for several months in a ward of Vietnam veterans, all amputees. “It was quite a shock!” Anne admits now. Her greatest challenge was projecting a calm demeanor as she watched these young men struggle with new prosthetic limbs, relearning how to do simple things such as walk or feed themselves.

  When Anne turned 23 she received orders to report to Vietnam. And after spending Christmas at home in Pennsylvania, she boarded a plane on December 28, 1968, for the first leg of her trip.

  As her parents waved good-bye at the Philadelphia International Airport, tears streamed down their cheeks. It was the first time Anne had seen them crying together, and it moved her powerfully. But her sense of duty was strong, and she kept walking, saying later of that moment, “I knew in my heart that I had to go.”

  After stops in San Francisco, Alaska, and Japan, Anne finally landed in Vietnam in the middle of the night. “I don’t know why I thought it would be a normal landing,” she said, but she was surprised at just how utterly abnormal it was. To avoid the plane becoming an enemy target, “the lights went on inside, they went off, they came on, and then off.” And the landing was abrupt, “the fastest I’ve ever landed in my life,” Anne describes. “Boom, we were down.”

  When the chief nurse in charge of all American nurses in Vietnam gave Anne a choice of working in either the 2nd Surgical Hospital or the 93rd Evacuation Hospital in Long Binh, Anne chose the evacuation hospital; she had promised her father that if given a choice, she would work in the most secure location, and the surgical hospital was in a more dangerous area.

  Anne went to work in ward 3, a surgical ICU and recovery unit with 35 beds for intensive care patients and 15 for those who were recovering. When she arrived, all the beds were filled. And she learned that she was replacing a nurse whose husband had just been killed and who was now on her way home with his body.

  Most of the 93rd Evacuation Hospital’s buildings had been structured in the shape of a cross. This was deliberate; if one portion was hit by enemy artillery, the entire building would not be destroyed.

  On ward 3, the left side of the cross, section A held patients with chest wounds, and section B, the top of the cross, was for those with abdominal wounds. The right side of the cross, section C, was for burn and amputee cases, and the bottom of the cross, section D, was for those in recovery. The nurse’s station was located in the center of the cross and consisted of two desks pushed together and a podium holding an enormous logbook with each patient’s name, rank, unit, and medical facts.

  The 93rd Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh. Ward 3 is located at the back of the center row. Anne Koch Voigt

  The critically ill patients were always near the nurse’s station, but most patients stayed for only three days. Like most evacuation hospitals, the 93rd was the first place seriously wounded men were taken straight out of combat. As soon as they were stable enough to endure transportation, they were moved to Saigon for more involved treatment before being flown to Japan and finally to the United States.

  During their long shifts, the nurses in ward 3 were constantly on their feet, checking on their patients and monitoring their treatment equipment: IV drips, chest tubes, suction machines, breathing tubes, and stomach tubes and dressings. The burn cases, which were quite common at the 93rd, were the most difficult to care for. In American hospitals burn patients were soaked in large water-filled tubs called Hubbard tanks, the least painful way to treat severe burns. In Vietnam there wasn’t enough water pressure to fill such a tank. So instead Anne and the other nurses could only give their burn patients heavy pain medications like morphine before washing their skin and applying healing ointment. This process was excruciatingly painful, no matter how light a nurse’s touch.

  Because their wounds were so painful, burn patients could sometimes become seriously confused. As Anne was applying cream to one young soldier’s burns, he suddenly jumped out of bed and towered over her. Anne thought that, in his delirium, he might harm her; in spite of his injuries, he was still very strong.

  But the other nurses came to Anne’s rescue, and together they put the young soldier back into his bed.

  “KEEP THE FAITH”

  A medic wrote this poem for Anne on April 5, 1969. After receiving it, she wrote the words KEEP THE FAITH on the back of her hat.

  “A Poem for Anne Koch”

  Here we are in Vietnam

  Twelve months to go

  Most of us leave with a lot,

  Or nothing to show.

  No matter what your job is,

  No matter your chore,

  It will prey on your mind

  By outlook, less or more

  Until the day we leave this
>
  God-awful land,

  Keep the faith, Baby

  And meet the demand.

  Anne and the other nurses realized that the men sometimes saw them as surrogates for the women in their lives: wives, mothers, girlfriends. So they tried to care for their patients’ emotional needs as well as their medical ones. “We would smile and listen as much as we could,” Anne says.

  One day Anne had an unforgettable conversation with a wounded soldier that highlighted the tremendous difficulties of the war from the American point of view. This young soldier had been on a long-range reconnaissance patrol in a jungle when he encountered two young men whose appearance and behavior made him certain they were Vietcong recruits. He shot and killed them before they could kill him.

  But he discovered later that they were just two boys who had been playing, pretending to be soldiers at war; he described it as “Cowboys and Indians, Vietnam style.” The American soldier couldn’t cope with his overwhelming guilt. Anne tried to comfort him, telling him that it could have happened to anyone. “War is not always black and white,” she said. Mistakes, like the one he’d made, “can happen in the twinkling of an eye.”

  Another of Anne’s patients suffered from survivor’s guilt after a mission with his long-range reconnaissance patrol unit. The Americans were on a trail when they saw North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers headed their way. The Americans hid while the NVA soldiers approached with their water buffalo. When the animal stopped and turned its head toward the hidden Americans, apparently sensing their presence, the NVA soldiers opened fire on the hidden unit, killing every American except Anne’s patient. Anne tried to tell him that the other deaths were not his fault: “There was nothing different you could have done.”