It's My Country Too

by Jerri Bell, Tracy Crow

  [Arriving at her first duty station, Johnson conducts a barracks check-in with the assistance of two first class petty officers—one male, the barracks master-at-arms (Hawkins), and one female (“Ski”).]

  A tall girl with curly red hair stood at the head of the line in front of the check-in desk. She had three stripes and an eagle on her left sleeve and, from the way she ignored the comments of the men hanging around the lobby, I guessed that she’d been in the Navy for a while. [Petty Officer] Hawkins handed her a stack of envelopes and she walked away from the desk, sorting through her mail. As she passed the crowd of guys, one of them reached out and grabbed her butt. Without looking up, she brushed his hand off as though it were a pesky fly.

  “Your mother is a sow, Felton,” she said over her shoulder as she nonchalantly walked up the stairs. . . . I wanted to ask her how she learned to handle men so well. . . .

  [Hawkins] glanced at my orders, then snorted and hollered, “Lookee here, fellas, we got us a virgin sailor girl checkin’ in. This is her first duty station. Which one of you wants to volunteer to be her new roommate so’s you can break her in right?”

  He didn’t wait for an answer before he turned back to me and said, “Don’t bother actin’ indignant, honey. I know you wouldn’t of joined the Navy if you was really a lady. Ladies stay at home with their husbands or their mamas. The girls with hot pants join the Navy so’s they can get some of that good US Department of the Navy grade-A meat. I run a tight ship here, so don’t let me catch you screwin’ around in my barracks.”

  I was too shocked to say anything, so I just stood there and stared at him as he sniffed, hitched up his pants, and belched.

  “This is a man’s Navy, sweetheart, and women only have three positions where they really belong—on their backs, on their bellies, and on their way out the door.”

  This wasn’t the Navy I’d expected. I’d planned to march in, salute sharply, and be welcomed aboard by my commanding officer. Then I’d begin writing wonderful press releases and making plans to travel to exotic ports. My chin started to quiver and I fought to keep from crying.

  “Hawkins, you asshole! Why do you have to harass all the new women?” The girl I had seen earlier had come to my rescue. Nearly six feet tall, she stood looking down at Hawkins, with her hands on her hips, her eyes blazing. The fire-colored hair tumbling wildly around her shoulders only made her seem more fierce.

  “You’re the sorriest excuse for a petty officer that I’ve ever seen,” she snapped. “If your brother-in-law wasn’t an admiral, you’d be out of here in a flash. And you have a lot of nerve talking about women lying on their bellies.” She poked her finger into the soft flesh that swelled above Hawkins’s belt. “You’re just jealous because you couldn’t lie on your fat belly to save your soul, you slob.”

  Hawkins glared at her for a minute, obviously trying to think of a retort. Then, noticing her hair, he said, “You ain’t allowed to wear your hair down in uniform, Miss Smarty Pants Petty Officer.”

  “For your information,” she said, “I was combing my hair when I heard you down here making an ass of yourself again, Hawkins.” She grabbed my check-in sheet out of Hawkins’s hand and turned to me. “Come on, honey. I can tell you’re gonna need some help getting used to this place. My name’s Ski. Actually, it’s Ursula Marie Dubrokowski, but you can see why no one calls me that. Most of us call each other by our last names, just like in basic training.”

  [Johnson’s experience in the public affairs office in the Philippines is no better.]

  Commander Willenbrau [her commanding officer] was making his own plans to celebrate my promotion, but it wasn’t a fiesta. Instead, he told me I’d have to wait for a few months before I got to be the anchor person on the news because he had an exciting new project for me. My assignment was to develop a women’s feature television program. The new project kept me busy, researching stories, writing scripts, designing the set, producing the introduction, taking photos for slides to be used on the show. I designed and helped build the set, then took my place in front of the camera, welcoming the audience to “Woman’s World.” Each show had a different theme—women in science, women in medicine, women in sports. The CO said the shows were good, but he didn’t schedule them for immediate broadcast. He said he wanted to have a whole series taped before we started showing them.

  Kruger [a petty officer she worked with] wasn’t as naive as I was. He pointed out the fact that some of the junior men were being assigned to the anchor spots while I was busy writing stories offering advice to women on career advancement, education, and professional opportunities. I had followed the same job progression as everyone else on the staff, but men with much less experience and training were moving ahead of me.

  “It’s no skin off my teeth,” Kruger said, “it’s just the principle.” He bit off the end of a cigar and spat the tobacco off the end of his tongue. “I figure you pay your dues, you ought to get what’s coming to you, man or woman, instead of wasting your time on some program that will never be aired.”

  I looked up from the script I was reading. “What do you mean, never be aired?” I asked Kruger. “I just spent six months of hard work on ‘Woman’s World.’ The CO is going to schedule them after I have a whole series on tape.” Kruger shook his head slowly as I spoke.

  “Don’t quote me, but I figure it this way,” he said. “Commander Willenbrau isn’t wild about broads in the Navy, so he figures that it’ll catch up with him one of these days. When it does, he’ll whip out these programs and demonstrate his unbiased support of women. I don’t like that one bit. It’s too sneaky. I prefer to know who my enemies are right up front.”

  Kruger’s support surprised me. He had always been pleasant to me, but I hadn’t realized that I had a friend behind those smelly cigars.

  [Kruger recommends that Johnson talk to the CO, who avoids her until she receives her performance evaluation.]

  The CO had described my performance as mediocre, my attitude as uncooperative, and my potential for further advancement as poor. I couldn’t believe it. It had to be a mistake, especially after all the extra work I’d been doing. I knocked on Commander Willenbrau’s door and walked in before his secretary had a chance to stop me. The CO didn’t look a bit surprised. He had been expecting me.

  “This isn’t right,” I said, shaking the report. “It is not a fair evaluation of my performance. I won’t sign it.”

  The CO pursed his lips and clasped his hands under his chin. “It doesn’t matter if you sign it or not,” he said. “It will just go into your record, noted as unsigned and protested by you.”

  “But it isn’t accurate,” I argued. “I’ve done a good job here. How can you say that I’m a below-average performer?”

  “That’s the way I see it,” he said, “as your commanding officer.”

  “What about all the extra college classes I’ve been taking in my free time?” I asked. “And what about the new women’s program?”

  “Yes, you’ve spent a lot of time on that extra assignment. Of course, it wasn’t an official assignment. Nothing in writing. Maybe you’ve spent too much time on it and that’s why your work suffers occasionally.”

  “What do you mean, my work suffers?” It took all my control not to shout. “I just got promoted to second-class petty officer! Stratter signed off all my required practical factors. You know he wouldn’t sign them off if I couldn’t do them.” I paused for a minute, but the CO was silent, so I continued. “I’ve been here almost two years. It’s my turn to move into the anchor spot. You know I’m a good broadcaster.”

  “I don’t care if you’re the best broadcaster I have, you’re not going to anchor a newscast.”

  “But why not?” I insisted. “Haven’t I done a good job on the weather?”

  “Yes,” the CO nodded. . . . “Weather isn’t real news.”

  “I do spot news, too. When I tape my women’s program, I only need one take. The engineers love me—they call me ‘One-Take John
son.’ Lots of the guys stutter and stammer and need ten takes to do one little sixty-second spot.”

  “Feature programs aren’t real news either,” the CO said.

  “So what are you gonna do with all those programs I’ve been taping for the past six months?” I asked. “Aren’t you going to air them?”

  “That’s up to the program manager,” the CO said. Kruger was right. Commander Willenbrau was just wasting my time, keeping me busy on projects that would stay on the shelf in the film library.

  “Those shows are good,” I said. “You know they are.”

  “You’re still not going to anchor the news,” the CO repeated.

  “Why?” . . .

  “Because I don’t believe women have the credibility as announcers to anchor the news. No one will believe you.”

  “Let me try and see.”

  “No.”

  “Why?”

  The CO realized I wasn’t going to give up. He cleared his throat. “Because I don’t think women belong in the Navy, that’s why.” Commander Willenbrau’s voice was so low, I could barely hear him. He finished rearranging his pens and then lined up all the papers on his desk. He drummed his fingertips on the desktop for a second, then stood up and walked over to look out the window. “I used to be an enlisted sailor and the women got the shore billets,” he said, with his back to me. “I swore that when I became an officer, women weren’t going to do men’s jobs in my command.” When he said that, I realized I was not dealing with a rational man. I tried, desperately, to think of another argument.

  “It’s against Navy policy to discriminate against women,” I said, without conviction, sensing his answer in advance.

  “You can’t prove it’s discrimination.” The CO looked up at me, but he didn’t smile. He wasn’t enjoying his power, just abusing it. “Your performance appraisal is mediocre. In that case, I’m forced to put a junior man ahead of you.”

  There’s a point at which bravery becomes stupidity. I knew it would be stupid to try to fight the CO. An overseas commanding officer has even more power than he would in the States. I could write all the appeals and arguments I wanted to; he would just say I was acting like a typical bitchy broad and the appeals board, men just like him, would believe him.

  Suddenly, I was tired, too tired to fight anymore, tired of working so hard for no reward, tired of rain and lizards and roaches and cold showers and not being able to call my mom on Sunday afternoons and—most of all—tired of being told that women couldn’t this and women couldn’t that.

  [Johnson negotiates with her commanding officer: he improves her performance appraisal in exchange for her “voluntary” request to return stateside.]

  “I’m glad you’re not going to be silly about this. The last woman we had onboard here wasn’t as cooperative as you are.”

  “What happened to her?”

  “She’s gathering weather reports on Adak Island.”

  “Adak is off the coast of Alaska, isn’t it?” I shuddered just thinking of the frigid weather reports she must be collecting. The CO nodded.

  “I see,” I said quietly.

  “Yes, I’m sure you do.”

  Lee Wilson

  (1947–)

  U.S. Army

  Lee Wilson grew up in Las Vegas about forty-five miles from Area 51, where her mother worked for a time. In an oral history that she provided interviewer Therese Strohmer in 2010 for the University of North Carolina at Greensboro Women Veterans Oral History collection, she describes the forces that shaped her interest in military service, her reasons for joining the Army, and her decision to volunteer for orders to Vietnam.

  [Wilson’s first assignment after basic training in Alabama was supply school at Fort Jackson, South Carolina. However, she was soon assigned “boring” clerical duties that involved separation packages for soldiers on their way out of the Army. She found the humidity unbearable and the work less than exciting, so she started considering Vietnam as a way out of South Carolina.]

  One of the girls apparently had gone to Vietnam on the first wave. I met her when I first got there at Fort Jackson, and then she departed and sent a postcard, or something, saying, “Hey, they really need more women over here.” So I applied for that. One of my roommates worked where the orders and whatnot come in from headquarters. She said, “Lee, you’ve got two orders here.”

  I said, “What do you mean?” I says, “I just put in for Vietnam.”

  She said, “Yeah, but you also have been ordered to the Pentagon.”

  I said, “Oh.”

  She said, “Would you like me to lose one?”

  I said, “Yeah, lose the Pentagon.” I didn’t want to go to the Pentagon. [Chuckle] I didn’t know what Vietnam was. There was very few soldiers had been coming back—but very, very few. I told her I wanted her to lose the one for the Pentagon, because I couldn’t afford civilian clothes, and you would have to have civilian clothes a lot more than any place else. So I put in for Vietnam and they approved it.”

  [Wilson explains that she landed at Bien Hoa Air Base, about twenty-five miles south of Saigon, during the first night of the Tet Offensive.]

  Tet of ’68, the major battle, nobody mentioned anything about it. I don’t remember anybody saying anything about when we took off. Until we got close to Vietnam [and] they said, “Close your windows.” And because it was—what was it—early morning?—I think it was early morning when we were arriving. So it was . . . right before the sun come up. They said, “Close your windows.”

  I asked one of the guys, “Why are we closing our windows?” And he didn’t know. We pulled the shades down. And they finally told us that we were under fire. The base was under attack, but we were coming in and shouldn’t have any problem. And I said, “Oh, this is good.” Of course, I was in my cord uniform with high heels, short skirt—wrinkled.

  And they said, “When you get off of the aircraft run for the bunkers.”

  And I looked again at this poor guy next to me and said, “What’s a bunker?” Because, our training in South Carolina for Vietnam was how to get into a hole in the ground, simulated fires going off. And when I jumped in the hole it was covered with ice. So other than that it’s the amount of training we got for Vietnam. But when we landed everybody jumped off, and the guy next to me—I never did know his name—he grabbed my hand and drug me to a bunker. We came out a little bit later. You could hear—it was slowly clearing out because it was getting daylight. When daylight comes they kind of—the bad guys, kind of, back off.

  [Wilson explains that women in Vietnam weren’t allowed to carry weapons, and this bothered her.]

  So eventually down the line I ended up working at engineer headquarters, and one of my bosses was a big skeet shooter. In fact, the general of the engineers was a big skeet shooter, and he had found out that I liked to shoot skeet. He’d come talk to me. He said, “Lee, what would you think of having a skeet range?” That’s where I also got hold of a sawed-off shotgun, because sometimes I’d go into Saigon—not by myself—I’d talk somebody in the company, or in the office, that was having to go into Saigon to take me along—just to get out of the office. And so, I’d drive along and then we’d stop by and I’d pick my shotgun up just to feel a little more comfortable.

  [The shotgun would help to save her life.]

  A guy I was dating . . . was going in for something, and I sweet talked him into taking me along. We were ambushed. Luckily it wasn’t a big, big ambush—in other words they didn’t use rocket grenades or anything like that—just rifles. We just jumped out and got on the right side of the jeep and used that for cover. I think we ended up in a ditch, and just started firing back. I don’t know if I hit anybody—shotgun doesn’t have that good of a range—

  At the time you’re not nervous. You’re in survival mode at the minute. You kind of just say, “They’re not going to get me.” You just kind of go with the flow and most of the time the people I was with knew exactly what to do. The guys that were shooting a
t us were injured, because there was another jeep behind us and they had—what do you call it—they had a mounted machine gun. Because they were—I don’t know how many jeeps in the convoy—it wasn’t really a convoy, but it—the machine gun in the jeep behind us got them. It was scary. Like I said, at the moment, other than you’re trying to get your face down in the dirt—you’re also trying to survive. The guys would always put themselves in danger for me. And that—that’s why I think that women don’t belong in direct combat, because guys are putting their lives for mine. Del had grabbed me and pulled me—you know behind the tires or something like that. A couple of times—other places—the guys would put me in front them—or push me out the way. That’s one of the main reasons that I disagree with women in direct combat. And I’ve had some arguments with women. They say, “Oh, but we deserve to be able to do that.” I say, “Yeah. You go out there do it in real life and do it and tell me.” You are not—it’s just the way that we’re brought up. I don’t care how they do it or change things. The man will always try to protect you. Even if you don’t want him to, he will try to protect you. So I knew—I mean once I got behind a tire I knew what to do, but standing there like a dumbo—we don’t have the training even now—with the training they have—a guy will put his life out in front of you. Yeah, it was scary, but I survived.”

  [Wilson talks about the camaraderie among her peers.]

  We were the rebellious crew, because when they had sirens go off—you were supposed to run downstairs and get in a bunker. But before you ran you had to put your uniform on—we never did [chuckles]. We didn’t—Finally, the first sergeant got on us enough [to] where we finally did carry our helmet down there. That was kind of silly. When you were inside of a bunker, why would you wear a helmet? After we would watch her for a while—When she’d go to sleep we’d go outside, because it was too stuffy in the bunker. And you could tell when something was coming close to you. Like I said, you could hear it. One night the finance company near her barracks and the mailroom took direct hits. And we got shrapnel.