Oral History Interview with Jane Helms Vance, 2015

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Jane Helms Vance
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: April 10, 2015
[Begin Interview]
TS: Today is April 10, 2015. My name is Therese Strohmer. I'm actually at Jackson Library, here, with Jane Vance in Greensboro to conduct an oral history for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina of Greensboro. Jane, would you like to state your name the way you'd like it to read on your collection?
JV: Let's call it Jane Helms Vance.
TS: Okay, that sounds good. Well, Jane, why don't you state out by telling me a little bit about when and where you were born?
JV: I was born in Kinston, North Carolina, March 11, 1944, in what was Kinston Memorial Hospital, which is now a nursing home. [chuckles]
TS: Is that right?
JV: Yes. And, also, my brother was born there; I have one brother.
TS: You have one brother?
JV: Yes.
TS: And your parents, what did they do for a living?
JV: Well, my mother's a homemaker, my daddy was a general contractor and he built lots of nice homes. Now, we lived in Goldsboro and that's where his business was, but he built homes and schools and churches; built some beautiful churches.
TS: Did he do it all by himself or did he have people helping him?
JV: Well, he—Well, he had his company.
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TS: Yeah.
JV: And actually, he did some of—I don't know if he was an architect at heart but I'm pretty sure he designed the stained glass window at Good—what was Good Shepherd Lutheran Church in Goldsboro, because he—I think he built that. And it's no longer Good Shepherd, it's something else.
TS: Yeah.
JV: But anyway—
TS: But it was at that time.
JV: I have had copies of the—oh, what—not watercolor, but pencil—colored pencil drawings that he did.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Oh [unclear] of the stained glass?
JV: Yes, he was quite an artist.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And printed—He printed—He never wrote script, he always printed.
TS: Printed.
JV: And so, he did beautiful blueprints too.
TS: Oh, nice; very nice.
JV: But yes, he was a general contractor.
TS: So you grew up in what town?
JV: I was—Well, I was raised in Wayne County.
TS: Okay.
JV: I liv—We—Because my parents lived in Goldsboro when I was born—
TS: Okay.
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JV: —but my mother's doctor was in Go—Kinston.
TS: Oh, I see, okay.
JV: So that's why we went over there to get born. [chuckles]
TS: Now, did you live in the city, did you live outside—
JV: Well, until—through the second grade we lived in town in an apartment—the Edgewood Apartments in Goldsboro—and went to Edgewood Primary School, and about that time is when integration became a consideration, and my folks knew that with school assignments that we were going to be moved from where we were going at Edgewood to Walnut Street School. They didn't want us to go Walnut Street. The only way out was to move out.
TS: Why didn't they want you to go to Walnut?
JV: Well, the schools weren't good.
TS: Okay.
JV: I mean, I will not say because it was black, but it was not a good school.
TS: Right.
JV: I mean, it was an old—much older school, whereas Edgewood was fairly new. And anyway—
TS: So this was, like, in the early fifties?
JV: Yeah, that would have in—well, '52.
TS: Fifty-two.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Okay.
JV: So we moved out into the county and—near Dudley. We went to Brogden, which was a one through twelve grade school; no such thing as kindergarten back then. And so, my brother and I both graduated from Brogden.
TS: Now, how close in age were you and your brother?
JV: Fourteen months—Yeah, fourteen months.
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TS: Oh, yeah, almost Irish twins [slang for a pair of siblings born less than 12 months apart]. [both chuckle]
JV: Yeah. Okay.
TS: So you're out in the country. Now, were there a lot of other houses or friends or kids around?
JV: Well, it happens that these friends of my daddy, Winfield Byrd, he was a—kind of the vice president at Dewey Brothers [Inc.] in Goldsboro. They were good friends, and so they also moved, probably for the same reason.
TS: Okay.
JV: And so, they had—at the time they had two kids, and then I think they had a couple more later, but anyway, two of them were our ages.
TS: I see, okay.
JV: And so, we went to school together. But other than that, there weren't many children really close; not close enough that we would walk to play with them or anything like that.
TS: Yeah. Well, what kind of things did you do for fun in the fifties there?
JV: Well, we played Round Up; that's kind of softball.
TS: Oh, okay, hitting the ball around.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JV: And—Yeah, yeah. Well, yeah. [chuckles]
TS: No?
JV: And we—
TS: You can describe it.
JV: Yeah. Well, how did—Okay, if you were at bat, you hit the ball—somebody would pitch and you'd hit the ball, and whoever got the ball , if they could catch it in the air or on first bounce it was their bat next.
TS: Okay.
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JV: If they—nobody caught it on first bounce or in the air, then whoever got it would roll the ball toward the bat, which was laid on the ground, and if it hit it—
TS: Hit the bat?
JV: —it was their turn. If it hit it. [unclear]. [both chuckle] So we played a lot of that, and we didn't have much room to play wide open games because there were a lot of pine trees around.
TS: Okay.
JV: So we just had to do the best we could with—driveway, or something like that.
TS: Did you spend a lot of time outside?
JV: Oh, yeah. Oh, sure; all the time. I mean, we'd play hide-and-go-seek, throw the statue—or sling the statue, and—
TS: What's that one?
JV: Well, that was—A person who is kind of the object would grab hold of the arm of the other people and throw them around, and the person who they threw around would land in a position.
TS: You had to stay in that position?
JV: Yeah, had to stay in that position—
TS: Okay.
JV: —until everybody had been thrown, and then the person who did the throwing said, "Well, that person is more—looks more like the statue I had in mine so—" kind of a stupid game. [chuckling]
TS: Oh, it's a kid's fun game. It's imagination, right?
JV: Yeah, yeah.
TS: Yeah. Now, you had done, like, a little questionnaire with me back in 2007, and in that you had called yourself a tomboy, I think—
JV: Yes.
TS: —because you said there were a lot of boys around that you played with.
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JV: Yeah. When we—When we lived in Goldsboro, was before we moved out in the county, it was an apartment complex so there were a lot of kids there.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And there was room to play.
TS: Okay.
JV: And so, we played a lot of—well, softball—whatever you call it, that kind of ball, and I was the only girl that was interested. There were two or three other girls but—
TS: They didn't want to play?
JV: They didn't want to play. They were playing dolls and I never was into—
TS: No?
JV: Yeah, I had dolls. But anyway, I—
TS: You'd rather be playing softball.
JV: I'd rather be playing softball, and so I learned how to throw a ball, [chuckles] that wasn't like a girl.
TS: That's right.
JV: And so, I was—I was always an athlete—
TS: Yeah?
JV: —after that.
TS: You always enjoyed that?
JV: Yes.
TS: Now, did you enjoy school?
JV: Yes, I liked school a lot. I mean, I was good.
TS: Yeah?
JV: Yeah.
TS: What did you like about school? 7
JV: Well, I liked math, I liked science, I didn't care much for English, but I just—I liked school. I had good teachers for a lot of the grades. Some of them were not so good, but I had—Ardine Lewis, in the seventh grade, was the greatest teacher I had.
TS: Seventh?
JV: Seventh. She made me work, because except for her I never had to work.
TS: [chuckles] Is that right?
JV: Yeah.
TS: So she challenged you.
JV: Yes, yes.
TS: Other than that you did pretty well?
JV: Yeah.
TS: You were challenged?
JV: Yeah. I mean, I was valedictorian.
TS: Yeah. [unclear]
JV: No—Or was I? Was I salutatorian? I don't know.
TS: In your paper you said your brother was salutatorian the year before and then you were valedictorian.
JV: Yeah, I guess. Okay, I forgot. [both chuckle]
TS: It's not seared in your memory.
JV: Right, not any more.
TS: So you're going through elementary school, and are you thinking about your future; like, what you're going to do when you grow up? Did you ever think about stuff like that?
JV: I can remember in the ninth grade, it came through to me that I was interested in the weather, and I—maybe I would like to be—work in the weather bureau.
TS: How'd you get interested in that?
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JV: Books, I guess. I don't—I don't know. I don't know what it was, but I've always been interested in maps.
TS: Maps.
JV: Always.
TS: Yeah.
JV: I mean, Daddy would go somewhere and come back with a map—a folding map. Oh man, I would just pore over that thing, and to this day—to this day—oh, thank the Lord for Google Earth [a virtual globe, map, and geographical information program].
TS: [chuckles]
JV: I mean, I love Google Earth.
TS: [We'll have to?] look at all the—yeah.
JV: So anyway, I wanted meteorology.
TS: Okay.
JV: And then when I got old enough that I could be serious about what to do, I thought, well—I also wanted to be in the air force; maybe I could be in the weather in the air force. Well, I don't know—I can't remember now what it was that meant I didn't do that. I think I found out there was a lot of math—higher math—and I kind of made a mess of things with calculus. I mean, that was the end of the math major, so—
TS: So you switched.
JV: —so I switched to geography.
TS: Okay.
JV: And—
TS: That's your map side.
JV: Yeah, that's the map side. As a matter of fact, I think I was one of the first—I was in the first class that had map major at this school.
TS: When you went to Woman's College [now the University of North Carolina at Greensboro] here?
JV: Yeah. 9
TS: Well, we'll get up to that in a minute, then.
JV: Yeah.
TS: So you're a child of the fifties. Now, did you ever go to any, like, dances or—
JV: I was not a—No, I never cared for that.
TS: No? No sock hops or anything?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JV: As a matter of fact—No. I mean, we didn't have that many of them anyway, but I was the wallflower.
TS: Yeah?
JV: I didn't want to go to the junior prom and the senior prom. I didn't want to go but I did because I had to.
TS: Yeah?
JV: [chuckles] No, and to this day I don't—I'm not interested in dancing.
TS: Yeah.
JV: Now, my husband, he was a dancer.
TS: Is that right?
JV: But—
TS: So you would do it with him?
JV: I would do it with him; just slow dancing.
TS: Yeah. No jigs or anything.
JV: No.
TS: [chuckles] Okay. So you weren't necessarily interested in all the music that was going on at that time?
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JV: Well, my mother got me interested in classical music when we were still living in Goldsboro, and so I didn't care that much for rock and roll. It was loud. I mean, I just wasn't interested in it. And I had albums with John Phillip Sousa [American composer and conductor]. I had Bozo the Clown. And I had—I'm thinking of another one but I can't—things like that.
TS: That's okay.
JV: But I didn't care for the loud rock and roll music.
TS: Right.
JV: But I love music today. I mean—
TS: Yeah?
JV: Yeah.
TS: What do you like today?
JV: Classical. [both chuckle]
TS: Same thing.
JV: I went through a period where I liked country, when it was country.
TS: Yeah.
JV: Not when it crossed over into—
TS: More pop music?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Yeah, real country.
JV: Right.
TS: Okay.
JV: And I like bluegrass. I really didn't know what bluegrass was until I was getting old.
TS: Oh, really?
JV: Because—Actually, bluegrass was more like what we called "hillbilly," back when I was a kid, and my mother didn't want me to listen to that. She thought it was hillbilly. 11
TS: I see. Well, she's having you listen to classical.
JV: Yeah. [both chuckle]
TS: Now, we had the Cold War going on.
[The Cold War was a state of political and military tension after World War II between powers in the Western Bloc (the United States, its NATO allies and others) and powers in the Eastern Bloc (the Soviet Union and its allies in the Warsaw Pact)]
JV: Yes.
TS: Did you ever do anything like "duck and cover"; worries about nuclear war with the Soviets or anything?
["Duck and cover" is a method of personal protection against the effects of a nuclear explosion]
JV: Well, we didn't do anything like that in school, however, I remember when I was going to school at Brogden—and see, we had to walk down the driveway to get to the bus stop, and a fellow who lived across the street from us was a pilot—an [Convair] F-102 [Delta Dagger] pilot over at Seymour Johnson [Air Force Base]—and so he sometimes would fly around, buzz us. But I loved Seymour Johnson and jets. But when the Cold War came and I could read newspapers and listen to Walter Cronkite [American broadcast journalist]—I guess Walter Cronkite there then—it was Douglas Edwards [American television newscast anchor] probably. When the threats came, like down in Cuba, I can remember getting off the bus and walking up the drive to home, and this plane flew by and I momentarily became scared, and could it possibly be a Soviet—a MiG [military aircraft].
TS: Right.
JV: I mean, it was a real strange sensation. I mean, it passed but—
TS: Right.
JV: —I thought about that.
TS: Well, just because it happened so suddenly—
JV: Yeah. 12
TS: —and you weren't expecting it.
JV: Yes.
TS: Yeah. Interesting. Okay. Well, now, when you got to high school—let's see—it's still in the fifties. You graduated in sixty—
JV: Sixty-two.
TS: —two, okay. Was there anything going on in the world that you were interested in as a young child?
JV: Gosh. Well, I knew about the Korean War. My grandparents lived in Kinston at the time—or—well—and we went over there to spend a lot of time; we loved that. And I can—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: At your grandparents?
JV: To this day, I can remember being in the dining room and my grandmother's in the kitchen, and she had her wringer washing machine in there, and the radio was on and they were reading off the names of the troops that were coming home. It was either that they were coming home or troops that had been killed—reported killed. I'm not sure what it was.
TS: Not sure which.
JV: But it had to do with the Korean War.
TS: And that was on the radio.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Now, you're finishing up your high school, are you wanting to go to college then?
JV: Yeah, I just assumed I would.
TS: You did?
JV: Yeah, both my brother and I, we just assumed that, yeah, we're going to go to college. And—Now, my brother [chuckles], he was accepted at Carolina [University of North 13
Carolina at Chapel Hill] and he went to Carolina, but then he was subject to the draft, so he—to avoid the draft he joined the air force.
TS: He joined the air force? Yeah.
JV: Yeah. But—Of course, I didn't have that obligation.
TS: Right.
JV: I didn't have to worry about it so I went—Well, actually, where I thought I wanted to go to school first was—it's either Florida State [University] or Flor—the one in Gainesville.
TS: University of Florida.
JV: Okay. They had a meteorology program, and I said, "Oh boy, I'll go down there and get into meteorology." Well, I knew before long there was no way I was going to go down there; I was going to be in-state.
TS: Yeah? Why is that?
JV: And—Money.
TS: Oh, money, okay.
JV: I mean, I didn't know how much it cost but I wasn't going to press to go somewhere that my—
TS: Was going to be more expensive?
JV: Yeah, yeah.
TS: So how'd you end up here at Woman's College?
JV: Well, I went to Girls State [workshop in the legislative process sponsored by the North Carolina American Legion Auxiliary] when I was a—I guess a rising junior, and I stayed in [Moore/]Strong [Residence Hall]—I don't know what I might have told you before; I think it was Strong, is where I stayed. And it was a wonderful time.
TS: Yeah.
JV: I loved it. I loved the campus. I fell in love with Woman's College, that's what it was then. I just loved it.
TS: And you decided this is the place for you.
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JV: "That's where I'm going." I didn't know, actually, where else I could go, because I might have gone to Carolina, except in those days they would not accept women freshman unless you were in a specialized program; pharmacy, or something like that.
TS: Is this UNC?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
JV: Yeah. And so, I says, "Okay, I'll go to WC [Woman's College] and then transfer," but of course I didn't; I stayed.
TS: You stayed here, yeah.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Well, what was it like here back at that time? I mean, you're on campus today and—
JV: Well, of course, the campus wasn't as big then.
TS: Right.
JV: And everything was within walking distance, and I walked everywhere on campus. I did have a bicycle for a while but that—I'd just as soon walk, frankly.
TS: I was walking with some ladies yesterday who are coming for the reunion, and I guess they're [class of] '65?
JV: Sixty-five, yeah.
TS: And so, they were saying how the housing was just—like, where the parking garage is—
JV: Yes.
TS: —there was, like, little houses—
JV: Yes.
TS: —and things like that.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Where did you stay at? Did you have, like, a dorm or house?
JV: For Girls State? 15
TS: No, for when you actually came to school.
JV: Well, when I got my acceptance and then the—Oh, by the way, I got my acceptance letter on my birthday.
TS: Oh.
JV: It was the greatest birthday in the world. And so, later on you get your packet and your dorm assignment. Well, I had said whatever my preference was—I don't know what I put down—but I wound up being in Grogan. However, they said, "Due to construction problems it might not be ready when you show up on campus." And so, they said, a week before I was to show up, "You will be in Woman's [Residence Hall]." There was Woman's, and what was that other one? [Kirkland—JV added later]. There were two of them. They were down in the valley there where the dining hall has expanded I think.
TS: Okay.
JV: Over there where the steps are.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: It's okay, we can look it up.
JV: Yeah. And so, I'm—Kirkland [Dormitory].
TS: Okay.
JV: Woman's and Kirkland. Oh my Lord, those were fire traps. I mean, the huge room—it was my remembrance, but good Lord, you didn't want to live in that.
TS: How were they fire traps?
JV: They were old.
TS: Okay.
JV: Old wood. I mean, old. And I didn't know how they were going to pack us up—all these women—girls—in this dorm. So I was prepared to go into Woman's Hall. So the day that we showed up—my folks drove me up there with all my worldly possessions, drove up to Woman's, big sign: Go to Grogan. It's open.
TS: Oh.
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JV: Hallelujah.
TS: You were pretty happy about that?
JV: Yes, I was. So—I've got—I have a—The story is backwards—not backwards. That was—That was when I was a sophomore.
TS: Okay.
JV: Because actually I was in Jamison [Residence Hall]—
TS: For your freshman?
JV: —in the quad for my freshman year. That was all cut and dry; Jamison, yeah. But it's when I was a sophomore—
TV: Sophomore, okay.
JV: —that was when—
TS: They were moving you to—
JV: Yeah. I was in Jamison, and I had three room—let's see. There were three in our room—Was it three or four? Whatever it was—because they were overcrowded. And so, as students would drop out, if they had any extra space then they'd just shuffle around. So it turns out that I was in the only room that still had three people in a room at the end of the school year.
TS: Oh, is that right?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Okay. So pretty tight.
JV: Yeah. Well, they were big—
TS: Not too—
JV: —bigger rooms than they are today.
TS: Oh, okay.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Now, you had mentioned a little bit about the integration that was happening in the first few years you were here too. 17
JV: Yes. Well, my daddy, he was a fair man, but he was a segregationist, and when he found out that there might be—we didn't call them black, we called them negroes—in the school, he said, "Well, you might not be going there."
I was like, "Oh no. I don't know what to—what I'm going to do now."
So we just had to wait a little while and he kind of—he mellowed. He didn't make a big stink about it, and so I went to Greensboro. But when I got here there were—In my class I believe there were only four black students, and I think they all stayed together. I'm not sure where they stayed; somewhere in the Quad.
TS: Yeah.
JV: But I knew who they were, but they were not in my—I didn't avoid them but I—
TS: Right, they weren't in your classes and things like that.
JV: Right, yeah.
TS: Well, you would have been here, then, with the 1960 sit-in to—
[On 4 February 1960 four NC Agricultural and Technical State University students started a sit-in at the "whites only" Woolworth's lunch counter in downtown Greensboro to protest segregation]
JV: Yeah. Yeah.
TS: What about that?
JV: Well, they—I remember that they were going to have some kind of a—they, I don't know who "they" was now.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: They were going to have some kind of a sit—I don't know what it was—and word was getting around and I thought, "Well, am I going to do this or not?" And I declined. I decided my job at Greensboro was to go to school, it wasn't to cause political problems. And I think I remember when they did the stuff down at Woolworth's. Is that where it was?
TS: Yeah.
JV: Yeah. But I didn't know any of these people. I don't know if they had a demonstration by our students or not.
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TS: In the ensuing weeks that people kept going, I think that some of the ladies that did get involved, a couple of them, kind of, initially got in trouble—
JV: Yes.
TS: —because they had their [class] jackets on, is what I remember.
JV: Oh, okay.
TS: Right, so you had to wear your jacket.
JV: Yes.
TS: But what did you think about what was going on with this demand for a right to integrate at the lunch counter and things like that?
JV: Well—
TS: Just at that time. It's hard to put yourself back in time.
JV: I don't know, except that when I grew up you had your white water fountain and your negro water—colored—pardon me—colored water fountains, and your rest rooms, and all like that, and you were just raised and you didn't know why but that's the way it was.
I remember being in a—I believe it's the train station in Wilson [North Carolina], and we were in the waiting room and I told my mother—I said, "Well, I've got to go to the bathroom."
And she says, "Well, it's right over there." Well, she pointed over there but there were two rest rooms, but I didn't pay any attention; I went into a rest room because I had to go to the bathroom. And when I came out she says, "Did you realize you went in the colored rest room?"
I says, "Well, no." [chuckles] I mean, it was—
TS: Right, you just went in.
JV: Yeah. Yeah. So—I mean, I was never one to make trouble—
TS: Right.
JV: —but then I never thought deeply about putting myself into a colored person's shoes. I just—I don't know. I didn't—I don't know, I just didn't avoid anything but—
TS: Right.
JV: —I wasn't faced with places I had to make a stand.
TS: Right, you had your own path and your— 19
JV: Yeah.
TS: —life thing that's going on. I mean, this was swirling around you, too, though.
JV: I mean, I knew what my father thought, but my mother, she was the more calming person. And when we were driving somewhere in the car and there was this fellow on the side of the road—it was a boy in my class—and she says, "Well, let's pick him up."
She says, "Now, we don't pick up hitchhikers. You don't pick up anybody you don't know, but we know who that is."
I say, "Okay."
So we stopped and we picked him up, and he got in, and we drove on wherever he was going, and in the course of just conversation he said something about "nigger", and my mother said, "You do not use that word in this car." And we didn't use it. I never used it. But I knew what it was. But she told him, "You don't do that." So despite what my daddy thought—and I'm sure he had colored fellows who were workers for him in his construction business, but he—
TS: Socially, it was different.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JV: Socially, yeah.
TS: It was different in the way that that time was, yeah. Well, it's just interesting because not a lot of people go through that, that'll look at this interview and they'll be like, "What was it like then?"
JV: Yes.
TS: That's what we're trying to get at. So you're going along and you're going to school. Now, did you have the curfews and things like that, where the doors were shut and you had to get in by a certain time?
JV: Oh, yeah.
TS: Yeah?
JV: You had to be in by—let me see. Well, I know ten o'clock, absolutely ten o'clock, and you had to have permission to go places on the weekends. Now, you could get a blanket thing from your parents that you could go to places that the student, as a group, might go, but if you had a separate thing—like, for instance, I was with the Lutheran Students Association and we went to some places, so I had to know ahead of time where we were 20
going and when so I could get my mother to sign a permission slip and have it mailed in time to give to the dorm mother.
TS: In time. I see. Yeah, very different today.
JV: Right. And of course, there were only women in the dorms, and so there should be no man—I mean, if your boyfriend came he would have to wait for you in the parlor, and they would call you, say, "Your date—" or whatever—"is here."
TS: Did you date? Did you do—
JV: No. No.
TS: Not too much. You just—
JV: I never was much of a dater. [chuckles]
TS: Well, you said, too, that you'd go home when you could.
JV: Yeah. I mean, for big holidays and—and I remember they told me I couldn't go home for—I don't know if it was three, four, six weeks, whatever it was, until I could go home. I thought, "Oh my Lord, I don't know if I'm going to make it."
TS: Were you homesick?
JV: Yeah, I was homesick, and I was glad when I was able to go home. And when I got home and I saw everything was there, I was good [for] the rest of my life about being able to go anywhere I wanted.
TS: Why is that?
JV: Well, the insecurity of—in the homesickness is wondering, "Is it still there? Do they give a darn?"
TS: "Are they going to remember me?"
JV: Yeah, yeah. But when I got back there everything was in its place—
TS: Yeah.
JV: —and it was alright.
TS: That's nice.
JV: So I could go back to school and enjoy it and go home again.
21
TS: Now, were there any professors or instructors that you had that you enjoyed learning from here?
JV: Dr. [Eugene E.] Pfaff. He was—P-F-A-F-F—He was my History 101, and he was kind of tough, I—but I think underneath he wasn't as tough. But yes, I liked him. I feel like I learned something from him. And let's see what other teachers I really liked. Oh, her first name was Margaret Hunt, I can't remember her last name, she was political science, and that was the one course that I took as an—audited; I took it because I wanted to.
TS: Okay.
JV: And it was political science and it was American government—federal government, that's what it was. I loved that. [chuckles] And she—When it was exam time and I didn't show up, and maybe it was a midterm or something, and so the next class there I was, she says, "Ms. Helms, where were you for your test?"
And I says, "Well, I'm auditing. I'm not supposed to take tests."
TS: That was—
JV: [chuckling] "I think."
TS: So that was okay?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Maybe she didn't know you were auditing.
JV: I guess. I mean, surely she did but—
TS: [chuckles]
JV: Anyway.
TS: You said you originally came in as a math major?
JV: Yes. No—Yes. Yes, I was a math—math major.
TS: But you switched to geography.
JV: Yeah, I did two years of math, and I loved trig[onometry], but when I got to calculus, man, I was a dead duck [slang for "unsuccessful"]. There was just some concepts I just could not get and that's when I said, "No, no more." And so, when I was a junior I changed my major, and then there was plenty of time to get all my stuff.
TS: Was there?
22
JV: Yeah.
TS: What did you think about your experience here at Woman's College?
JV: I loved it. I loved it. And I would recommend anybody to come. I mean, I guess it's like it was—I know it's not like it was when I was here but—
TS: What'd you like best about it?
JV: Well, I don't know, I liked going to classes, and we had a nice little group, we tried to eat our meals—especially the evening meal—at the time same time. I don't know. I just liked it all.
TS: Yeah. Friendships and things like that.
JV: Yes.
TS: Yeah. So as you're going along, what do you think you're going to do for your degree?
JV: Well, I had had thoughts about meteorology, then I changed it to geography, but I didn't know what exactly, and at the same time I'm thinking military, because of the military heritage in my family.
TS: Yes.
JV: And I wondered, "Well, how can I meld the two?" So as I got—about a junior, that's when you have to start making decisions, and so I did sit for the—some kind of qualification test, and also the Civil Service qualification test. And I had decided I really wanted the [United States] Air Force, and if I couldn't get the Air Force I was going to go in the [U.S.] Coast Guard, because I have a soft spar—spot on my heart for the Coast Guard.
TS: How come?
JV: Well, my daddy had a property down at Cape Lookout [North Carolina], and we went down there in summer. Other people went to the beach; we went to Cape Lookout. And we fished and we went swimming in the ocean and we just played; climbed the sand dunes. I loved it. And daddy was good friends with the chief over there, I forgot what his name was [Wink Robinson—JV added later]. But anyway, so we got to ride a lot of the Coast Guard boats. And sometimes—let's see. Now, Daddy had a boat that we would put in the water at Harkers Island, and then drive over. But sometimes he—I think if he left the boat down there between trips his buddies—Oh, no, no, it was—his last name was Kelly, and he was the mail—he was the mailman.
TS: Okay.
23
JV: He took the mail boat over to the station—or over to the Cape, and so Daddy would ride the mail boat with whatever his name was. Anyway, that was a lot of fun.
TS: You enjoyed that?
JV: I enjoyed that. We got to go over to the station, when it was occupied; it's not active anymore. And they also had ponies and cows in those days, and this Coast Guard fellow, he managed to lasso a colt of one of the mares, and so—I've got a picture somewhere.
TS: Like a wild horse?
JV: Huh?
TS: Was it one of the wild horses?
JV: Yes, yes. Mustangs, I guess, is what—Outer Banks ponies.
TS: Okay.
JV: And anyway, I just loved, loved the guys. We'd go over to their mess hall, had coffee out of these humongous, heavy cer—not ceramic—but anyway, heavy coffee cups. I mean, I just loved the Coast Guard. So if I couldn't make the air force I was going to go in the Coast Guard. If I couldn't go in the Coast Guard I was going to join the Civil Service. And I actually had a job offer for the—whatever they call it—the [Department of Defense] Mapping Agency that was in St. Louis [Missouri] —
TS: Oh, you did?
JV: —as a GIS [geographic information system] [unclear]—[chuckles]
TS: [unclear] really long.
JV: —starting out. I mean, I didn't know anything; they were going to have to train me for everything. So I knew I had a job, because I had that before I got my acceptance into the air force, but luckily the air force took me.
TS: And you were interested in the air force—kind of with the [unclear] we were talking about earlier, with the Seymour Johnson—
JV: Yeah.
TS: —and the planes—
JV: Yeah.
TS: —and you had said something about the romanticism of the planes— 24
JV: Yeah.
TS: —was something that really attracted you.
JV: Oh gosh, yeah, they—When we lived out near Dudley—well, Brogden, we were not far from the end of the runway, and when these tankers and bombers took off, I mean, it would just rattle your house, but Michael and I loved it.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: Oh, we loved it.
TS: Michael's your brother?
JV: Yeah. I mean—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Yeah. And he went in the air force too? He was already in the air force.
JV: Well, he—Yes, he enlisted before I came in.
TS: Right.
JV: But the [Boeing] KC-135s, they were loaded—loaded—with jet fuel and they—I swear, I didn't know if they were going to make it over my—our roof; they were so low when they took off. Now, the bombers, they're big airplanes but they didn't have that load, and so—Anyway, they were loud, and we can see the irises of the pilots' [eyes].
TS: [chuckles] Oh yeah, that[?] black clothes[?].
JV: Yeah.
TS: Well, that's kind of neat.
JV: Yeah.
TS: So you decided to join the air force—they accepted you—and what did your parents think about that.
JV: Oh, they were—they were thrilled. I mean, they both wanted me to do what I wanted to do.
25
TS: Yes.
JV: I don't know what I would have done if I hadn't been in the air force, but they didn't push me to go in or to not go in.
TS: They just supported the decisions—
JV: They supported me, whatever I wanted to do.
TS: Now, you had said you'd looked earlier at some of your—the papers that you had, like your dad's draft notes where he then was III-A [Selective Service classification "deferred for dependency reasons"], is that right?
JV: Yes.
TS: The business he was doing was supporting World War II?
JV: Yeah. Of course, he had dependents; he had his wife and one child at the time.
TS: Right.
JV: But to me the important—more important thing was that he was a contractor, and he built two of the—well, I don't know how many—on Cape Lookout, that's how he got to Cape Lookout, he built some observation posts over there; they were made of wood. And they were still there when I was a child when we went over there.
TS: Yeah?
JV: And of course they're gone now—the weather.
TS: Yeah.
JV: But yeah, he built those and—I mean, they were watching for U-Boats off the coast. And he also did some work—it was near Cape Ann. Is that Maryland? Yeah. I don't know what he did over there. But he also, I believe, did some work having to do with Fort Macon. I mean, that's a Civil War fort, but it was used in World War II.
TS: World War II. And you had other relatives that were connected to the military.
JV: Yes.
TS: You had your brother, you had—was it on your mother—
JV: Well—
TS: —mother's side? 26
JV: Well, my mother's side I know more than anything else. My maternal grandfather, he was enlisted and up in Fort Strong, Massachusetts, in WWI [World War I], and then my mother's two brothers were both in World War II. Her twin brother was an officer and he was in—well, what is NC—wait a minute—NSA [National Security Agency] type.
TS: Okay.
JV: Spooks [slang for undercover agents or spies].
TS: [chuckles] Spooks.
JV: And her other younger brother, he was in the army also, but was enlisted and he was in the motor pool.
TS: Okay.
JV: And was in England when they were—before D-Day, and they were waterproofing Jeeps and other trucks that were subsequently going to be used on D-Day.
[D-Day, or the Normandy Landings, were the landing operations on 6 June 1944 of the Allied Invasion of Normandy in Operation Overlord during World War II. It was the largest seaborne invasion in history.]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That were going over?
JV: And—Let's see. Her brother-in-law, he was also in the army at— [Fort McClellan at Anniston [Alabama]—JV added later].
TS: It's okay.
JV: —North Alabama.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: Fort something in North Alabama.
TS: That's alright.
JV: Yeah.
27
TS: But you got this really rich heritage—
JV: Yes.
TS: —and these people, some of them were still in when you enlisted.
JV: Oh, sure.
TS: Or when you signed up.
JV: Yeah, all of them.
TS: Yeah, because a lot of them retired, right.
JV: Yes.
TS: And it's a time when, really, there's not that many women in the military at all.
JV: Not many in the line, meaning they weren't in the medical corps. I mean, there were lots of nurses, but few in the line, and in those days there were none flying or navigating—
TS: Right.
JV: —on airplanes, except flight nurses. But—So anyway. So I'm joining the air force and when I got to Barksdale [Air Force Base in Louisiana], which was my first real assignment, my brother, he was in the air force and he was about to be shipped off to Southeast Asia, and he was married, and I thought they wouldn't send him to Vietnam. I think he had orders—almost orders to Cam Ranh Bay [Vietnam]. And I didn't like that, and I says, "Well, if I go to Vietnam will they send him not to Cam Ranh Bay?"
And I—So I called a lot of people and they said, "Well—" I don't qualify as sole surviving son, like the Sullivans, but they would take that into consideration, but especially since he was married and I was not, I had no dependents, and you're a female. Well, hot damn. [chuckling] Fill a couple of blocks here, we're going to send a woman, why [not?] an officer to Vietnam. Because at the time I think there were about ten in- country.
[The five Sullivan brothers were World War II sailors serving together on the USS Juneau (CL-52) who were all killed in action on its sinking around 13 November 1942. As a direct result of the Sullivans' deaths the U.S. War Department adopted the Sole Survivor Policy designed to protect members of a family from the draft or from combat duty if they have already lost family members in military service.]
TS: Not that many in the air force for sure.
28
JV: Oh no, lots in the air force, but only ten line—female line officers—
TS: Right.
JV: —in the air—in Vietnam.
TS: Yes.
JV: So I says, "I want to go to Vietnam."
"Wonderful. We'll fix you right up, and we'll make a deal; we will divert your brother to Bangkok [Thailand]."
TS: Okay.
JV: So.
TS: Well, before we get to Vietnam, let's talk a little bit about when you first went in and you went through your officer training. How was that for you? Where'd you go? You went to San Antonio [Texas], Medina —
JV: Oh, yes, Medina Base [at Lackland Air Force Base] near San Antonio, and—let's see—we had a flight of about twelve—called a class—a small class—and I think they tried to make sure how ever many women there were in the class—and I can only remember looking from that picture, there's at least about twenty I would guess—they made sure that there were at least two women together in their individual flights.
TS: Okay.
JV: And—But—And we were in this one dorm—called a dorm, it's a barracks, and I'm not sure if there were any men at all. It was a two story barracks but I'm not sure if they allowed any men in it. If they had enough room then it was no problem.
TS: Right.
JV: But we were all together.
TS: All the women stayed together.
JV: The women, yeah, yeah.
TS: Well, was there anything particularly difficult about that sort of—
JV: No.
TS: —course for you at all?
29
JV: No.
TS: Academically or physically?
JV: No, no.
TS: No?
JV: We had a—they call it conditioning, PT [physical training].
TS: Okay.
JV: But it was no big deal.
TS: Nothing really—
JV: No. And we marched. Okay, marching.
TS: Yeah?
JV: I loved it, but I could not see up ahead. Okay, they had "taller tap", meaning where you all get together you—if you have somebody who—in front of you who is shorter than you then you were the taller one and you tap that person and you swap places, so that the tallest people wound up in the front and, like, to one side, see. So I was the short one, I was always in the back. And so, when we would go to our marching exercise—practice, whatever—and we would get into bigger groups, and I could follow command, that's no problem, but I couldn't tell what the ones in the front were doing. And so, as part of your marching you were required to command a little group, and you were supposed to do a number of commands—and I don't know how many, five or seven, whatever it was—and you could pick out the list that you wanted. And so, anyway, I could—I couldn't remember what something was, because I had never been able to see it.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: And so, if you give them the wrong command you know they're going—It was a mess. [both chuckle] I flunked marching. So anyway.
TS: But they had you do some kind of remedial [unclear].
JV: Yeah, so I had to go to—So yeah, what I had to do is, at a big mass lecture—I mean, the whole auditorium full of the whole class—and so since I had flunked something that meant I had to sit up front, and my job was when the people on the stage had arrived for the—to open the class, my job was to stand up and say, "Class, in seats" or "Ten-hut" or something like that. Actually, I thought it was fun but I only had to do it once, but that was a penalty for flunking something. [both chuckle] And everybody kind of laughed at me, because little ol' me. 30
TS: Yeah.
JV: That was kind of fun.
TS: But you made it through.
JV: I made it through, yeah.
TS: Yeah.
JV: I mean, if I had been really, really smart I would have gotten a regular commission, because a certain percentage—I mean, the cream of the crop—were offered regular commissions, which is tenure. I mean, that's regular; you're not going to be booted out for anything. But I didn't. I mean, I wasn't bad, I was in the bottom 98%, but that's okay.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: But I did make regular later on.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And so, that's—
TS: That helped you later?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Well, then, the first assignment that you got, you went to Barksdale?
JV: Yes.
TS: Is that right.
JV: Yes.
TS: In Shreveport, Louisiana, 1967.
JV: Yes.
TS: Tell us about that. What was that like? Oh, your job too. You went into, you said, computers, data automation.
JV: Yes. Well, when I arrived on base—Well, first you go to the CBPO, Consolidated Base Personnel Office, and you check in and you process in, and I don't remember when it was I actually met my—where I was going to work. 31
TS: Right.
JV: But they had said—Now, this is data automation, which is a part of the comptroller in those days, and so new officers were all—always taken to the comptroller to be introduced. And they—Now, this is in 1966, and so you still had a lot of older, senior officers who were of WWII vintage; the colonels were like that. And so, they had told me, "Well, this guy is like that, and he likes it when you come in you go—you march in, you say, 'Lieutenant Helms reporting for duty, sir.'"
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Salute, stand at attention.
JV: And that's the only time in my life I ever had to do that.
TS: [chuckles] Right.
JV: And I'm—And it's too bad because that's the way the military should be, but these days it's like just going to your job.
TS: Yeah.
JV: Anyway. [chuckles]
TS: Well, apparently it was that way in the sixties, too, because you only had to do it once.
JV: Yeah, yeah.
TS: So you're learning, you're a green officer.
JV: Yeah, absolutely.
TS: How were you feeling about putting on the uniform, getting up every day?
JV: That was fine, because I'm a person of structure.
TS: Structure.
JV: Yes, regularity. Yes siree.
TS: That was good.
32
JV: Yes, it was. And—Now, actually, I wasn't there too long before I went to Sheppard [Air Force Base in Texas] for my data automation training.
TS: Training.
JV: And so, I was there for about three months I think, and I loved that. But when I was at Barksdale, to tell you the truth, I don't know what I did. [chuckling] I mean, I didn't know anything about anything. I vaguely recall that—See, this was Second Air Force. I was assigned to Second Combat Support Group, which was base level, but the way they worked out the personnel business I actually worked in Second Air Force. And so, seems to me like we—there were some other bases that we did some kind of programming support. I don't know. I really—
TS: [chuckles]
JV: But we would get new programs from on high.
TS: Right.
JV: And we would just have to, I don't know, make copies of them and send them somewhere else. I really don't know. I mean, the GIs [airmen] did it.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: [unclear]. Right.
JV: But—
TS: Just sending the orders down the line, that sort of thing?
JV: Yes. Yes.
TS: Well, what were your housing conditions like at first?
JV: Well, when I first got there, there was not enough quarters. I mean, this is in—Vietnam is building up and they're getting a lot of young people and nowhere to put them. So they didn't have any—enough BOQs—Bachelor Officer's Quarters—so I was given permission to live off base. And so, I found this apartment, which was a bit of a dump; I was glad to get out of it. But I did live in an apartment, and I had a—Let's see—fifty-five dollars housing allowance a month. Or maybe that was what my rent was. It seems to me like I got more housing allowance than I had to pay—
[Speaking Simultaneously] 33
TS: You got a little bit extra?
JV: Yeah, yeah. But it was a dump. So after a while, when they had completed construction of a new BOQ, they said, "It's time to move."
I said, "Great." So I moved in when—
TS: Where did you do your eating with that?
JV: Well, when I lived in the BOQ—I never have eaten breakfast. I didn't—I just had coffee.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: No, you're not a breakfast eater?
JV: But I was close enough I could walk home and get something to eat, and most of these places had a—an exchange cafeteria, or something like that. But—
TS: You didn't have to go to an Officers' Club or anything?
JV: Well, I didn't—I mean, I could have but I didn't.
TS: But you didn't have to?
JV: No. It was closer—I mean, the BOQ was closer than the O Club [Officers' Club], though, so.
TS: Okay. Okay. So you're learning, you're starting to learn a little bit about automation, and you had said something when you had written to me about when you went in you wanted to make it a career.
JV: Yes.
TS: And how did you know you wanted to make it a career when you're so young and—
JV: Well, I don't know, just because—Well, my mother's twin brother, he was a careerist, and maybe he's the only one, but, I don't know, I just—
TS: It seemed like that would work.
JV: Yeah, that was the thing to do.
TS: Yeah. 34
JV: Yes.
TS: And so, you're liking it, you're enjoying the time, and stuff like that. So you're in Barksdale, now, and this is a period when Vietnam was really, really going on. I mean—
JV: Yes.
TS: —it's a pretty hot war.
JV: Yes.
TS: Did you have any views, politically, about the war? Did you—
JV: I tried to understand what it was about; the dom—the domino theory; that was what I knew about more than anything else. So that if Vietnam fell, then what was next? And so, we had to stop them right there. And so, I was anxious to do my part. And I despised the demonstrators and—
[The domino theory was prominent from the 1950s to the 1980s and speculated that if one country in a region came under the influence of communism, then the surrounding countries would follow in a domino effect]
TS: Why did you despise them?
JV: Because I thought they were stupid; they didn't know what they were doing. People like that who—the ones that live on campuses, live in a cloistered world and they don't know what real life is, and that's the same thing today.
TS: Yeah. So the antiwar protestors, do you feel like they were undermining things or—
JV: Oh sure.
TS: Yeah?
JV: Yes.
TS: Was any of that going on around Shreveport or anywhere—
JV: No.
TS: No.
JV: No. Now, see, most of these air force towns—military towns—they are military friendly. 35
TS: So it's just stuff you read about, like, in the papers and things like that.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
JV: In papers and TV, yeah.
TS: Now, you had talked a little while ago how one of the reasons you wanted to go to Vietnam, too, was because you wanted to keep your brother out of it.
JV: Yes.
TS: And so, you volunteered.
JV: Yes.
TS: And you got accepted.
JV: Yes.
TS: And so, tell me about that; tell me about going to Vietnam.
JV: Well, I drove myself to—Let's see—Travis Air Force Base; that was the jumping off place.
TS: Out in California?
JV: Yeah. And so, I left my car with my brother's [chuckles] father-in-law [in Sacramento [California]—JV added later].
TS: Okay.
JV: And they kept it; it was theirs. And so, I—It seemed like it was a long time of processing at Travis, till we finally got on the plane. Of course, it was a commercial [aircraft].
TS: Okay.
JV: I can't remember the term for it when they are under contract [contracted commercial air fleet].
TS: Right.
JV: But anyway. Probably Continental [Airlines] or Braniff [International Airways]. So we were flying—I'm not sure if on that flight they let the woman and/or the officers on first 36
or not. Of course, there wouldn't have been many women anyway. But it was a long flight, and when we were getting close to being able to land, we—they said that we can't go to Tan Son Nhut [Air Base], Saigon, because we had a six hour—six or twelve hour delay leaving Travis [due to a false bomb threat—JV added later]. That meant everything was backed up. You could not land at Tan Son Nhut except in the daytime. Well, it was dark. It would have been dark. So we had to go to Kade—Kadena [Air Base]; I think it was Kadena, near Iwo Jima [Japan]. Anyway, Kadena.
And so, we landed there, and everybody got out, and we stayed in quarters somewhere; didn't get a bit of sleep I'm sure.
TS: [chuckles]
JV: And then we get back on the airplane to go, but we're still—we're on a—sitting in the stupid airplane, the engines are running away, but they wouldn't let us take off because we would still get there too soon. Well, smoking was permitted. I thought I was going to suffocate.
TS: On the plane?
JV: All these people were smoking. Oh, it was terrible. Anyway, we finally took off and we go to Tan Son Nhut. So as you're approaching Saigon, instead of a nice gradual, easy descent they come in level and then they make a nose dive, and then they land; the purpose being to avoid anti-aircraft fire.
TS: Fire? Yeah?
JV: Even if they were only rifles, which they did do.
TS: Were you nervous at all about that?
JV: No, that was just the way it was. Kind of exciting.
TS: Oh yeah? [chuckles] Okay. Now, you got there—I wasn't exactly sure—looks like, maybe, May?
JV: May of—
TS: Nineteen sixty-eight?
JV: Probably about the thirteenth of May, yeah.
TS: And so, this is after the Tet Offensive that had happened.
[The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on 30 January 1968, by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's 37
Army of Vietnam against the forces of the South Vietnamese Army of the Republic of Vietnam, the United States Armed Forces, and their allies. It was a campaign of surprise attacks against military and civilian command and control centers throughout South Vietnam]
JV: The big Tet.
TS: The big Tet.
JV: Yeah.
TS: The initial one, right?
JV: That was in February, but they did—they were finishing up, what they called, Little Tet [Mini-Tet], that was a little bit—maybe about that same time when I was going in.
TS: So what was it like then? Do you remember getting off the plane? Do you remember anything about your initial—
JV: No, that was more [unclear]—
TS: Oh, because you were so tired.
JV: Tired, yeah, and, of course, there I am, female, and an officer, and they don't know what to do with me.
TS: Oh, they don't?
JV: Of course, what they do is they probably split up army here, air force there, if there's any navy split them up, and they probably have places—they know where they're going. But with me, I think they didn't really know what they were supposed to do with me. I finally wound up going to this—I think it was a hotel or something, it'd been commandeered by the military, and maybe stayed one night there. And that's when they found out that they had this empty room in the barracks, because this girl was gone TDY [temporary duty] for about six months—
TS: Right.
JV: —so there's a place I could stay.
TS: So you took over here room while she was gone?
JV: So they took me there. Well, when it's time to have this in-processing you very quickly have to get there. I'm not sure if I've got my jet lag taken care of or not. But anyway. And I don't know how—what my transportation was; I have no idea how I got— 38
TS: Right.
JV: —to places. But anyway, I got to this place and it was under this—it was a building but there were no screened windows. I mean, it was just air blowing in, that was all it was. And lots of guys there doing the same thing, in-processing.
Anyway, I'm sitting on this chair or whatever—bench—and all of a sudden, oh man, I think somebody said, "How about I—something to drink?"
I said, "Well, yeah." And I looked at—they had a water jug—fountain thing—with water in it, and it was the most God-awful stuff I ever saw. It was green. I thought, "Are you—I've got to drink that stuff? Yuk." So I said, "Yeah, I guess so." So I got a paper cup full of this water and I put it to my mouth and I threw up. I mean, I threw up. And I don't know that I'd had anything to eat, it might have just been dry-heaves, but I was sick to my stomach. And I thought, "What have I gotten myself into?"
TS: [chuckles]
JV: And it's embarrassing besides that.
TS: Yeah.
JV: But then I kind of calmed down and I didn't have any trouble after that.
TS: That was it.
JV: Yeah, it was kind of like going to school and then home the first time.
TS: Oh.
JV: You go the first time and everything's all right.
TS: Your nerves, kind of, were all—
JV: Yeah, yeah. And so, after I threw up and—
TS: Got it all out of your system.
JV: Yeah, and everything was fine.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And the water wasn't that bad. It looked awful. They had to treat it and that's—whatever—however they treated it [unclear] green like that.
TS: The water?
39
JV: Yeah.
TS: You drank it later?
JV: Yes.
TS: [chuckles] I don't know that I would have if they'd given that to me. So you're in Vietnam, and tell me a little bit about, like, the office that you worked in—
JV: Yes.
TS: —what that was like. Were there very many women? What was it like?
JV: Well, the office was in a large complex, because the Base Exchange—under the same roof. The Base Exchange was there and they had a movie theater, and the comptroller; that's what we were under. And so, we were just—Well, we were just in part of that. Before I got there, and not too many months before I got there, they were in a Quonset hut. I had pictures of it. I don't know where they're at.
TS: For the office that they worked in?
JV: Yes.
TS: Okay.
JV: And so—But anyway, at the time I was there we were in this building, and, I mean, it was not sorry conditions at all. I mean, it was great.
TS: Pretty nice?
JV: Yeah. I mean, it wasn't "modern" modern but it was quite workable. I mean, if you didn't know where you were you wouldn't have known you were in Vietnam. Maybe a little crude wood and everything, but painted nicely.
TS: Were there a lot of other women with you?
JV: No, there were no women in the comptroller that I remember. The only women where I was, was the key puncher and the maid, or janitor.
TS: Was the key puncher—
JV: Vietnamese.
TS: Vietnamese, okay. When you had left from—What was it?—Barksdale, were there many women in your field at that time?
40
JV: I believe there were—I know there were some women enlisted people there. I'm not sure if she was, kind of, secretarial, or if she was in the date automation business; I don't remember.
TS: Yeah? Not a whole lot though?
JV: No. And there were civilian women, but I think I was the only officer.
TS: Officer?
JV: Yes.
TS: Okay. The hours, generally—What?—twelve hour shifts?
JV: Almost twelve. Let's see, I forgot when I actually got in there in the morning. Maybe about 7:30, but you didn't leave until 6:00 in the evening.
TS: Okay. And six days a week?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Yeah.
JV: Now, I think Saturday they might say, "Well, two o'clock, go home."
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: [unclear] early?
JV: Yeah, yeah.
TS: But you kept a pretty busy schedule.
JV: Yeah, yeah. I mean, it's not like you are wondering, "Well, when will the day end?" It was never like that.
TS: Yeah, just kept going.
JV: Yes.
TS: Well, one of the interesting things that I remember reading that you wrote was how with the money exchange, right, you didn't use the American currency because of—to keep the black market—
41
JV: Right.
TS: So you had—What was that called?—MPC?
JV: MPC; Military—
TS: Military Payment—
JV: —Payment—
TS: —Certificate.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Okay.
JV: Well, when you get to the—Now, when did we do it? That might have been one of the things we were doing at the airport that took so long. As soon as you got off the plane and started your processing in the airport they took your money.
TS: Exchanged it.
JV: I mean, you could have—Let's see—pennies—Now, I'm not sure, they might even have taken the silver.
TS: Yeah. I think you had written that you could have change but not dollars.
JV: Yes. Yeah. And so—But a lot of people like me, we were illegal, we were criminals. I kept a two dollar—or was it a one dollar—anyway, a bill in my wallet for the duration.
TS: Yeah. Just to keep it—
JV: Yes.
TS: Keep some American with you?
JV: Right. Yes.
TS: It was interesting, too, because it sounded like at the comptroller you actually had to—Did you print the money there or did you work on, like—
JV: No, no, no, no, no, no.
TS: But you got ready for it to—
JV: Yeah. 42
TS: —the exchange [unclear] change?
JV: When there was a money changing time, and they did it at least two times while I was there, to break the black market. They had to change—
TS: [unclear]
JV: —the MPC money also. And so, it was a deep dark secret. I mean, maybe top secret; I don't know. But the comptroller was the office that executed it.
TS: Okay.
JV: And so, they would—I don't know how they did it because that was—
TS: Out of your—
JV: —accounting and finance people. We were—
TS: Not your field.
JV: Yeah, but it was under our roof.
TS: Right.
JV: And so, they would receive the monies somehow and keep it until the magic day, and they might know a day ahead of time, but they couldn't tell anybody. I mean, even the GIs, because they were the big part of the black market.
TS: Right.
JV: So the day it happened they said, "Alright, on this time you go—your group goes to this place, you turn in your old MPC and you get your new MPC," and that was it.
TS: Yeah. Now, did you use your MPCs to buy much in the marketplace?
JV: Not really because I didn't—I didn't go off base that much. I never went off base by myself. But there was a commissary downtown and once in a while our group would go down there and get stuff for the office; soda pop; I don't know what else.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And so, we'd ride the pickup truck and go down there, and that was—that was exciting. I mean, driving down Vietnamese roads and everything.
TS: Yeah. 43
JV: But you'd go in there and it was—it was a commissary just like back home but a little cruder.
TS: Yeah.
JV: And so, you'd get the stuff and then you'd go back home—or back to the base. So that was—I didn't do that—I didn't even go once a month.
TS: No? Not that much, then.
JV: No.
TS: Were you nervous at all? Were you ever afraid?
JV: I was watchful, because while I was there there were some, like, pipe bombs. And there was this military bus that had some people going somewhere and this other female line officer—I think she worked over at base supply—she happened to be on this bus wherever they went, and so there was the explosion and she got injured. She got a Purple Heart. [chuckles]
TS: She got—
JV: Yeah, because she was injured—
TS: I see.
JV: —in a war zone.
TS: Yeah.
JV: But anyway, yes, so it did happen.
TS: Yeah.
JV: So you were—
TS: You have to be careful.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Well, you weren't all that interested in going off the post or the base.
JV: No, no, I knew better.
TS: It's a pretty big base, wasn't it? 44
JV: Yeah, yeah it was. Now, the guys, they did. I mean—Of course, they went for the brothels, and I don't know what else all, and there was this one place called 100 P Alley; I think is what it was called. And so, for a hundred P—piasters [Vietnamese currency]—you could have a good time.
TS: Yeah?
JV: And so, when we did go somewhere, like down to the commissary, I says, "Where is this place?"
And they said, "You want to know?"
I said, "Yeah." So they drove me by it and—100 P Alley. [both chuckle]
TS: Now, you also said you got a few rides on a helicopter.
JV: Yeah, one—
TS: One?
JV: I don't—You make friends, and have friends of friends, and I think this was the rescue squadron, whatever it was, and I think we did some jobs for them.
TS: Yes.
JV: And so, they let us go for a ride; the officers, me, I don't know who else. And it was on one of these—it wasn't a Huey [Bell UH-1 Iroquois military helicopter] it was a—some kind of rescue helicopter. And so, he—the pilot, he flew us around places and I says, "Can you do loop de loops?"
And he said, "Well, yeah," and so, he—helicopter did a loop de loop.
TS: Oh, nice.
JV: Yeah. So—But that was fun.
TS: How far up did you go? Was it just around the base?
JV: Yeah, just around Saigon. We didn't—You didn't dare go far.
TS: Yeah.
JV: I mean, it probably was illegal for the military to go beyond the perimeter.
TS: Right. And then—
[Speaking Simultaneously] 45
JV: Dangerous.
TS: And you did a few boat rides on the river?
JV: Well, I didn't go on a boat ride but, again, it must have been a job we did for somebody—
TS: Yeah.
JV: —and they said, "Do you want to come see what a container ship looks like?"
"Yeah, yeah!"
So we go down to the dock and there was this—I mean, it was a big boat; I mean, oceangoing boat. And so, we looked around, and he opened the hatch and there was about a million apples down there, and it was cold. I mean, it was just a boat full of apples.
TS: Full of apples.
JV: Yeah. Yeah. But they did tell us about how dangerous it was just getting to the ocean from where they were on the Saigon River.
TS: Oh, to get out?
JV: Yeah.
TS: And travel. Well, that—
JV: So I would not have wanted to take a boat ride of the Saigon River.
TS: No. [chuckles] No. Well, you also talked about watching the war from your—
JV: Yes.
TS: —from your room.
JV: Well, in the—where I lived the most in this barracks, I was on the top—Was I on the top floor? Geez, I think I was. Yeah, I was. And I'm in the end room. And so, when the fighting was really bad, and I can't tell you exactly when that was, I could hear gunfire. I mean, it—not small arms but big gunfire in the distance. I could also hear concussions from the B-52s dropping bombs about ten miles away, which was getting pretty close I thought. And somebody had mentioned something about sitting out on the end of the—of the—call it the deck, and watching the war. [chuckles]
TS: But you did.
JV: But we did. 46
TS: You saw the tracer?
JV: Yeah. Well, let's see. I'm not sure if we actually saw the tracers or not, but you could hear it.
[Tracers, or tracer ammunition, are bullets or cannon projectiles that are built with a small pyrotechnic charge in their base that burns very brightly, making the projectile trajectory visible to the naked eye during daylight, and very bright during nighttime firing]
TS: You could hear it mostly?
JV: Yes.
TS: Yeah. Was that nerve-wracking at all?
JV: No, no.
TS: Not really?
JV: No.
TS: You felt pretty safe?
JV: Yeah, yeah.
TS: You have to go down to alert [unclear]?
JV: Yeah, a couple times when they would—the siren would go off and they would tell us, "Well, if the siren goes off you just leave your room and go downstairs," and there were sandbag bumpers—bunkers around all the barracks, so you were just supposed to crouch down there. So yeah, that happened a lot.
TS: Did it?
JV: There was a period where it happened a lot.
TS: There was a lot going on.
JV: Yes.
TS: Did you have to do that mostly at night, or was it sometimes when you were working, or—
47
JV: Well, it would have been when I was not working, so it could have been daytime on the weekend or at night, and most likely it was in the daytime.
TS: But not at work, you didn't really have to—
JV: Well, now, there, I think we did a couple times have to go somewhere, and there was really nowhere safe, but the guys had stacked up all the paper—the boxes of paper up and had boards that went across, and then they put sandbags on top of that, and that was our bunker. Somebody said later on, "Well, that was the worst thing you could have done because all that stuff is going to come crashing on you." [both chuckle]
TS: Yeah.
JV: But we tried.
TS: Yeah. You did something anyway.
JV: Yeah.
TS: Now, you had shown me a letter that you wrote to your grandparents, I think it was.
JV: Yes.
TS: And you were talking about the mail system and communication.
JV: Yes.
TS: You want to talk about that?
JV: Well, there was a post office in that same building where the BX [base exchange] and our office was, and it just looked like a regular post office with the little pigeon holes; had a key. And so, your outgoing mail, if it was just a regular letter to the U.S. the postage was free, and so you just had your little envelope and when you finished addressing it and seal it you just wrote "Free" in the corner where there would have been a stamp, and that's all there was to it. I didn't realize till later, but they didn't even postmark it, so you didn't know—I mean, the person that got it didn't know when it was actually sent.
TS: Oh, okay.
JV: I would rather have it postmarked than not but—
TS: But yeah. Well, you got the date of the letter, right, so—
JV: Yes.
TS: Now, you also said you sent some tapes? 48
JV: Yes. Yeah, tapes qualified for free postage also, and so I had bought this little re—open reel, little tiny three inch reels, and a lot of people did that. And so, instead of just writing you could talk like I'm doing now—
TS: Right.
JV: —and describe watching the war at the end of the barracks.
TS: Do you still have some of those?
JV: I've got them all.
TS: Oh, you do?
JV: Yeah.
TS: Oh, okay.
JV: I think I know where they are. [chuckles] I'm not sure.
TS: That's pretty neat. That's pretty neat. You also had some R&R moments [unclear].
JV: Yeah. While you were in Vietnam you got to go on one—I guess it was just a one week R&R, rest and recuperation, and they had a—quite a list of places you could go. A lot of people liked Hong Kong [China], and then Singapore, and lots of places like that where the guys could go get the girls, primarily, and the ones that liked to shop could shop.
Well, they had Australia. I said, "Man, I want to go to Australia." So I did, I went to Australia, and that was the greatest week. I mean, we stopped in Darwin [Australia] and they wouldn't let us get off except to stay in the airport, because we were under quarantine, for one thing; the Australians thought we were contaminated. And so, before we got off this—I forget if it was a person from the airport or if it was our stewardess, she had this aerosol can and she goes walking down the aisle spraying this, as if that's going to kill anything. And so, anyway, they did that before we got off.
TS: Right.
JV: But then we had to get back on and fly the rest of the way down to Sydney. And so, I got off there and one of the—there was a fellow with me who worked—he was also in the data automation business but he worked for Seventh Air Force, and so we knew each other and so we stayed in the same hotel on the beach. Oh, what's the name of that beach? [Manly Beach—JV added later] Kind of a main beach in Sydney. But anyway, on the beach. It was awesome.
TS: Yeah? Real Pretty?