Oral history interview with Rita A. Barbraitis, 2014

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WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE: Rita Barbraitis
INTERVIEWER: Therese Strohmer
DATE: May 10, 2014
[Begin Interview]
TS: Today is May 10, 2014. My name is Therese Strohmer at the home of [both chuckle]—I forgot your first name already, Rita—
RB: That's okay.
TS: —Rita's home in Asheville, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history interview for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina of Greensboro. Rita, go ahead and state your name how you'd like it to be on your collection, please.
RB: Rita A. Barbraitis.
TS: All right, that sounds great. Okay, why don't you go ahead and start by telling me when and where you were born?
RB: Born in Worcester, Massachusetts, 1944, on Veterans Day [November 11], which was then Armistice Day, so maybe they had a portend of my coming contact with the military.
TS: Do you have any siblings?
RB: I have an older brother who—Actually, he went to the air force academy for two years.
TS: Oh, did he?
RB: Yeah, connection there, but, no, my father wasn't connected with the—during World War II or Korea [The Korean War] or anything. He was a machinist and was needed for that type work and he traveled a lot.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
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TS: Civilian work.
RB: —my mother was basically a housewife and raised us.
TS: Now, was Worcester a—like a—What size was it at that time?
RB: Worcester was probably a hundred thousand. It was the—It's the second largest city in Massachusetts after Boston.
TS: So a pretty good city.
RB: Yeah. [unclear]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Did you live in the city? I'm sorry.
RB: Well, actually we lived in the country. Well, sort of a country; we lived next to a country club.
TS: Oh, did you?
RB: A golf course—a public golf course—so we had these big fairways around us type thing. Today those houses would have been worth thousands, right, but back then it was just—just located there, and woods, so I spent a lot of times roaming through the woods and playing in the woods and I was off on my own, so.
TS: Oh, were you?
RB: And sometimes tagging along with my brother and his older friends type thing, but so—some of my independence that I got probably I think came from my experience [with] that. And I was thinking my father traveled—
TS: Oh, okay.
RB: —for Norton Company. He was a troubleshooter, so if one of their big machines broke down they sent him off to fix it. So he—We took him to the airport, and he'd fly out [the train station and go. And so, I always saw he's going someplace. There's lots of other places to see out there. So I thought that—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
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TS: That piqued your interest?
RB: Yeah, so it was like—it was very common, the idea of traveling. Oh, all right, you do this. You go and you come back and that type thing. And then my mother would—when my father was gone a lot of time in the summertime, would take us for camping trips, so again we we're—we'd go places and do things, just my brother and my—the dog and my mother.
TS: Yeah.
RB: So that got a lot of independence, I think, of the idea of travelling. Because I remember when I was in high school at Notre Dame Academy, one of the good nuns in my junior year or something saying to me, "What do you want to do after graduation and college," because it was a college prep program.
And I said, "I want to travel. I want to see the world."
TS: And that was when you were in high school?
RB: Yes.
TS: Well, when you were—when you were a young girl, then, and you're tooling around in the farmland, and in the for—woods—
RB: Yes.
TS: —as well, did you—did you have a lot of other—like, certain games that you would play or anything like that?
RB: Well, I think we played hide and seek and then there's the game where you climb up to the top of the birch trees, the skinny ones, and see how far you could lean it over to the next tree—
TS: And how were—
RB: and grab—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: How did you do on that one?
RB: I did okay. I think I fell a few times and sort of gave up on it but—but I—
TS: And then you'd grab it and— 4
RB: Yeah, you'd grab the next tree. You lean over as far as you can then you grab the next one. [chuckles]
TS: And then you get on that tree or—
RB: Yeah, yeah, and then you try to move, because there was a for—there was a little forest of—
TS: It's a game I'm not familiar with.
RB: —birch—birch trees; the northeast birch trees—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —which we don't—they don't have down here south, but—So those—And I knew where all the lady slippers [orchids] were—
TS: Oh.
RB: —and were the blueberries were and—so.
TS: That kind of thing.
RB: And my mother took us into the woods, too, so—when we were younger, so then she just let—and there was a pond, and we—The boys had a raft. I just—I never—They wouldn't let me on the raft.
TS: No? [both chuckle]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: [unclear]—
TS: That was theirs; no girls.
RB: —in the woods type thing. And then—And then the—The golf course was great fun to roam around, and I was always amazed of how these golf balls would be hundreds of feet off the fairway in the woods. I said, "How do they do—How do—they getting way over here?" I played golf for four or five years and I understand how that happens. [both chuckle] I know that now.
TS: You couldn't collect them and go get some cash for them?
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RB: Actually, I did that a couple times.
TS: Did you?
RB: Actually I did it—We'd find them and the guy at the pro shop would give us some money for them, and, actually, when I was really young I picked up a couple that were live.
TS: Oh, no.
RB: Someone had hit them up. They were—They were heading into our yard. [unclear] "They're mine, they're in our yard," because we were right on the fairway, so.
TS: [chuckles] That's too funny.
RB: And I sold Kool-Aid [brand of flavored drink mix] to the golfers, but I had trouble. We were right next to the eighteenth hole so the next hole's the nineteenth for them.
[The nineteenth hole is slang for the clubhouse when golfers go for drinks after their round of golf]
TS: That's right.
RB: So I didn't—Business wasn't that great.
TS: You needed to be, like, on the ninth hole or something, right?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: About halfway through.
RB: Yes, the middle, right.
TS: Before they had the carts with all the beverages that they would drive around—
RB: Right.
TS: —and stuff like that.
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RB: And it was a very hilly golf course—the back part of it—and that's—In the wintertime it [was] great fun sliding and tobogganing, and they actually had a ski jump that my brother went down a few times on his sled. It was, like, just crazy things.
TS: Nice.
RB: Kid stuff—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —that—we were adventurous.
TS: Now, how was school? Did you enjoy school?
RB: Yeah, yeah, I mean, I had—I had a lot of the good—I had four years of Catholic [school]—my first four grades were Catholic with the nuns, and then I went four grades public [school], and then I went to high school and college with the nuns, so I had a lot of strong women images around me. I just really—and I didn't have problems with—A lot of people have bad stories about nuns but I had positive experiences with—that they were strong, independent women, and they transfer them around all the time; like, especially in high school we'd pay attention to that. We'd have a nun we really liked and then she wouldn't be there the next fall; that they got trans—she got transferred to another part of the state or something, so, again, that travelling, moving around thing is like, "Hmm, okay."
TS: You're familiar with that.
RB: Yeah.
TS: Now, what were the names of the schools you went to?
RB: First one was Saint Joseph's [School], was in—I think that probably was actually in Worcester—or was it Worcester, on the border? And then—And then the Holden public schools. And then my high school was Notre Dame Academy, and then Emmanuel College.
TS: Now, did you have a favorite subject or anything?
RB: Well, I was always very sports-orientated, and I liked natural sciences, and geography; I had an interest in geography, all these little—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
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TS: Still traveling.
RB: —coloring those—the various countries, and the rivers and all that, and just, again, it was a big world out there.
TS: Did you ever read, like, the World Book [Encyclopedia] series or anything? You go through those—
RB: No.
TS: National Geographic?
RB: No. No, we didn't get those.
TS: No? RB: No.
TS: Did you use the library much? RB: Yeah, I read; I was a reader.
TS: Yeah. RB: And the Nancy Drews [Nancy Drew Mysteries] and those type things.
TS: Did you have a favorite teacher?
RB: I had a couple probably. I had Miss Reeves in the fifth grade who was one of these older, stern as can be, and just a—
TS: But you liked her?
RB: Yeah, she was just—Actually, I was— pulled down my stuff; I was looking at my report cards. I didn't get very good grades with her. [both chuckle] A lot of Cs, a lot of Bs, but—and there's one story I always tell with her is that—She said, "We're going to do an art project," and she says, "Go get two pieces of construction paper, two different colors, and bring them up and show them to me," so that tells you something; what kind of teacher she was; she wanted to see what you picked out. So I picked out red and yellow, which is also the color of the—of the 25th Infantry Division.
TS: That's right; yes.
RB: So—And she looks at my colors, she says, "Gypsy colors. Go get two more." She didn't like those colors.
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TS: I guess not.
RB: But they were gypsy colors; I always liked red and yellow.
TS: [chuckles] Still do.
RB: Yes.
TS: That's good. Now, as a little girl, and you have a sense of, like, "Hmm, there's something more out there," did you have any sense of, like, what possibilities were for you to do with your—as you grew up and grew older?
RB: Neither of my parents went to college and—but they sent both of us to schools that were college preps for high school and such—
TS: Okay.
RB: —so I was—I realized how college was something that—to do next and my par—my mother especially was [unclear], "Get the best education you possibly can."
TS: They were focused on making sure you got a good education.
RB: Right, because they had to pay tuition [for] both these schools; it was not public schools.
TS: Right.
RB: Spend extra money, and she had gone to a—also a girls' high school so she had a—had a connection there. She was a good, staunch Catholic, so—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —she wanted to keep me in that fold, so.
TS: So you're a child of the fifties [1950s] and sixties [1960s]—
RB: Yes.
TS: —really. What do you remember about that era? Anything jump out at you about music or entertainers or anything like that?
RB: Well, see, all the stuff around The Beatles and Ed—The Ed Sullivan Show, Howdy Doody. I just recently picked up a—found a little Howdy Doody doll and I was taking—buying it at a thrift store and I asked—and I said, "You know who this is?"
And this young woman said, No, who is it?" [both chuckle]
TS: You had to tell her what she had? 9
RB: Yeah, yeah, and she vag—it was vaguely familiar to her type thing, so—I remember [unclear]—We got a TV—Our TV, we probably got it '56, '57, and the Howdy Doody show and watching all that stuff and—because we—I remember my father, he would come home when he was working at home, and traveling, he didn't like to go out again. He was just tired. He didn't want to go so we spent a lot of time around the homestead, sort of, and didn't—Mother would want to go out to eat or something and he goes, "I eat out in restaurants all the time."
TS: [chuckles] You want a home-cooked meal.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: [unclear] Right, right, so.
TS: Now, did you do anything, like, sock hops, or anything of that nature, like, dances?
RB: Yes, middle school, I remember taking dancing classes and middle school having to go to—learning the box step and those type things, and then, of course, into high school I went to, what they called, mixers and—
TS: Okay.
RB: Yeah.
TS: You brought—because you had—were you—Was your high school all girls?
RB: Yes.
TS: Okay.
RB: So there'd be certain—the chur—it was the church groups that would have dances and invite—anyone could come that wanted to come so I used to go to those.
TS: What was that like being in an all-girls school? I mean, you didn't know anything different, I realize, but wh—
RB: Well, I—when I was in middle school it was coed—
TS: Okay.
RB: —because I was—so I went from—my first eight years was all coed. I had met a couple women who were in—young women who were in—went to the same academy that I went to and I really liked—I really admired them. They were very intelligent and outspoken, and their parents, they were probably upper middle class and had some 10
money, and I just—so I appreciated the idea, that, "Yeah, this could be okay, going to an all-girls school." So what happened—And I really enjoyed it. Probably—I think it's a great benefit when you're—I was never president of the class or anything else but it was always—it was always the girls in charge.
TS: Right.
RB: Like, I was the president of the pep club, ran different little small organizations type thing, and we were in charge and we didn't have to deal with boys or any of their—some of the trials and tribulations you go through in high school. And then—And we got out enough—that my mother—We got out to dances and things so we saw the other side, but I think you get a really good education from a—
TS: And maybe some sense of, like, confidence in your own abilities.
RB: Yes, right.
TS: Because of the things that you're—that you're challenged to do, too, right?
RB: Right.
TS: Because you get these positions of, kind of, authority and responsibility—
RB: Yes.
TS: —that maybe might have been given to a boy at that time.
RB: Right, right, and it depends on you and your team, or in a group that you're working with, so.
TS: Yeah. Did you—Oh, go ahead.
RB: So then that led me into—to college too. I mean, I went to a coed college for one year—my freshman year in college—and—but it was out in the sticks and I was really—wanted to see football games and I wanted to be part of the bigger thing so I transferred into Boston to this Catholic women college. But I had friends there who were at Boston College and at BU [Boston University] and there was just—and Harvard. I went to Harvard—I went to lectures at Harvard, I went to mixers at Harvard, so I got that whole mix of—Boston's a great town that way. There's so much educational and fun stuff going on there all the time. I used to cut class in the spring sometime and go sit in the bleachers and watch the Red Sox play.
TS: Oh, nice.
RB: Yes.
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TS: Nice. Now, are you still a Red Sox fan?
RB: I'm still a Red Sox fan.
TS: Because we might have to end the interview now.
RB: Oh, don't tell me you're a damn Yankee [fan of the professional team the New York Yankees]. [both chuckle]
TS: No, I'm not. I'm from Detroit—I'm from Michigan so I'm a Tigers fan.
RB: Okay. Well, that's all right. Just Yan—Yankees I just don't have—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: No, no. Well, we'd just definitely have to end it then and that be—we'd be all done.
Well, what about—So you're—So you have, like, a—have this urban connection to things going on—
RB: Yes.
TS: —at that time, right? Because you said you didn't want to be out in the rural—
RB: Right, it was very—
TS: —college.
RB: —calm, peaceful. They played soccer; that was it. [both chuckle]
TS: That was it.
RB: Because I always—My brother played sports so I always paid attention to sports; I always liked sports myself.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Did you get to play some yourself?
RB: Yeah, I played basketball in high school, I played field hockey in junior high, and I played basketball in college.
TS: You—Now, was it the five man teams or the—
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RB: Started off that way. No, we started off with six man teams.
TS: Six man teams where you do the two dribbles or—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Couldn't go across—three dribbles. Couldn't go across—
TS: Oh, three, sorry.
RB: —that center line.
TS: Okay.
RB: And then my—During college we could go across the center line, I think, my last couple years. But it was—
TS: Did you have fun with that when it changed or did you enjoy it or was it, like, different?
RB: Well, it was—it was so different because the ball handling skills.
TS: Yeah, you didn't have that—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: When you do one, two, three dribbles, you didn't—you couldn't dribble behind your back, you couldn't—I didn't know all that stuff—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —so that was—
TS: Made it a little more complicated—
RB: Yeah, right.
TS: —to play.
RB: Yes.
TS: Yeah, I can see that that would be case.
So you would have been about sixteen when [John Fitzgerald] Kennedy was elected president, then, or somewhere in there. 13
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yeah, because—Well, he was in office two years, because I was [in] my freshman year of college—
TS: Sixty—1960.
RB: —when he—when he was killed.
TS: But that was when he was elected, though, in '60.
RB: [unclear], right.
TS: So—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —as a Catholic what—how did that—
RB: Well, I mean—because everyone was criticizing the fact that the Pope [John XXIII] was going to lead the country and tell us what to do and all that and we just knew that was just not correct, so we were very—I think we were very pleased that we had a Catholic president and he had his—seemed to have his head screwed on right but—
TS: How about his—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Didn't know he was a womanizer and everything else. [chuckling]
TS: Didn't—Well, that all came out later, though, right? So that's all—
RB: But in retrospect, yeah.
TS: Yes.
RB: But, yeah, I mean, I remember watching the conventions on TV, and that's when they—they would have floor fights and it was much different than what they do now, which is so automatic, but here they would—the votes were really—"Are they going to pass on this vote or not? Is he going to get in? What's—What—Is the state going to turn around their votes?" And so, it was interesting; I watched that stuff, yeah.
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TS: Right.
RB: My parents watched it.
TS: And he was the senator from your state too.
RB: Yes, from Massachusetts, right.
TS: That's right. And then—So did you have—Were you inspired at all by his inaugural address?
RB: Probably, thinking of that thing of "What—Don't ask what you can do for your country," [John F. Kennedy quotation: "Ask not what your country can you for you — ask what you can do for your country"] so it probably struck home type thing, and that whole service thing—of the whole Catholic thing of service was built into the nuns that you should—you should serve.
TS: Yeah.
RB: Yeah, so.
TS: Well—So then when he was assassinated how—Do you remember when that happened?
RB: I was in philosophy class in a big audi—slanted auditorium, and the priest was often going on about whatever on philosophy and this—one of the students stood up and just said, "The president's been shot." He had his radio on.
TS: Oh, in class.
RB: That's what he's doing in class instead of listening; he was listening to that.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And they dismissed us immediately, and [we] went over to the student union and just standing around watching the TVs and just—
TS: Do you remember how you felt at that time?
RB: I pretty much felt very shocked. I didn't—I don't remember bursting out into tears, but just shocked at—"Why did this happen? How could this have happened?" This—Because you heard about assassinations in the past—[President Abraham] Lincoln and all that—but it's, like, this is our time and era. It was just—It was just really shocking.
And then I was—I remember we watched, of course, the funeral. I was staying in a—They didn't have dorms for women there so I was in a house with four women; two seniors and two freshmen with a house mother. It was a private home type—how she made her money, and cooked our meals and all that, and just all of us sitting there, and 15
she was—she was terribly upset. She was really upset. I remember seeing how she was just—I don't think she even cooked that night, she was just so upset.
TS: Pretty shook up.
RB: Yes.
TS: Well, you had also been raised during a period—the threat of nuclear war with the duck and cover [drill to protect oneself against nuclear attack]. Did you guys do that at all with the—
RB: Yeah, I remember doing the—the Cuban [Missile] Crisis of—would always start off—the PA [Public Address] system would start off with a hymn—the good Catholic girls—and then there was a prayer. So during the Crisis, or in the height of it, they start off with the Star Sp—the two—and I knew the two girls, they were in my class and they're on the piano [unclear], they sang—they did the "The Star-Spangled Banner." [chuckles]
TS: Instead of a hymn.
RB: Instead of a hymn.
TS: Made a big impact; I'm sure you remember that.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: [unclear], yes.
TS: So you know something's going on.
RB: Yes.
TS: But did—
RB: But I didn't really—I don't know if I completely grasped how sev—the severity of that situation, and a lot of that stuff—
TS: Right.
RB: —after you—you read about it and study after—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
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TS: Where you're just a young girl.
RB: Yeah, right. Right.
TS: Yes.
RB: But [unclear] I've also always—I've had had this very positive attitude so I didn't think that we were going to get blown up or blown away or that—
TS: Right.
RB: Things will always work out, and I—it was when you believed in the government; the government is right; right or wrong, we're doing the right thing.
TS: Right. So you're in college, and what is it that you are expecting your future is going to look like at that time?
RB: Wasn't really sure because there wasn't—because we had a nursing program and we had a teaching program and then there—you can even take typing classes. I never took typing classes because I never wanted to be a secretary. I figure I can't type, I can't be a secretary, [chuckles] so eliminate that possibility.
TS: I've heard that a few times from a couple people, yeah, a couple women.
RB: So.
TS: Yeah.
RB: So I wasn't sure. I really wasn't sure at all. During college I spent a couple summers—My summers—Again, getting my little travels in here. In high school I worked at S&H Green Stamps store and my father's cafeteria in the factory that he worked in and at—but when I got older, when I was old enough to—in college or eighteen—where I wrote to some of these resorts, one in New Hampshire in Jackson—Jackson Hole—big fancy resort where they put you up. You sleep—We slept in the barn out in the—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Oh, you did get to go there?
RB: Yes, so I spent—
TS: That's such a beautiful place.
RB: Yes, I spent the whole summer as a waitress type thing and we—which was great fun, and then college kids from other resorts around that we'd just hang out with, and drink 17
and party and get—try to stay out of trouble and make sure we're wide awake for breakfast in the morning.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And then I did it my second year—my junior—because there was sophomore year, then junior year in college I did it in Long Island, in East Hampton. Very “fancy-dancy” little resort where you would—And I had—You do the—your shifts then you lay on the beach in between the shifts type thing and you finish the—your shift at ten o'clock at night or something and then you'd party. And of course, all of the cooks, and waiters, and the—some of the black guys and everything else who were going to Florida in the winter and back. It's just a whole other world of what they were—of partying and hanging out and—
TS: Right.
RB: —dancing, so I—again, I got away from home, and my mother—my mother is a lit— was a little domineering. She—It was her way was the right way and everything else wasn't, so she could give you a real hard time. Like, I wanted to volunteer during some of the civil rights movements and such and she didn't want me to do anything to do with that and she thought it would just be too dangerous, too dangerous.
TS: What did you want to do?
RB: Well, there—the whole—there was the black movement going on in Worcester at the time, working with them. I mean, I can't remember what it was, I never got that far.
TS: Right.
RB: The idea of just volunteering to help out the cause of voter registration and the whole thing [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: But in the local area, not, like, go down here or anything.
RB: No, no. No, it would have been right in Worcester but mother just was completely opposed to that, really strongly, and I said, "You don't—What about poverty? You don't know what poverty is. We don't know what poverty is. We're so fortunate and so lucky."
She says, "I know what poverty is." She says, "I was raised in poverty. I don't need to have you out there doing that; you cannot do that." So I didn't. But the—
TS: So when you got out from underneath her thumb—
RB: Yes, yes.
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TS: —I guess, in some sense, that was, like, liberating for you to go out—
RB: Yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: —to actually [unclear]—
RB: Because she was—Yeah. What I was actually doing in—so this was Jackson Hole—this is New Hampshire.
TS: Right.
RB: This is not in Wyoming. You know the area? You been up there?
TS: I have been through there but I had—don't know it very well.
RB: Yeah, it's beautiful; the mountains are gorgeous. Yeah, so I was—I was—We were on our own completely. It was sort of like when I went off to college, too; I mean, I just loved being without mother being around college and I went home only when I had to. Of course, when I got to Boston I loved Boston, so.
TS: Yeah.
RB: Had a good—
TS: Did you drive at all? Because I don't know anybody from Boston that drives.
RB: No, I didn't have a car at all until—
TS: Later.
RB: I didn't get a car until '71—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —after Vietnam. I drove a few jeeps illegally in Vietnam and Korea but—a couple planes but—[chuckles]
TS: What—A couple planes?
RB: They just let me have—
TS: Oh, the wheel, don't have to— 19
RB: The wheel, yeah.
TS: Tell me how it was that you ended up with the—with the Red Cross; why you decided to join the Red Cross.
RB: Well, I was looking for something to take me travelling.
TS: Right.
RB: To get me—and I was thinking west coast. Let's go see—of course that—
TS: The other Jackson Hole.
RB: Right. The—the Age of Aquarius; the whole thing. San Francisco, all that stuff.
TS: What year did you graduate from college then? Sixty-eight?
RB: Sixty-seven.
TS: Sixty-seven, okay.
RB: So I was right in the throes of that, and I remember in college there was a couple of rallies going on that—all this hip—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Teach-ins and—
RB: Hippie stuff, yeah.
TS: Okay.
RB: Right.
TS: Did you—Were you able to connect with that at all?
RB: Well, just on the fringes.
TS: Okay.
RB: More as observer than a participant because we were—the college kept us [unclear]—
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[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That's right you're at a Catholic college.
RB: —college—
TS: Right.
RB: —type thing so we—We didn't do that. So I can't remember—I took a social work exam for Boston—
TS: Okay.
RB: —which I passed that and I was—I could have a job, and this was—In '67 there were jobs, there were a lot of jobs, so I knew I could—I could work with them but I wanted to stay in Boston. But the Red Cross sent me back, I mean, just a whole packet of stuff. They had many programs; there's a recreation program; they had the hospital program.
TS: How was it that you got their brochures?
RB: I mean, I think I did some research on organizations that were national.
TS: Okay.
RB: And those are the ones I applied to; that were national.
TS: And then they sent you some information?
RB: And they sent me all this information and I saw this one program was, like, the idea of working in hospitals didn't appeal to me but this idea of going to Vietnam—I mean Korea—I just didn't pay attention to Vietnam. That's where the action is.
TS: Well, what did you think of—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: It's the other side of the world. [chuckles]
TS: Right; that's right. What did you think about the war at that time?
RB: I was sort of apolitical. I—No one in my family was really military background; the two years my brother was at the academy didn't count. I didn't know; I just really didn't know. I just knew the controversy was just starting to really build—
21
TS: Right.
RB: —at that time and I wasn't—I didn't have a "for or against" it. It just sounded like an adventure.
TS: Right, an adventure.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: It was an adventure.
TS: So you're up for an adventure—
RB: Yes.
TS: —and an adventure far away from home.
RB: Yes.
TS: I see.
RB: And expenses paid.
TS: So get paid for travelling.
RB: Right. I mean, I get a chance to go and see places and it was sort of unknown but I wasn't really scared of the unknown. I mean, when we went camping with my mother a ranger once said, "If you hear shooting tonight, don't worry. We're just scaring the bears away."
It was, like, "Oh, okay." It's—That's normal, so.
TS: [chuckles]
RB: I'd be, "Sure, let's go." So that's—and that was the only really good response I got back, and that was probably during the winter of '67. And they said you fill out all the paperwork, blah-blah-blah, and they said, "Come—Come to Washington [D.C.]. We'll fly you to Washington for [an] interview."
So I went down to Washington for the day by myself. Popped in [to] Logan Airport, and it was during cherry blossom time. Had my interview, and what I told you before, I wanted Vietnam, but she said that the class was filled and I could go to Korea, but—and I thought I'd really rather—"Well, there's a chance of transferring to Vietnam"—they put that out there, and she said, "Yes, yes, I'll put that down, that you'll be interested in transferring to Vietnam."
But—so I said, "Okay, Korea." But—
22
TS: And I think you had told me off-tape that you didn't know that if you just waited a month you would have been able to go—
RB: Yeah, oh, she didn't tell me that.
TS: Right.
RB: Yeah, I mean, you don't know those things then you're not quite smart enough to ask those questions—
TS: Right.
RB: —that we might think of now, so.
TS: Well, what did your family and friends think about your decision?
RB: My college friends thought it was a little strange.
TS: Why?
RB: Well, one, where was Korea? They weren't sure. [chuckles] And working with the military. And one of the nuns I had [unclear], "You mean, playing games with the men?" She didn't—
TS: She didn't understand it.
RB: She didn't think it was—the idea of—at all of doing that, but I said, "Oh, it sounds interesting. If they're going to spend all this time and money it can't be just a crazy program type thing. It's got to be—some substance to it." I didn't get a chance to talk to anyone before I went to Washington, but—and they—of course, they do a real sales job on you in Washington, too, when they fly you down there.
TS: How was that? How did that go? Your sales pitch—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Oh, I—
TS: —they made to you?
RB: I mean, serving your country, serving the war effort. Just that you would—you—you'd be a vital part of the process of winning the war. In Korea it wasn't winning the war, it was more of—that we had these troops there and we have all these missiles there and they're all pointing at China and Russia and that this was important work. 23
TS: Now you—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: [unclear]
TS: Before you flew there, whe—had you already made up your mind or were you just still kind of wondering whether you were going to do it or not?
RB: Well, I was sort of wondering, yeah.
TS: Okay.
RB: But I was thinking—I was leaning that way because there was nothing else in the social work job lined up. Thank God that didn't happen. [chuckles] So when I got there and I was walking around I said, "Why not? It's an opportunity; jump on it. I can always come back to Boston and do something else later. I mean, it's here in front of you. Go."
TS: And so, what did your parents think?
RB: My mother raised me to be independent so—I mean, I told them, I didn't ask them. And she didn't say much. She said, "If that's what you want to do."
I said, "That's what I want to do."
TS: You were, like, twenty-three, twenty-four at this time?
RB: No, I'm about twenty-two.
TS: Twenty-two.
RB: Yeah.
TS: Okay.
RB: Twenty-two, and so she—I mean, I said, "You always wanted me to be independent. This is—I'm going to go see the world."
She says, "Okay."
And my father was, "Good. Go. It'll be good for you."
TS: [chuckles] Is that what he said?
RB: So off I went.
24
TS: Tell me what it was like. Tell me—You're going to Korea. How'd you prepare for going to Korea?
RB: Well—
TS: And did they do training before they sent you there?
RB: Yeah, we again [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: How [unclear]—
RB: —Washington—the two weeks in Washington—
TS: Okay.
RB: —type thing where they tell you everything in the world that you need to know about the Red Cross, and you've heard the stories about the donuts and the cigarettes and the money, and that we could answer those hard questions, because some people either love the Red Cross or they hated the Red Cross; I mean, some of the military.
TS: But—And this is what they're telling you to—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —prepare for?
RB: Yeah, right, right. That you go—and we got that, we got that stuff a lot of time. And they didn't spend enough time in—on really how to deal with the men, and especially in Korea it was much—I mean, it was very different than Vietnam too. It was, like, much calmer. It was like a little America without some of the chrome, the bases and everything else. There's movie theaters; there's basketball courts; you can go into the villages; you could do all that stuff, so.
TS: Because it's not a hostile zone.
RB: Yeah, yeah, but we had—we trained with the Vietnam people and so they had covered that, but they didn't—they never spent enough time, I think, on really—How do you deal with some of the difficult situations you're going to come up with [with] men, because you're going to be surrounded by them all the time. And then the other thing that I learned, too, is how you deal with these other young women that you're going to be stationed with and have to work with as a team, and that was a challenge too, so.
25
TS: What kind of difficult situations did you—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Well, it's—
TS: —feel like you didn't have the training for?
RB: Well, some of it was just the maturity of leadership.
TS: Yes.
RB: Of knowing—I mean, I ran into—I had—I was a unit director—a program director. I was always on the leadership track. Even when our class went overseas I was one—There was two co-leaders that make—would make decisions if there were problems or anything else, and I was one of them. And I was—and I believed these are the rules. You follow the rules, type thing, and a lot of people said, "Oh, we can get around a rule this way. Well, let's go out and do this. We're not going to be back in at midnight. We'll see you when we get back," type thing, and even this is before they get there. And so, a lot of people just—young women who are headstrong, who—the idea was they were going over to have a good time, and don't get in my way of having a good time. Yeah, it was difficult. I got a nickname as "Sarge."
TS: Did you? [both chuckle]
RB: Yeah. Because I went by the rules. And—Like, one of my workers once told me, "You're hard, but you're fair." Yeah, so.
TS: What was it like when you got to Korea then? You explained the base is like a typical base that—
RB: Yeah—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: —with all the amenities—
RB: —groomed lawns, rocks painted white. GIs [General Infantry] painted rocks, it was just really [unclear]. It was—And then all the prostitutes, and that just sort of shocked me that all the prostitutes in the villages, and that the guys—the thing is that they were [unclear]—they had cards that the American doctors would okay them for all the various STDs [sexually transmitted diseases] they could get, so that they— 26
TS: Who were they giving the cards to, the men or the women?
RB: To the prostitutes. So you would—If you were a GI you would ask to see her card and last time she had a physical checkup.
TS: And where did she get the checkup, through the—
RB: For the military—U.S. military.
TS: Really?
RB: They had a clinic, and if you wanted to be a prostitute and take care of the American boy you got to— make sure you had a clean bill of health. So this stuff—"What? What? We're paying for this?"
And then the whole thing around the—I mean, some of the things—the officers' clubs, and also we went to the enlisted mens' clubs, too. In Korea we didn't do—we didn't do enlisted mens' clubs in Vietnam; that was too dangerous to do that. But the drinking; the drinking was unbelievable. Well, you know about that in the military; you walk in to get a—
TS: Yeah.
RB: I'd walk in to the club, they'd see me coming, and I'd have three screwdrivers in front of me before the time I sat down that people bought me, that type of thing, so. And then you could tell some of the guys really did have a problem with the alcohol and such. But I was in a travel unit which was—again, was interesting in that we flew—we took trains. We took the local Korean train and went out to—well, they wouldn't be [unclear]—they were missile sites where the missiles were on one hill, the radar was on another, and then the support camp was down below. So we'd go and do these—You've heard about the recreation programs that we did around music and sports.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Well—But the people who are reading this transcript aren't familiar with it so—
RB: Oh, okay, okay.
TS: —so go ahead and talk—describe it.
RB: I mean, it was like—almost like developing a term paper, but an activity, that you'd come up with a topic that was of interest to the young male mind that would be stimulating and fun. And cars, music, sports. And you'd—And you'd go through a process of, "This is my idea," and people throw out ideas, "This is how I'm going to do it. You would have—And 27
you usually did a group—a large group that could—a group could be twelve, or it could be—it could be a hundred. So you'd have these props that you could see, and so we didn't sing or dance or entertain. We involved them in these fun activities.
TS: Like trivia?
RB: Trivia questions, flash cards, games. I mean, some of the one—I did one on football and I had an All-American football player help me do—of the percentage of time, if you call it and run, and the defense call is looking for a quarterback sneak, what's the likelihood of yards you would get. It was really a complex game.
TS: Oh, interesting.
RB: But one of the problems with it is that one guy would want to be the quarterback and wouldn't involve his other guys around him. [chuckles]
TS: Right.
RB: So it was interesting but it was stimulating for their minds and some of the guys just really enjoyed it, that type thing. Because you couldn't relate to—If you talk to one or two guys—because the program would be an hour long—but how did you reach the other fifty that were there. So these—these—
TS: It's like an interactive program, right?
RB: It was, right. We'd divide them into two teams. We'd harass them, they'd harass us, and we'd go back—where we were from and all that. "Where was Suzie, that cute one from last week?"
I said, "I'm here, not you." [both chuckle] [unclear] So it's all this give and take with the guys which I didn't have a whole lot of experience in.
TS: Right.
RB: Because going to—I mean, I did my share of dating and all that, but college and high school where you don't really—
TS: Right.
RB: —have a daily procedure but you learn from the other women who were there, and there's some that were just really excellent, and then they would know little tricks and games and just little mind things that get the guys just—
TS: Well, what kind of things would they do?
RB: Oh, there's one where you can—You put a guy down on a chair and you press on his head real hard and you—with your little fingers you can put under his leg and under his 28
shoulder and we—two of us could lift him up. So what's happening is you're making the bod—body go rigid into a bla—into a really sharp, rigid, stiff thing and we could just pick that guy up for—We've dropped a few too. [both laugh] But—then there's card games, there's things where you tie strings around their wrists and tie the other one's wrist. Okay, get out of it. Don't untie it. And they'd do contortions.
TS: Right.
RB: And then people giving opinions of what to do and such, so that kind of stuff just—
TS: Fun?
RB: —just to keep them—so their mind just came off—and, of course, Korea, their biggest problem was boredom. And then so we'd go out to these bases and we'd spend a night at the base, and then get on the train, [unclear] program, get on a train and go off to another place, and a jeep would pick us up from the train, and that's where we had donuts too. Donuts came from World War II. But they had—We had a Korean baker.
TS: Okay.
RB: There was a big stainless steel machine. Pour the batter in, pour all the stuff in, put the oil, and then in the morning we'd have to catch a six o'clock train or something. I remember it would be in the office and these donuts were sliding down this little thing through the oil and then they'd come around and then they'd slide out and I had my pencil there and catch them.
TS: [chuckles]
RB: I gained some weight there. [chuckles]
TS: Well, you can't pass up donuts—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —fresh-made.
RB: Yeah, so. And then the guy—the guys liked those—the donuts and—
TS: Yeah.
RB: So.
TS: What kind of negative reaction would you get sometimes?
RB: Oh, prop—get propositioned. I mean, just some really rude—typical rude, crude, but they—basically they had a—in Korea and Vietnam, too, a lot of respect for us. I mean, 29
they'd start swearing like a—sailors, or soldiers, and then they all—they'd apologize all over the place. But what went on behind out backs—And we hung out mainly with the officers, and that was—because that was always an issue, but I used to say they're taller. There's various things, and—but some of them, I mean, they was just—we were college graduates; we were their age. You get these eighteen year olds, all they wanted to do is drink and try to get in your pants. You just—Those aren't people you wanted to hang out with and they were hanging out with the prostitutes anyways, a lot of them. And you—because certainly there were some other enlisted men that we certainly related to well and all our program[s] was to—mainly to enlisted men.
TS: To enlisted.
RB: Right.
TS: Now, did you have—Did everyone that joined the Red Cross, doing those programs, did they have to have a college education?
RB: Yes, you had to have a college education, good health, between twenty-one and twenty-four.
TS: Oh, okay.
RB: So that was—That was a must; that you had gone through trials and tribulations of college. Part of maturity is what they were thinking.
TS: Now, you hadn't been—I mean, you'd been away from home doing the various things during the summer but this was a long ways from home. How—How did that—Were you homesick or anything?
RB: No, I didn't get homesick. No, it was just—everything was so new and so it was an adventure and just safe. I just remember how hot it was in Korea when I got there, and we didn't have air conditioning. We had Quonset huts—
TS: Quonset huts.
RB: —those metal huts and—
TS: Yes.
RB: —and the people that used to like to rock them, so in the middle of the night they'd get all pebbles and throw them at the Quonset hut and they'd roll down. In Korea that was great fun; I did that once in Vietnam and almost got shot.
TS: A little different atmosphere, right?
30
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: A little different. You have to learn that you don't—you don't surprise people with large sounds in Vietnam. [both chuckle]
TS: Exactly.
RB: What's on the other side of it, so.
TS: That's 1967 that you're in Korea. What did you like best about being there?
RB: Seeing another culture, because we could get out in the village and we—and could—could talk with the people and, I learn to li—really like Korean food and kimchi and bulgogi and—type thing, and we traveled. I mean, we lived on our own base and I met a lot of nice guys. Hung out—I remember one guy, we—it was a—there—the World Series—Red Sox were in the World Series and he was from Boston, too, and it was, like, the game was on at three o'clock in the morning, so here I am in his hooch at three o'clock in the morning, and they lost.
TS: How are you—Are you listening to it?
RB: Radio.
TS: The radio.
RB: Radio, yes, yes.
TS: Okay.
RB: Just [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: The Red Sox won the World Series in '67?
RB: Yeah. Well, not—
TS: Sixty—
RB: Yeah, the World—Well, they lost.
TS: Really? Okay.
31
RB: Either World Series, or it was—it may have been [unclear]—
TS: No, you're probably right, I'm just—
RB: Yeah. So they lost and—
TS: Okay.
RB: —I always thought as I was leaving his hooch at five o'clock in the morning what everyone was probably thinking.
TS: Oh, that's right. So this is at Pyeongtaek [South Korea]?
RB: Yes, Camp Humphreys [United States Army Garrison-Humphreys], yes.
TS: Camp Humphreys, and this was with the 23rd [Area] Support [Group]?
RB: Yes, [and the travel unit?].
TS: Was there anything besides the hotness and the coldness that you didn't particularly care for?
RB: Well, the poverty you could see.
TS: Yes.
RB: There were a still lot of thatched roofs all over the place and you—there were something called Mickey Mouse boots that you see in the wintertime. These huge boots that looked like the kind of shoes Mickey Mouse would wear, type thing, which—
TS: Okay.
RB: —from the black market that you would see the Koreans running around in. And I remember—There was one instance, I remember being on a—on the bus going into Seoul for a weekend or something, shopping and then going through this little village and this Viet—Korean mother smiling and laughing and then bending down and holding—all I could see was her holding out her hands, and the bus starts to pull away and I said, "I wanted to see the rest of that." So this little kid runs to her. I said, "No different; we're all the same."
TS: Just a different place.
RB: So—Right. And so, reading the paper on Sunday morning in Seoul, reading the paper on Boston Common, yeah, it wa—it was all the same; that we—that the world was very different but also very much alike.
32
TS: Right.
RB: Yeah.
TS: A lot of the same values and—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —family, and things like that.
RB: Yes, right, right. Thinking about it—and, I mean, they treated—I remember we'd wait for the trains sometimes and the trains would be late and this whole thing. I remember one time there was a guy, he had a watermelon. All the kids would come around us all the time, to American women type thing, and so we'd show pictures of our family and talk to them the best we could and some would try to practice their English and not having very good English and the whole thing.
TS: Did you pick up any Korean?
RB: "Annyeonghaseyo" is how you say hello, but you picked up hello, thank you, type thing.
TS: Common courtesy.
RB: Right, just common courtesy things, type thing, but I just remember once we—this guy— he was going by with a—had a whole thing of—yoke on his thing and had just big baskets of these watermelons. I said, "Oh, that's what we need." Oh, the kids went crazy, so I think for a couple bucks we bought, like, four watermelons, and, of course, we didn't have a knife, so the guy puts down—he takes the watermelon, smashes it on the ground, and the kids go [makes noise].
TS: Right to it.
RB: And just cracked it up, so.
TS: Picked it apart, yeah.
RB: Yeah. But riding on the train was interesting because we saw businessmen and we would see housewives and just people, and we would—and they had first class and second class. We usually—sometimes we went first, sometimes second, depending what was available. And there was chickens, and there was—and the third [unclear], there's a cargo type thing. We didn't ride in that because that's where the goats were, and people sitting on—hanging their feet out the windows type thing.
TS: Right.
33
RB: But the Korean people are very industrious, very supportive of Americans. We saved their half of the country supposedly, so I just enjoyed seeing them and meeting them and just realizing—as I said, similar but different. They have those big Buddhist temples in Seoul or something but—
TS: Right.
RB: No different than a cathedral.
TS: Yeah.
RB: So.
TS: Now, did you have any—Oh, I was going to ask you about traveling too. You traveled on a train and—
RB: Then we'd get picked up by the unit in their jeep.
TS: In a jeep. You didn't ever fly in the helicopters in Korea?
RB: Very little.
TS: Okay.
RB: My first helicopter ride was one of those big, fat bubble things. I don't even know what they even call them now. Not the Hueys [Bell UH-1 Iroquois military helicopter] that we flew in Vietnam but—and they knew it was my first ride, and the other woman I was with, I don't know if she was on her first ride or not, and he was smoking a big stogie. And there's a big floor up here and the pilots are up higher and we're down [here], and they said, "We're going to give you a ride." So they contour flew, which—flying the landscape. There's a mountain here, [makes noise], you go over it, you drop down to the valley. So it was this. And with his cigar, and that going up and down, and my first flight, and the doors were open and I was like, "Oh, my God. I'm not going to throw up, I will not throw up. I will not throw up. I do not want them to see me do that." So I toughed it out but it was—
[Counter flying is the technique of flying at a constant altitude of less than seventy-five feet above the ground.]
TS: Did you make it?
RB: Yeah, I did make it.
TS: Yeah. And then did you ever enjoy flying on the helicopters? 34
RB: In Vietnam I did, yeah.
TS: Yeah.
RB: I mean, I got to the point where I could sleep on them, because we got to—sometimes you just—you didn't get enough rest and I could put my head on the—I don't know if you know about Hueys, the bench seat going across; there's a bench seat.
TS: Okay.
RB: The pilots were—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: I don't; I don't know about Hueys.
RB: Yeah, well, the two pilots are up front.
TS: Okay.
RB: And then there's a couple pockets on the side with the two gun—there's—well, no, the gunners are in the back—There's a couple seats there but there's a bench seat.
TS: Like right behind the pilot?
RB: Well, further back; there's a space in between.
TS: Okay.
RB: I mean, big enough to put some bodies in if you needed to.
TS: I see.
RB: But you—we usually sat on those chairs, and right behind you was the engine mount, and above you—and then right on either side of you were the two gunners.
TS: Okay, and the open doors.
RB: And the doors open. Yeah, they mainly always flew with the doors open because it was just so hot, and then when you got up high in Vietnam it was just air-conditioned.
TS: Yeah.
35
RB: That was good. Plus it safer to fly higher. [chuckles]
TS: Yeah.
RB: That was good, so.
TS: How long were you supposed to be in Korea?
RB: Well, it would have been a year tour, but they asked for—they needed more people in Vietnam.
TS: Okay.
RB: Right around Christmas time, they wanted them down there for Christmas, and there was, like, three or four of us. I said, "Oh, yeah, I'll go. I'm ready; I'm ready; let's go."
TS: Did you go straight from Korea to Vietnam then?
RB: No, no, I had a—I took three or four days leave in Japan.
TS: Okay.
RB: And then—
TS: Where'd you go in Japan?
RB: I was mainly around Tokyo. There's a military village and you can do just Tokyo itself. I mean, it's just the big lights and they—people with white gloves helping you onto the escalators and all these little Japanese things that you can buy, which I still buy when I see them. [both chuckle]
TS: Do you?
RB: Yeah, and sell and re-sell.
TS: Yeah.
RB: So it's just a—So again, seeing that culture, and I just unwound three or four days. And then flew down to—and you've heard—probably heard the stories of the flying into the Philippines, then going in and—
TS: Right.
RB: —on the—this guy sitting next to me and getting near Saigon going, "Lean over, they're going to shoot us. They'll shoot us." He was just giving me a hard time. [chuckles] Just kidding with us about how dangerous it was in Vietnam, but it was— 36
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: So it was mostly a plane full of men?
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: Did you—
RB: Might have—
TS: Oh, I'm sorry; go ahead.
RB: Might have been a few nurses on it, because I remember when we came—we flew over from—out of Spokane, Washington, to Korea, flew over Alaska, and just gorgeous but it's just—we played car—I still have a pair—deck of cards that Northwest Airlines gave us. We'd play cards with the guy, we had—somebody told us to bring little snack bag. You sleep, you talk, you get up and move around; just a long flight.
TS: Long flight.
RB: Yeah.
TS: I forgot to ask you. When you were in Korea, did you run across any women in the services, either nurses or WACs [Women's Army Corps] or anything like that?
RB: Some in the hospitals. But we didn't have a hospital on our base, and I'm trying to think. I don't remember any WACs, I really don't. I think about that now, because I think about the officers' club and it was mainly all men. And a few officers had some wives there. They'd bring them in on their own, there wasn't a—
TS: The higher-ranking ones, probably.
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And then some—I guess you could—they could come in on their own but they couldn't live on the base if—captains or majors or something if they could foot the bill and—
TS: So they paid for their own housing for them.
[Speaking Simultaneously] 37
RB: So there were some women there. We had minimum contact. I don't remember really any—really a lot of contact with women in Korea.
TS: When you were in Korea, how many women were there with you at the same time for the Red Cross?
RB: Well, there was probably—Actually, I have some paperwork over there with one of the units. There's probably, like, ten units and each one might have averaged ten to twelve women in it.
TS: Oh, okay.
RB: So, eighty to a hundred.
TS: Okay, and so then—Now, you get to Vietnam—
RB: Yes.
TS: —and you—you go to Saigon. Is that where you—
RB: Yeah. The plane door opens, you walk through, and then you get hit with this hot, steamy, smelly diesel, like someone threw a wet blanket over you. And this—just this airplane's going [makes noise], and this helicop—I mean, it's just something [unclear], like—me, I thought it was out of the movies; it was just fascinating. [chuckles]
TS: But you remember the smell?
RB: Yeah, the diesel—there's a diesel smell I still love—of aircraft diesel—that just reminds me of Vietnam.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And being on the tarmac and what it smells like. You know that smell. Maybe?
TS: Not so much.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: [unclear]
TS: No, I didn't really work on a flight line at all, so.
38
RB: [unclear] But—Because when we—whenever we flew out you always walk out to the plane and all that.
TS: Yes.
RB: So you always have that smell, so. And then—Actually, I came in a day earlier then I was supposed to, which I didn't realize, and so I had to find—I mean, so no one was there to greet me.
TS: Right.
RB: I was, like, "Oh, okay."
TS: Where do you go?
RB: I said, "Okay, let's find where the Red Cross is." And so, I did find—I mean, there was a Red Cross thing in the airport there in Tan Son Nhut that was a field person who handled stuff and I said, "Hey, I'm here and no one's here to greet me and I'm going to the SRAO [Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas] program." So he called over there and they sent a jeep for me.
TS: Somebody came and picked you up?
RB: Right, right.
TS: Now, did it seem like a different place than where you had been?
RB: Oh, just different world. I mean, entirely different. Because we heard all the time in Korea that they were short of supplies and everything else, they were short of this, they didn't have this, because they were sending them to Vietnam; extra weapons, fuel, food, everything was [unclear].
TS: You get there and, like, there's this tremendous activity going on in this airfield and, like you said, it was like in the movies.
RB: Yes.
TS: You describe it kind of like it was too. And so, then—now you get this—a jeep picks you up and then you go—
RB: To this office building. We were on the—I remember, the second floor of the office building, and they said, "You're in early." [both chuckle] Surprised them. I guess my travel—I just—I don't know how that happened—my travel orders—but I was just ready—I said, "I'm ready to be here; here I am," type thing, so. And they'd give you a—they gave me a three or four day orientation to Vietnam, and such, and then they said, "On the job training," and sent me off, said, "You're going to Pleiku." And I was a unit 39
leader when I left Korea and they said, "We won't promote you yet. You need to get your feet wet in Vietnam and feel your way out and [unclear]."
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: You weren't a unit leader here?
RB: No, I was just one of the peons.
TS: Okay.
RB: Which was—Which was good because I just got a chance to mix in and I was smart enough, too, to keep my mouth shut that I used to be a unit leader—
TS: Oh, yeah?
RB: —because the unit leaders were—they were important positions that—I mean, they ran the unit. They kept track of everything, made sure that you follow the rules. I mean, the basic safety and everything else was your responsibility, and it was pure leadership and it was like—for me it was learn as you go. And we wrote evaluations of people, if we thought somebody should be transferred out, there was a problem or something, we had—there was a certain amount of power that we had—
TS: Right.
RB: —as a—as a peer, and I liked it. [chuckles]
TS: Well, did you ever have trouble with any of them, except for, like—You had told me on the way over to Korea that some of them were talking about, "Oh, whatever. We're going to do what we want."
RB: Well, go back to—Yes, you—I mean, trying to maintain curfew and just really that you had to—this is the rules that you agreed to. I mean, we had basic rules. Also, not sh—sleep with anyone.
TS: I was wondering about that—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: —for pregnancy. Did they have—Like, did they have to leave if they got pregnant or— 40
RB: Yes. Yes, you were sent home immediately. And also not date married men, was another big no-no.
TS: Okay.
RB: And that was really a difficult situation because married men knew how to treat women just charmingly and they would lie through their teeth.
TS: About being married or not married?
RB: Yes, yes. Yeah, and there was more than one occasion of—stories of women going home, calling up, "I'm here, I'm here," and his wife answers the phone. "Where's John?"
"This is his wife. Who's this?" It's like—I mean, it's—I remember one woman. She left him, and we tried to convince her. Don't go home. Don't go. He's leaving early, wanted her to come with him.
TS: Right.
RB: And then he had a—he had a wife at home.
TS: And he wanted her to go with her?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yes.
TS: What was he going to do?
RB: He said he was going to divorce her and that whole thing—
TS: Oh.
RB: —but it just—and, of course, it didn't happen. She said she wanted to go back and, of course, she couldn't. It was done, so. And, also, all through college we could pick our friends, we picked our roommates, we picked who we sat with at lunchtime, we picked who we went out to party with, and all of a sudden you're with eight other women, and we try to mix the women in—of course, this is more of my second tour experience of—you need a good artist in a unit so you [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
41
TS: Oh, right to use the different skills.
RB: Had some really—some of the really outgoing, mix in a really shy person. Don't put all the shy ones together, and the same way that—
TS: Right. Okay.
RB: —get those—mix those different ways of doing it and sometimes, I mean, there were just personality clashes that were just—When I went to one of the reunions and I didn't remember all these people, there was one who said, "You saved my life. You got me out of that unit."
And then someone said, "You almost got me sent home." [both chuckle] And she was the one that—I—my second tour as administrator, I was flying someplace and I looked around, here—here's one of our Red Cross women. You don't go anyplace in Vietnam unless you're being transferred, or on leave or something. I said, "And where are you going?"
"I'm going down to see my friends in [unclear].
I'm going, "And you have an authorization for this or anything?"
She's going, "No."
I said, "You're going to catch the next plane to Saigon. You want to fly, you go to Saigon." So I called up our boss and I got on the phone and said, "You have," I said, "So and so's coming down to see you. She's illegally [traveling— RB added later]" But I'm sure there's a lot of rules got broken; the whole thing of thou shall not sleep with anyone. One of my transfers—I was really in Quy Nhơn. I was—just did a great trade of some information, I got a—an air-conditioner in my room. That meant I was big stuff. I mean, when you're talking about ninety degrees and they called and they said, "Rita, we need you to transfer. We need you to go down as the unit leader in [Camp] Cu Chi.
I said—probably what got me my job as a assistant director was that I said, "Oh, well, all right, well." I said, "All right. I know you know what you're doing. I'll go. I'll be there."
Now, what had happened when I got to Saigon, they told me the story, is that all the medical—anyone's in the hospital in Vietnam or any place there's a medi—Joe Blow Company C, 25th Infantry Division, head wound, blah, blah, blah, blah. This is Susi—I don't know what the name was—Susie Smith, abortion, listed on all the medical—on the daily handout that everyone gets. So two things happened. Someone was—One, she messed up. Two, someone—I mean, some—a doctor did it—one of our docs did it—and—but someone put it on the records so everybody would know, and so.
TS: But they didn't have to, they just did that.
RB: Well, technically—technically, yes.
TS: Yeah.
RB: It was a medical procedure that was performed there, and her doctors couldn't—they could have kept it more quiet. Well, I'm sure, probably, this—the nurses probably did it. 42
[chuckles] Because they had mixed feelings about us in Vietnam; that we were—that we were all fun and games and we're playing and they were dealing with life and death. The blood and guts and just that stuff, and we were out flying around having a good time, so—which was partly true, but we had—we had our role and they had their role, and we weren't nurses. I mean, there's one story that I always like to tell that—on Quy[?] there, I wasn't there but they were being rocketed and they had to evacuate the hospital and there was—there—the VC [Viet Cong] were inside the lines; they were inside the barbed wire. So they were locked in this one bunker and really, literally, locked in, and then—with all these really injured guys, and the Red Cross women were there and the nurses were there—a certain amount—and the nurses did what they could. Then the Red Cross girls went into their [unclear] games, jokes. I mean, just lightening the mood.
TS: Right.
RB: By just doing this—I mean, I guess they had a couple of really good ones, too, just—the nurses got relaxed, the guys relaxed. They got them ou—they got out. No one else got bombed or anything else, so that was—so then I remember the nurses saying their— that was their role.
TS: Right.
RB: That we couldn't have done that. We [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: There was kind of an understanding—
RB: Right.
TS: —of that role—
RB: Right.
TS: —because they experienced it.
RB: Yeah, but a lot of times there wasn't.
TS: Right.
RB: I mean, between the—I mean, I had a nurse as a roommate and we—and she—she had a tough job. They had a really tough job and they did great work.
TS: This is when you were director?
43
RB: When I—Yeah, I was in Saigon. I had—One of the nurses that worked in the main Saigon hospital was my roommate for a while. And then they—They had rough situations, like, they didn't live any better than we did.
TS: Right.
RB: But, I mean, I had great respect for them and I think they just thought we were fun and games, because even when we had the reunion with the statue type thing they had all these ribbons that if you were a veteran, a woman veteran, you got a blue ribbon and if you were anything else you got a yellow one or something; they wouldn't give us a blue one.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: You would differentiate—
RB: We were dif—Yeah, we're different; we were not military; we were not volunteer—We volunteered, we could go home anytime we wanted to. If we wanted to say, "I'm sick of this. I can't do this. Send me home."
TS: Right.
RB: We'd send you home type thing.
TS: Interesting. When you—One of the ladies that I talked to—actually, I think a nurse as well as one of the women in the Red Cross, mentioned how they knew the guys by their nickname or their first names and didn't necessarily know their last name so much as they—because you'd go into a unit and you'd leave and you'd go in. And so, even though they'd make, maybe, some connections with them—then she said she went to the Vietnam Wall Memorial and it—it really hurt—It got her because she was, like, she didn't know which ones made it and which ones—
RB: Right.
TS: —didn't make it. Who was on the wall. Because she's, like, there's the—the nicknames—
RB: Right, right.
TS: —they had.
RB: [unclear]
TS: Yeah. She said that was hard to, kind of, come to terms with—
44
RB: Yes.
TS: —I guess you could say.
RB: My take was I knew them all.
TS: Yeah? You knew them all? Yeah.
RB: One story of first tour in Vietnam, flying—just finished a who—long day out in the field; we were out at Firebase [Fire Support Base] or something, had programs and the whole thing and we were ready to fly back. This'll get me—get me crying, but I like this story. So we're ready to get on the chopper and this lieutenant comes over and just really apologetic and just, really—He said, "We have a body to get home."
TS: Right.
RB: "Will you ride with him?"
I said, "Of course. We'd be honored."
TS: Right.
RB: So body bag, big green one—body bag, right on our feet. [unclear] and both of us sort of [unclear].
TS: It must have been very difficult.
RB: Yes, I mean, I should have looked at his tag on it, see who it [he] was, but I didn't. But we just pushed our feet against him.
TS: Right.
RB: —sort of touching him.
TS: Have a connection.
RB: Had a very quiet ride home.
TS: Didn't really say anything?
RB: No, no.
TS: What could you say?
RB: And usually the pilots always give us the earphones and we're all just—It was just—
TS: Yeah. 45
RB: —his trip home. I didn't—I did my share of dating and making out with guys and that whole thing, but I didn't get really close to a lot of guys. I mean, my role as unit director, my first function was that—our mission.
TS: Right.
RB: The job. Do it right; protect my unit; protect my women in the unit. Like, during—we got rocketed so much during the Tet [Tet Offensive] thing they'd have to throw—we'd spend—We had a bunker bag that we'd have bananas in, bottle of champagne, crackers. Because we might be in there for hours in the bunker and just couldn't get out. And—Where was I going with that story? What were we just talking about? Lost my train of thought.
[The Tet Offensive was one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, launched on January 30, 1968 by forces of the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese People's Army of Vietnam against the forces of South Vietnam, the United States, and their allies]
TS: You were talking about your role. It wasn't necessarily knowing all the guys.
RB: Yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: [unclear]
RB: Because there was a—A lot of the women and—and this was fine, this is who they were—that were really—just got really close to the guys [in] more ways than one. And just were really just into the guys and had them—enlisted men over into our billet all the time, type thing. I had to throw them out. "It's midnight, guys. You've got to go," because they couldn't get rid of them. They didn't want to leave, of course—
TS: Right.
RB: —type thing, so I really functioned—I mean, I got to know some of the officers and the support people that supplied our choppers and supplied our jeep driver, to make sure—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: You had to coordinate with them— 46
RB: Right, right.
TS: —to get things—
RB: My jeep driver, [unclear] alcohol in the middle of the afternoon one day on his breath saying—"Oh, God, this is not—you're not going to drive us around drunk."
TS: Right.
RB: And it's a question of—My thing was, if I report him he's going to be in big doo-doo [trouble], so.
TS: How did you handle that?
RB: Well, I asked him, I said, "You shouldn't be driving." Then he got very belligerent.
TS: Right.
RB: And that ended that and I reported him.
TS: Then you reported him because—Yeah.
RB: Yeah, yeah, he wasn't going to back off and find another driver or anything for us.
TS: Yeah.
RB: So—type thing. Yeah, there's one story of—so many stories just come to mind—of walking—I remember having a big prop bag and going down this muddy—and then just had all these planks down that we're walking through—all these billets and the guys are hooting and hollering, "Round eyes," because we have these light blue uniforms so we really stood out.
TS: They knew who you were.
RB: This g—this young guy, [unclear] eighteen or something said, "How's it feel to be stripped and naked every day by a thousand pairs of eyes?"
I said, "I never thought of it that way." [both chuckle]
TS: Yeah.
RB: It was probably exactly what going on, the whole thing, so, but—But, like, we had a problem with dating married men and a couple times—again, as a unit director going to the—get my G numbers, here—who was Personnel, G2? No, that's intelligence. G1 support? [G1 refers to Personnel] Anyway, I'm saying—I mean, this colonel, saying, "I need to know if this guy is married or not. This woman is just really flipped over this guy 47
and some of the other women think they have heard that he is married and has kids, and all this stuff, at home." And so, he didn't want to tell me. I said, "We need your support on this."
TS: Right.
RB: "This is a rule. That's not good for his family."
TS: Right.
RB: "It's not good for our family, and let me know." And he just really didn't want to do any—Finally, the next day he told me he's married with four kids.
TS: Well, it seems almost that resistance—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: —and his money goes home—
TS: —would have told you, right?
RB: Right, yeah.
TS: Right.
RB: Well, his wife—he thought it was [a] personal matter—
TS: Yes.
RB: —and that he wasn't going to share that, and so we actually had to transfer her out of the unit; she wasn't going to stop seeing him. So it was like stepping into that personal world and trying to just help them not get too caught up [unclear]—because I had that sarge—This is the job, the mission, the rules; I'm following them so I'm going to STRAC. You know the term STRAC from the military?
[STRAC is a 1970's era U.S. military acronym, meaning: Strategic, Tough, and Ready Around the Clock]
TS: Yes.
RB: Yes, I was STRAC.
48
TS: Kind of like your mother.
RB: Yes, yeah, probably.
TS: Yeah.
RB: Yeah.
TS: Well—What was I going to ask you about that? What—Where you have a mission, right, and you're doing your job, did you ever find that when you're the person in charge that it's not actually doing the job that's the hardest, but it's that dealing with the relationships of the people, either with each other or—You know what I'm saying?
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: I mean, it's like the personal—the personal issues are harder than actually just doing the job sometimes.
RB: Yeah, yes, yeah.
TS: Especially in a place like that, I would imagine, too.
RB: I mean, as I said how a lot of women did not get along with each other and did not know how to. I mean, I had—When I was first promoted in Vietnam, I had a couple of just really—no respect at all.
TS: For each other?
RB: Yeah, I mean—And I probably had a very aggressive way of telling people how to do things—"This needed to be done," da-da-da-da. But—And they just sunk their heels in and they would just try to do as little as possible or anything I asked them.
TS: Oh, they were really resistant to you.
RB: Yeah.
TS: I see. Okay.
RB: Yeah, yeah, and if I wanted to—We had a schedule and we'd rotate the schedule so the women would have different experiences, but there just being—just personality clashes. I remember—I started saying during Tet, when we were in the bunker all the time.
TS: Oh, right.
RB: And then—so this fourth, fifth night, sirens go off. We were in a base next to a airbase—They were aiming for the airbase. 49
TS: Where were you at, at that time?
RB: That would have been in Pleiku [Vietnam].
TS: Pleiku, okay.
RB: There was an airbase there and we were on a support base and there was artillery around us, and also engineers, so they're always aiming for one of them and not us, so our concern was that if they missed—
TS: Right.
RB: —that we'd [unclear]. So I checked the rooms to make sure everyone was out in the bunker. "Let's go." Siren's going off. So here's Trish in the living room putting on her shoes.
TS: Casually.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Just sort of sitting there. I can hear the roc—I can hear the rockets. They're heading for the air base. I said, "Get a move on." I mean, she was just passive aggressive; just trying to [unclear] the whole thing. I should have just left her but I felt I just couldn't. I said—I mean, I didn't—I didn't want to touch her, either, because we just had this animosity towards each other. But she finally got into the bunker. [chuckles]
TS: On her own time?
RB: Yeah.
TS: Were you just fuming?
RB: Yeah. Oh, I was. It was just, like, "You're endangering your own life, my life—"
TS: Right.
RB: "—and everything else."
TS: Yeah.
RB: But the base never—We never got hit on the base. It was always fun to—We had a—There was the perimeter—If this is the perimeter, [unclear] the towers and this is our bunker, and there was this big ditch where all the typists—or all the clerks lined up 50
behind us; we were in the forefront. [both chuckle] So they came through—They would come through us first before they got to the guys behind us. I said, "This is not a good placement for this bunker."
TS: Who thought that one up, huh?
RB: Yes, yes. During Tet was like fireworks. I mean, I still—I'm not really very fond of fireworks because fireworks—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —are like a rocket. I mean, just attacks going off.
TS: Right.
RB: And I just remember the chaplain would come in and check on us. This was the first few nights—the first night of Tet and he said, "You can—You want to step out and see this." Because nothing was aimed at us but you could see "Puff the Magic Dragon"—the big [A]C-130s with their—the Gatling guns. Traces going. Their traces are red, ours are green coming down, flares going off, explosions over in the city of Pleiku; jets taking off in the airfield. I mean, the sky was just smoky, lit up. You have all that flare and such going on. It was like a—at least a few pictures of there in that too. It was just, like, "Oh, my God. Look at this." It was just—And they were trying to break into a POW [Prisoner of War] camp which was, like, about a mile down from our base.
TS: The enemy was?
RB: Yeah, yeah, trying to get them out of there, so that's where all the shooting wa—[unclear] seeing the traces going both directions. A lot of times you see them go in one—just our direction.
TS: Right.
RB: We're sending them out but these guys are shooting back.
TS: But it was really active.
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: What were the—What—Were you afraid?
RB: First time I went to the bunker in Vietnam, got in, rocket—they were rocketing the air base—got down on [the floor—RB added later]—the bunker was just a sandbag building, just—so you'd walk into it and there was benches in there.
TS: How many people can fit into it? 51
RB: Oh, you could probably—Yeah, at a squeeze you could probably get twenty in. And so, I just remember we hit the ground because the explosions were going off three hundred, four hundred yards away.
TS: Did you have any helmets or anything?
RB: No, no, no. Did we? Did we actually have helmets? I don't think we did. Certain places that we went we had to have flak jackets and helmets but we didn't on this base.
[Flak jackets are a form of body armor designed to provide protection from high explosive weaponry fragments]
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Not at this place?
RB: Yeah, yeah. And I just remember hitting the ground and just it smelling of urine. That's where the Vietnamese men would go in and—who were doing stuff around the base would pee. I just went, "Oh, my God." And then it was a question of, "Why are they trying to kill me?" I really took it personally at first. Why is this [unclear]. Then you got used to it. It happened so frequently, and that you weren't in any immediate danger. You just knew if they had—if they really missed you would be in a problem but they weren't, like, literally—there were some women who were in like [unclear] and such where they actually came through the [wire—RB added later]—as I told you, they came through the barbed wire, and they were on the base and they were throwing [charges—RB added later]——This one woman just showed me her uniform, had shrapnel pieces all through it, just holes in it [unclear].
TS: That she'd had on?
RB: No.
TS: Did she get hit?
RB: No, it was in her closet.
TS: Oh, okay.
RB: She was on the floor with her mattress on top of her. And they build the sandbags up about four feet high.
TS: About waist high or so? 52
RB: Yeah, yeah, so the idea—because when they explode they go out this way.
TS: Out—
RB: So if you're low, if—I mean—
TS: Right.
RB: —you don't stay running. If a rocket's coming in you get on the ground because you're—the chance of getting miss—missing that cone[?] is better if you're not running.
TS: Oh, because it's going over you.
RB: Right.
TS: I see.
RB: Going up this way, yeah.
TS: I see, okay. Kind of like a mushroom.
RB: Yeah. I didn't—But I never got into that type of dire situation. A few did.
TS: Now, how did you—You showed me all your tapes. Did you record any of the artillery fire or rockets, or anything like that on tape?
RB: I know there's—I'm not sure. I don't know if anybody would do that in the middle of the night because usually—I probably wouldn't have done that. I would have been busy with taking cover.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: You had some responsibilities to get people—
RB: Right, right. To make sure they were in the bunker, that we were safe. The military—the chaplain would come in, whoever was checking on us, and just—you just wait for the siren to go off so you could go back. Go back to the [hooch [military quarters]—RB added later]
TS: What did you think about all this? I mean, what did you think about your experience now as a young woman in this combat zone?
RB: Again, it was an adventure. [both chuckle] 53
TS: Well, that's true.
RB: Yeah, and I really felt—I really felt the military really was taking—kept an eye on us. Actually, that—the day of Tet, that it happened—during the day—we were living in—it's funny—the stateside looking house that this—so the story goes—that this air force colonel who was in love with this Red Cross girl, who wanted to keep her there, and keep this unit, and they really had rough housing and all that, so he had them build a house—We had a circular fireplace in the living room. It was a—it was just like a state[side]—big bathtub.
TS: What kind of housing was it then?
RB: It was—it was like a—
TS: Was it a Quonset hut or—
RB: No, it was a house.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: It was a house? And where was it located?
RB: This was in Pleiku [unclear] [Camp Humphreys—RB corrected later]—
TS: Was it on a base?
RB: No, it was off—
TS: Off base.
RB: It was off the air force base but he built it with air—supposedly there [unclear] all these air force—these supplies, because the air force—the navy [air force—RB corrected later] lived the best in the military because they can fly in their stuff, and the army has to depend on everyone else to lug it in, and the Marines, so they had flown in this stuff and there was this house. And this was probably a couple years after that original incident but we had this—
TS: That's where you stayed when you were in Pleiku [or Camp Humphreys?] ?
RB: Yes, yeah, that was it.
TS: Luxury house.
54
RB: Well, it wasn't luxury but we had a bathtub. You draw the water—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That's luxury.
RB: —for the bathtub and you go—you look at the bathtub, "Did I or should I?" [chuckles]
TS: Oh.
RB: It would just be red water because of the—
TS: Oh, because of the—
RB: —the—
TS: —the water faucets.
RB: Yeah, it would be—we'd have tanks that they'd fill up with water and so it was—type thing. But all that—I sort of—I started to tell you. So this air force—one of my—one of the women in our unit was dating this air force captain who's in intelligence.
TS: Okay.
RB: And he comes over and he said, "I want to talk to you, Rita."
I said, "Okay."
He said, "Do not let anyone out tonight. Not off base at all. Not the air force base—not the—not our base, anything.
TS: Was this before Tet?
RB: This was the day of Tet. That night.
TS: Okay, so he's in intel. They're hearing something.
RB: Yes, yes, and he said, "The army won't listen to us. This stuff's going to happen. Stuff's going on." He pulls out a .45 [caliber revolver]. He says, "Here, I want you to have this." Never had a gun in my life—in my hand—ever before.
TS: First time?
RB: And I said, "I'm a noncombatant, I can't have this." Again, STRAC; follow the rules.
TS: That's right. 55
RB: Plus I didn't know what to do with it, whether it would be more harmful than anything. He said, "You might need it."
I said, "We've got—We've got guys all around us here. We'll depend on them. I'm not going to have a—stick a gun in my pocket."
TS: Yeah. [both chuckle]
RB: I wouldn't do that. So, anyway, he said, "Just stay close to home. Don't go to the officers' club. You don't want to be out walking around," and it was—it was twelve o'clock, one o'clock in the morning that all hell broke loose.
TS: Did you have everybody in?
RB: Yes, everyone was there. I said, "We're not going anywhere." And I checked with the army and they're—they were like, "That's a good idea." [chuckles]
TS: Okay.
RB: They didn't know a lot but—
TS: Something.
RB: —the air force knew more, yeah. So that was pretty bad. I remember we went to Pleiku, I don't know, a week later and just—maybe not even that long—three or four days later and just a pile [unclear] the more horrendous things—just a pile of Viet Cong bodies they had piled up across the square and getting front loaders and picking them up and I was like, "God. The smell. The stench." Three or four days in the hot sun.
TS: Right.
RB: Dragging them out of buildings. But they didn't—They didn't get into the POW camp and they didn't take over the city there, so.
TS: How were you feeling about the war around then?
RB: When you're in Vietnam and they're shooting at you you're a hawk [pro-militant attitude]. You want—The whole idea of them shooting at you—We're going to shoot back.
TS: Right.
RB: You're—It wasn't until after—I mean, I think the war was absolutely insane. That we had no regard for that culture and how important family was, and all these different things that we didn't know about Vietnam, and just ran all over them and just—the industrialists, I think, caused that whole damn war and it was—and it shouldn't have been, but it was, and this is my little part in it. It—It was—I certainly—I grew up fast. 56
TS: Yes.
RB: I learned an awful lot. Like being assistant director, I, one time, went into—I—I'd meet with the commanding general of the base—as assistant director with the unit head. And just check on support and—courtesy call type thing. And I guess this two star general says, "Well, we're going to just compress things here. We have the Red Cross girls here, and we have the USO [United Service Organizations] girl over here, and then we have the showgirls from Korea here and they're all [in a] different place. We're going to put you all together. All in the same building." [unclear]
And I was like, "With the showgirls in the travelling troops that come through?" And they—they did the enlisted mens' clubs and we could not—and we were such—really strongly suggested not to go in because the guys just got stupid drunk. I mean, just obnoxious. They took weapons away from them and everything. They wouldn't let them in there with weapons or anything. And I went to a couple EM [enlisted men's] clubs with these acrobat women doing nude—I was just, like, "Oh, my God." [both chuckle] I mean, it's someplace you didn't want to be and we got up and we left.
TS: Right.
RB: And got hooted at because we did. But—So he said, "It just would be better for security."
And I said, "And there's going to be a curfew?
And he said, "No, they have their thing that they do and you can do your thing and—" they had—I mean, they were prostitutes. I mean, they would have GIs in all—just—You knew this was not a situation that we wanted to be in—
TS: Right.
RB: —type thing and—and just stealing things. I mean, we had heard all these stories before. Mama-sans [slang for native Vietnamese women] would steal from you. Our cleaning people would steal anything that was not tied down, because they didn't have anything.
And I said to him, "Can't do that." I said, "We need to have the security of our—We can't have guys going through the billet at all hours to the rooms. We can't have the whole—this whole sanitary thing, because they have a whole different sanitary thing; they'd pee on the floors, some of them. And I said, "You can't do that. We have to have our own security, our own billet, our own rules, and our own guard, and not with—
He just said, "No. No, that's the way it's going to be."
And I said, "I'll take the unit out." There's lots of other people that would like to have this unit." At which time he got big-eyed and the whole thing and basically ordered me out of his office, and—
TS: You said—You told him you would take your peo—your women out—
RB: [unclear]
TS: —somewhere; you would leave. 57
RB: We would leave—
TS: If he was going to do that.
RB: Right. If he was going to do that.
TS: Okay.
RB: I think it was the—it wasn't the 101st, it might have been the 82nd Airborne [Division].
TS: Okay.
RB: And I said, "This is not our original agreement with the military; drivers, billeting, security."
TS: Right.
RB: And I said, "We will not be billeted with anyone who's not Red Cross or nurses or the USO—not the USO, the Special Services, but they weren't—they weren't there, it was just—I don't think they even had nurses there—their hospital. And he was just pissed at me. Pissed to no end. So he called Saigon. He talked to my director and back—she backed me up a hundred percent. We had our own billet and our own guard, so. But it was, like, okay, two star general. [both chuckle]
[Special Services are the entertainment branch of the American military]
TS: How were your relationships with—relationship with him after that?
RB: I didn't go back to that base.
TS: Yeah.
RB: He was just really pissed. Here's this twenty-three year old telling him what he could not do—
TS: Right.
RB: —on his base—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
58
TS: Not used to being told no—
RB: —and I had the card.
TS: —I'm sure.
RB: Right, right.
TS: Right.
RB: I said this is—would not stand. We're not going to do that, so.
TS: Yeah.
RB: Sort of—I sort of enjoyed it in a way too.
TS: Yeah.
RB: [laughs]
TS: I imagine because that's—
RB: I knew I was right; I knew I'd be backed up. That was not the best thing for our women.
TS: Yeah. Well, do you mind if I pause for just a second?
RB: Sure.
[Recording Paused]
TS: We took a short little break there, and I wanted to ask you a little bit about how your relationship—what—you were talking about this general, it made me think about—how were your relations with, like, those—your peers you've been talking about a little bit. Like, the little bit of tension when you—when you're in a position of authority and people are trying to resist but—and then you had that deal with the military, and then you have to deal with the Red Cross hierarchy. How was that?
RB: Yes. The Red Cross hierarchy, I mean—when I was—we had a director and she was there when I was—most of my second and my first tour—Quinn Smith [Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas Director]. Fine, fine woman administrator, and I think she was actually—she started the program in Vietnam back in '65 or something, or did all the contacts with the military and just set up all those support systems and was just—And then she was—We had—So the assistant directors, like, when I was a recreation 59
worker—or unit director—the assistant directors would come out to your unit once every thr—four weeks, maybe—
TS: Okay.
RB: —five weeks, six weeks, depending on schedules and such and deal with personnel matters. You would—I mean—And, actually, when you were promoted, when you were a peer leader—and this was across the board—because we would have a unit director meeting and that—you were immediately separated out. You were different from everyone else; from the rest of the unit that you had—
TS: You lived in a—separate housing—
RB: No, no. We lived in the same housing and all that.
TS: Okay.
RB: But as far as how they—what they would tell us and what they—what they would talk about, I mean.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: [unclear] leadership—
RB: I got—Joe, he's going to take me up in his Apache helicopter which is illegal. So you don't hear [unclear] but someone else hears—the other—They'll tell each other that.
TS: Right. They're not going to tell you.
RB: You're not going to because I would slam my foot down on that so fast. That's all we need is to call home and tell [unclear], "Well, your mother—Your daughter crashed in a Apache helicopter on a joyride." Because the Red Cross tells the families, "We will take care of your daughters, and the military will take care of your daughters. We will keep them safe as possible in this war zone." I took that very seriously, so if someone wanted to go joy-riding, like the one that was just taking a flight down to see her friends or something [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Like the one you caught.
RB: [unclear] Yeah. 60
TS: Now, when you sent her to Saigon what happened to her then?
RB: I think she did get a reprimand. I think she's the one that probably said to me, "You almost got me sent home."
TS: Oh, so she—
RB: [unclear] so sure I remember that. [chuckles] [unclear] remember that, so. But the assistant directors I really admired. There's was one, Ceecee Dubrinki that was just a—She used to call me a giant Shirley Temple.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And I just really highly respected her. And I remember the time I was, like, twenty-two and she was real—She was probably thirty-two and I just thought she was so old.
TS: Yeah. [both chuckle]
RB: But. So good relationships, because they would pick unit leaders that they had worked with, and the idea of having their priorities right. Some people were just put[ting] together [something—RB added later] that really [was] not a great program. See, this is, again, coming from the assistant director position; you won't hear this from the regular recreation workers. And they just did a minimum program doing minimal work, and they'd just flirt and carry on with the boys and just be cute and be sexy and wiggle their little tails and—nothing to do with the program—geared at one or two guys and then you have another fifty, they're just—their mouths open, "Why is no one talking to me." [chuckles] So that was the idea, that we were trying to reach a maximum amount of guys—
TS: Yes.
RB: —in a limited amount of time [unclear] interesting thing, so you had—so there was—And a lot of them just thought our rules were just stupid and ridiculous and they didn't want to follow them.
TS: Well—
RB: Not a lot. The majority—there was the pro—They were the minority.
TS: Right.
RB: But there were—there was a file, and I never really went through it, that Quinn had, we knew, in the drawer, and it was a thick file of “problem children”—
TS: Yeah. 61
RB: —she called them; people that [broke rules—RB added later]—and some of that stuff.
TS: Did they just keep a closer eye on them or did they send them out?
RB: A lot of them, they sent—some of them it was really a problem. Why jeopardize the whole unit and the whole thing? They would be sent home.
TS: Well, when they went out now—when you were doing the shows, right, the—well, not the shows, but what do you call it—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yeah, the programs.
TS: —the programs.
RB: Programs.
TS: You went out—how—Describe a typical day for that.
RB: Well, it depends what your run was. Let's say you could have been in a—in a recreation center. Some bases you would have a recreation center and you would have [“out runs”—RB added later]—You go out to the firebases. Those firebases would be—Okay, you're going to catch a eight o'clock flight on the flight line. You know what unit it is you; would know approximately where to go; there would be a little station there. They would pick you up, fly you out to a firebase.
TS: And how many of you would go?
RB: Two.
TS: Two.
RB: Always traveled in teams of two with our prop bag. No donuts. We didn't have donuts then, in Vietnam. And some of the old sergeants would say, "Where's our donuts?" [chuckles] So you'd fly in. They always circle the base, make sure it was secure. Occasionally, not very often, it wasn't secure and you couldn't go in. You couldn't land. But you go in and you get dropped. You wave at the guys as you're coming in.
TS: As you're coming in?
RB: You're coming in, right, and they're hooting and hollering and just carrying on. And we'd then go to a certain battery. There might be, like, four big guns—105s [artillery]. And 62
there is—as long as they're not—not in a fire mission. Of course, you know how the fire bases supported the troops out—They were out in the field. If they got into trouble they could send in—call in artillery. So in those we might have, like, twelve, fifteen guys there and we'd do our program. Divide them into two teams, where they were from, where we were from, whatever the program was, run through that program for an hour. A couple times we got interrupted by a fire mission. They said, "We have a fire mission," and we just picked up our stuff—
TS: So they had to go.
RB: We got out of the way. We got—They said the best place to stand is way back behind the gun and that's really blasting out there and they would have a fire mission for ten, fifteen minutes and then we went back to [the] program.
TS: Just—they'd stop and then you'd—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Yes [unclear]—
TS: —just pick it up again?
RB: Yes, yes.
TS: Did that just seem eerie?
RB: It got to be the unusual was usual.
TS: Yes.
RB: In Korea, like, I crash-landed in a helicopter when we were flying to Saigon one time and I just remember looking at the—and we weren't up very far. We had just taken off.
TS: Okay, but when you say crash-landed in a helicopter with such—[both laugh]
RB: But it was like—
TS: That doesn't happen to everyone.
RB: It must be on one of my tapes, too, because I remember just saying—
TS: Yeah, today, we crash-landed—
63
RB: This was an unusual day but it was usual. You just sort of went with it. I mean—one thing [unclear] the women had was just—they just could roll with the punches and if you didn't—you just had to be able to deal with that and just—and I rolled over in a jeep. We were in a jeep and [a] bus in Korea forced us off the road and [unclear]. I mean, it just was just a slow roll. All four of us were in a corner—bumps and bruises, nothing broken.
TS: Okay, jeep. Did it have a hood on it?
RB: It had a canvas top.
TS: Okay. Oh, canvas.
RB: Yes.
TS: There you go. Some protection.
RB: But it was very slow. It hit—Probably hit the side of the road and the gutter wasn't that big.
TS: This was in Korea?
RB: Yes, this was in Korea. My two worst [unclear].
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Rolled in a jeep in Korea. Crash-landed a helicopter in Vietnam [Korea—RB corrected later]. What oth—what other kind of—
RB: Nothing that drastic. I mean, we just—we came out of them okay.
TS: Yes.
RB: I mean, we lost what—three women in Vietnam.
TS: From the Red Cross?
RB: Red Cross, right. One from a disease that she would have gotten wherever she was; just something just suddenly hit her. Another one fell out of a jeep, got her head cracked open.
TS: Yes.
64
RB: And a third one was killed by a GI in a—in a barracks—in our billet where I had the room next to her but I had left country already to do—two weeks before. So it was just rather—rather horrendous—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —type thing. They closed down all the units for, like, a week to secure—
TS: Where was that at?
RB: That was in Cu Chi.
TS: Cu Chi. That was the last place you were at.
RB: Yes. Yeah, they just didn't—it was years—I mean, years later—they never found out who did it but—
TS: Oh, they didn't?
RB: No.
TS: They didn't know who did it?
RB: No, they never captured him. But there were stories of some guy years later in prison—a federal prison someplace in the country bragging on it; killing a Red Cross—stabbed her to death. Yeah, just a—druggie type thing.
TS: Yes.
RB: So—
TS: We talked a little bit—
RB: A few—A couple got shot. One got shot [in the leg—RB corrected later] and by the time that chopper landed at the hospital with her on it—and they were just—It was just some pop shots.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Shrapnel—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —just shots [unclear] the plane— 65
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: —the helicopter.
RB: The commanding general of the division was there with a Purple Heart for her before she even got off the chopper.
TS: Oh, really?
RB: Yeah, so just—they try to take care of us, type thing, but.
TS: Right. You described the—like, going out into the field. How close would you get to, like, the forward area? Would you be in the forward area?
RB: Well, the forward area was around you.
TS: Right.
RB: There wasn't a forward area. So we'd do a program there. Then we might move over to the other side of that same base—
TS: Yes.
RB: —and do a couple other programs.
TS: Okay.
RB: Maybe two, maybe three hours, and then have lunch with them, the guys, and then fly off to another base.
TS: Okay, so you'd go from a base to a base. You wouldn't come back home?
RB: Yeah, so you might—No, you might hit two. Two, maybe, sometimes three but depends.
TS: Did you always come home every day?
RB: Yes.
TS: Okay.
RB: Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
66
TS: How long were these—
RB: There was no place—
TS: —helicopter rides—
RB: —because when you had to pee—You're on a fire base and they have these little holes—
TS: [chuckles]
RB: They just squirt it into and we were—so.
TS: Did you wait to go home to pee?
RB: Well, you were very careful about what you drank, which was probably a problem.
TS: Yes.
RB: That—That you didn't—And then, of course, being younger our bladders could hold more. But I just remember one time, it was just funny, we just had to pee and there was just no place. And they [said], "We'll hold up in our poncho liners." So they got ponchos in a circle—and they're all facing in. [both chuckle]
"Turn around."
TS: But at one point—At some point you probably just didn't care anymore because you—
RB: Yeah, but still—still, modesty was—
TS: Right.
RB: Because we were—we were the symbol of American home; [apple] pie, the girl, their wife, their mother—
TS: Right.
RB: —their type thing. That we—we didn't—we couldn't talk about politics, talk—couldn't talk about sex. You sort of kept [to] things that wouldn't get controversial.
TS: Baseball, sports.
RB: Right, right. This who—This whole thing, and just—
TS: Did you use some of the game shows that were going on then to kind of model what you were—
67
RB: Yeah, yeah, yeah
TS: —playing?
RB: I think so, yeah.
TS: Yes.
RB: I remember one great one that I had a part in. We did one on—on automobiles and cars and all that and we went down to the motor pool and I said, "I need us some old parts." And we put them in bags, in some cloth bags. And so the guy—the teams had to identify, through the bag without opening it, what part was that.
TS: Stick their hand in and figure it out?
RB: No, it had to be on the outside.
TS: Oh, okay.
RB: A carburetor, spark plugs, and some of the easy things that—
TS: That would be a fun one to do.
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: Yeah.
RB: As I said, there's [dull—RB added later]—sometimes there were ones that were just like, "Answer the question, playing a trick again, we get to move one move [on a board game—RB added later].
I was, like, "All right."
TS: A little less exciting.
RB: Yeah, yes.
TS: Now, what about—you said in garrison there was a—there were different things that you did, then, if you stayed [unclear]—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: On a support base—
TS: On a support— 68
RB: —like, on Cam Ranh Bay. Like, the most exciting thing that usually happened there was that the beer supply got hit by a rocket and then there was just hell to pay. They were just so pissed. [chuckles] "The beer got hit last night!"
TS: Yeah.
RB: So our recreation center, there would be two women assigned to the center.
TS: Okay.
RB: And it would be open nine o'clock until—It depends, it could be open 9:00 [a.m.] to 9:00 [p.m.], depending, and sometimes later. Guys would wander in and out depending where the base was. And sometimes if it was near where an R&R [rest and relaxation] center was, where they'd be flying out of at the time, that they could spend time there. And sometimes they were just the guys [whose jobs—RB corrected later] were—guys with nothing but empty rat traps. All this—All the clerks who did nothing but typing, the people who carry supplies around, who emptied the latrines; burned them with diesel fuel. So there were those guys that would come into the center, and you'd have more [time—RB corrected later]—you'd get to know those guys better and they weren't in a combat situation. Because a lot of times a combat unit might be in for a stand down [a temporary cessation of offensive actions; ceasefire] for two days and so then they would come in after they had showered and everything else and they'd just be wild. Some—Like at Cu Chi where this one unit called them the wolf men. Can't remember [unclear] but they were wild boys. [chuckles] They were just—just be really crazy.
TS: Was that why you really felt like you needed to protect the women that were under your authority?
RB: Well, the ratios was just—
TS: Five hundred to one?
RB: Well, more probably.
TS: Yeah.
RB: More than that of—Yeah, and some women didn't have some common sense. You just don't go—You make sure you knew someone before you go trotting around the base. I mean, I don't know how many of our women got raped. I don't—I didn't hear any direct stories of that but I'm sure it happened.
TS: Did they have any process for handling that at the Red Cross?
RB: It didn't come up. It didn't—so what was in her file, our director's file, all that stuff, nothing—I never heard, even as assistant director, as unit director, that happening. I 69
mean, there was a certain amount of respect there, because if you didn't respect her [The Red Cross girl—RB corrected later] the next guy was going to give you hell. If someone was really being raunchy to you—
TS: Right.
RB: —someone would step in, say, "Don't treat—" and they would treat us like sisters, some of them.
TS: Yes.
RB: Just really taking care of us. And, of course, there were those that [you would—RB corrected later] get propositioned by, and all the time and say no, no, no, no, you—it's—because the rumor thing was on the Red Cross that was a month's combat pay was seventy-five—sixty-five dollars, I think. That's what it took to get a Red Cross girl. I said, "That's not nearly enough." [both chuckle] [unclear] You just sort of kid with them and then they would always want to know why you—especially with officers after hours because they—they knew what—we were coming and going.
TS: What would you say to them?
RB: Well, one of my lines was, "They're taller."
TS: Oh. [both chuckle] That's right. You said that earlier.
RB: And—
TS: How do you—How did they respond to that then, right?
RB: Yeah, yeah. And it was—it was a question of—you can't exactly—We weren't dating. I mean, some people dated the officers and such and we—but it was—it was difficult in that sense. But there was a thing if an eighteen year old with very little—not a whole bunch of discipline and a gun, and then having a Red Cross woman there and you do not put yourself in situations. The idea of travel in twos, type thing, around the base even, and—
TS: Yes.
RB: —of just being aware of that. So I really—I can't answer that question. I really don't know what the rape situation—
TS: Right.
RB: I never—No one ever came to me and said this has happened to me.
TS: No. 70
RB: Yeah. I mean, people were sleeping with people so—the ques—question of where to do it was the problem; there was just nothing. I mean, I used to make out up on one of the water towers with this guy.
TS: Yeah. [both chuckle]
RB: We'd climb up the water tower. Sit up there.
TS: Just to have some privacy.
RB: Yeah, yeah, and sit up there and just look at the base, and hope you don't get rocketed while you're up there.
TS: Oh, that's true.
RB: Right, yeah.
TS: Now, you had said, too, that—so when you became part of the leadership, you still—did you—did you live in the same Quonset hut? Well, you lived in a house in the one place. How—
RB: Yeah, when you were a unit director you were—you were right with your unit. I mean, you're a peer leader; you're one of the peers.
TS: But when you became the assistant director.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Assistant director, I was stationed in Saigon.
TS: Okay.
RB: And then I would fly out of Saigon, like, on a Monday and spend—and go maybe to two different units and come back on a Friday or a Thursday, and just visit them; meet with the unit director; see what the problems [were]; meet with the commanding—see how things were going. Just checking in on them, and there was a whole thing that there—everyone would spiff up and everything. "Saigon's coming," was the term.
TS: Right.
RB: "Saigon's coming." And that was like—the inspection was like when the military would have an inspection so we would just—
71
TS: Well, wo—As the inspector, what kind of things were you checking?
RB: Well, we meet with everyone in the unit individually—
TS: Yes.
RB: —and talk to them and see how they were doing, how they were handling things, getting along type thing. The unit—The unit director really needed a lot of support because I said—because she was just sort of separated out somewhat. There were some that were just stellar unit directors that just were loved—I mean loved—by their staff. Those were the easy units. And then the idea of talking about quality programming and look at what some of the programs are. Someone wanted to do one on—on a woman's body parts. I said, "Well, that might not be appropriate." [chuckles] You're going to get into trouble there. Just sort of help—helping with that. But, so, we did Saigon and then we'd fly back in. When we flew out of Tan—usually out of Tan Son Nhut [Air Base], nothing was ever on time, you just had to wait. And, of course, I had my rank so a lot of times I'd be getting in line with all the GIs to pile in the back of a C130 [transport airplane] and the pilots would go [motions].
TS: They'd bring you up to the front?
RB: Yeah, we'd sit in—in the jump seats.
TS: Oh, yeah.
RB: A lot of times; it was really, really good. Another thing about my first tour was—the first tour I remember one time when I just—we couldn't—we didn't—couldn't get transportation. We wanted—We had this run to do to. The command said, "We don't have a chopper; they're all tied up and stuff; we just can't do it." This was in '68.
So I said, "Let's go down to the airfield." And this was sort of a grass field where there was a clearing and I just stood there and we were in our blue uniforms with our bag and I went [demonstrates hitchhiking gesture].
TS: [chuckles] With your thumb out?
RB: Stuck—Thumb up in the air. And five minutes, chopper came down and picked us up. "Where do you want to go?" [chuckles]
TS: Are you kidding me?
RB: No. And took us. The second tour that would never have happened because things were still a little looser there and they wouldn't have to account for everything but—
TS: Yeah.
72
RB: —that was good. I said, "We got a ride." And then there was one unit, we used to go to [Tuy Hoa Air Base—RB corrected later], it was an air force base, and we could—they never could get a ride back, because—they got stuck there one time because they just—there was no—it was just really—I said, "You just need to go to the tower." And the guys would love to see us so we went up to the tower and they would talk to planes going up that way, heading—we need to get these people back to [unclear]—
TS: Oh.
RB: —and [unclear]. And it was, like, line them up. Who's going to come in first?
TS: That's right.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Come get us.
TS: Now, a lot of them wanted to come and get them and take them.
RB: Right, yeah, and they—they could just swoop in. They'd take us out in a jeep so the plane would just be running. We'd get on and they'd take off again.
TS: Lots of ingenuity here.
RB: Yes, yes. I was—I was a very good scrounger.
TS: Yes.
RB: I used to do wheeling and dealing. I once brokered a deal between [United States Army] Special Forces and the [U.S.] Air Force; guy was in charge of their wrecks—planes and things. Special Forces wanted a plane. They had—They had guys that could fix a plane and fly a plane and, of course, Special Forces don't have planes, right?
TS: Right.
RB: So I put them together and I'm not sure how the deal finally came out but they wanted a damaged plane that would have been—
TS: That they could fix up?
[Speaking Simultaneously]
73
RB: [unclear]. Right, and the whole thing. And once there was this guy—a newsman—was leaving and he was living in a hooch near us and he said, "I have a vacuum cleaner, you're going to like it." But it was a Shop-Vac. Okay, shop—Shop-Vac. So I'm over visiting the air force base and we were handing out stuff—air force base we didn't program as such, we gave them puzzles and games that we had made up. Little things that they could do because they wouldn't let them off for an hour to do that stuff in the air force. Tough air force. So I go in the carpentry shop and there's all this sawdust all over the place. And then I see over in the corner there's four water machines—water fountains. The kind you plug in with the water—the whole thing—cold water.
TS: Right.
RB: I said, "I have a Shop-Vac. I'd trade that for one of those machines over there. One of those water machines." And so, that deal was done. And I didn't really need this thing, and then so I went to the army which doesn't have water coolers like that and said, "I need some fans and a typewriter."
And the sarge said, "Yeah."
And I said, "And in return I will give you a water fountain."
He says, "Okay. Done."
TS: [chuckles]
RB: So I was good at doing [unclear].
TS: You're like Radar—
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: —from [the television series] M*A*S*H, right?
RB: Yeah, yeah. So it was fun to do that. I mean, to just—of just doing that because we used to—we'd go to the commissary and get [the] best thing in the world, big—these big—great big cans of dried shrimp; big shrimp, but they were dried in cans. Big thing, and you'd pour in beer and water and different things and rejuvenate them and they were wonderful. So that worked really well. And then, first tour [that worked?]. Second tour [unclear]. And then we got a bill one year—I mean, one month—from all the stuff we had ordered. [both chuckle] They wanted the Red Cross to pay for it because it was not authorized. It was the guys were giving it to us.
TS: Yeah, but somebody found out and they—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —they billed you.
74
RB: Yeah, so we brought a bunch of stuff back because it just [unclear]. Another thing in Pleiku that was interesting that first tour was that we used to—there was a place where they made reconstituted ice cream.
TS: Okay.
RB: That was always one of our regular stops; we always got ice cream. And there was always big signs, "No scroungers, no giveaways." And, of course, as Red Cross people we always got them and we'd go across—right across from them, across the dirt road, was a small theater where they—the guys that we'd visit, there was, like, four or five of them, would do the [job—RB corrected later]—take the film off the jets that film the bombings. We'd sit there, eat our ice cream, and watch these bombing runs. Explosions going off in the jungle, just [makes noise]. Guys would tell us what plane it was and just—I mean, it was just, like, we're sitting there eating ice cream, [unclear] matinee. It's just—
TS: They'd just play them for you there?
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And there's big—these big chairs, because the generals would come in and the whole thing.
TS: Oh.
RB: This is where the—
TS: They'd have a briefing on it or something.
RB: They'd have a briefing on it and come in, but we'd be there when no one was there and we'd just be watching these things and that's what they—they had to give us. They could show us these films and they were just—we—you nev—You never saw bodies or anything, you just saw big explosions and nas—nasty, nasty, nasty stuff.
TS: Yes.
RB: But it was just interesting. I started to tell you this other story about that—on that—when I was [unclear] up to a tower. We were up visiting these guys in this tower and it was just a radio tower. It was for the air force and the army for helicopters, which is just one of those things. And so, this guy's going home. Coming out in a big jet. He was in a F-4 or something—came over—You could see him coming. Low, low, right off the treetops. Came over, flipped, completely 360 [degrees] right over us. He said, "Bye, I'm going home."
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TS: Oh my goodness. Home back to the states?
RB: Yes.
TS: Yes.
RB: It was his last mission.
TS: That was like, "What can you do to me now?"
RB: Right, and he was just—He just celebrated with us.
TS: [chuckles]
RB: Jumping up and down.
TS: Now, with some of the different memorabilia you have, you were showing me some of the patches that you got and you were talking about one particular unit in particular.
RB: The 25th Infantry Division. That was when I was in Cu Chi. That's where I went down—whoever had the abortion. Took over for that. She was the unit director, too.
TS: Oh, it was the unit director—
RB: Yeah.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: —that had the abortion?
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: Okay.
RB: So I came down and took her place. It was funny how no one talked about it. I mean, I just came in, made a few changes about a couple things, and made sure that everyone was on the same page and it wasn't brought up. They judged you by your leadership. I mean, I used to sit around with some majors and we'd drink and talk about leadership. Mine, with my—my young women.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Your philosophy and— 76
RB: Yes, and then with their men.
TS: Okay.
RB: And the difficulties and the pain of doing it and how to do it well. And this one guy I really liked, we used to just talk about leadership and so there was an important thing. I would have good meetings and they would respect you. They knew how you ran—that you weren't running a floozy outfit, that you were being cute, you're just running around. That you were trying to really accomplish something for the morale of the troops and that was really important to them. The morale of the troops—the reason they have us there because the morale of the troops was go—was good when we were there. I mean, the guys said they—We made them smile. We made them forget the war. And then [unclear] [dog barking] That's my dog. That's'—
TS: Here, I'll pause it.
[Recording Paused]
TS: Okay. You were telling me about how you talked to these men in this unit. Was that, like, your favorite—the inf—which one–which was the unit again that a—the red and—
RB: Yellow.
TS: —yellow.
RB: The 25th Infantry Division.
TS: And the—and the guys in that unit you just kind of bonded with in a way—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: Well, some of the—
TS: —[unclear] leadership?
RB: The leadership people.
TS: Yes.
RB: I mean, he's—he's the one I had to ask about, "Is this guy married or not? You need to tell me—"
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TS: Oh, right.
RB: —yeah, type thing. And also we used to get invited all the time to—this is another crazy part of this war—to the general's mess.
TS: Yes.
RB: And so the general—There'd be a table of ten to twelve and occasionally two Red Cross girls. We would rotate who would be—who would go. They were served by enlisted men who had been out in the field. They give them credit for that. They had been out in the field and they were now in a safe place serving.
TS: Right.
RB: Serving the food and the water and getting the general's clothes. I mean, he had a assistant. And so we would—[unclear] they—they'd—they'd talk shop a little bit. I had—My second tour, I had a secret clearance so some stuff could be talked around about me, no problem. But, yeah, so relating to them, yeah, was good. And the Saigon assistant directors were important people too. [unclear] even though the unit director I did the exact same work. I mean, I had—I went out to the fire bases; I was in the recreation center.
TS: Even as a unit director?
RB: Yeah, yeah. [unclear] you did all that—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: Or as assistant director too?
RB: No, assistant director, we just—
TS: Supervised.
RB: We just went out and supervised and just visited with the units and made sure things were running well and doing—
TS: What was the best part for you about your tours? And you can even separate them, like, in the first one and the second one because you had different roles, right?
RB: Yes, yes. Probably in the first tour it was certainly—again, you're using the word—the adventure—of new—I mean, just being in a war zone and feeling fairly well-protected. It's not like the infantry guy who was just—They used to describe them as 90% boredom and 10% terror. That we didn't have—We were very busy and occupied at what we were 78
doing. And just seeing the beaches and the train. They said there'd be a con also to recreation there on the beaches, and relating to the Vietnamese. I remember being on the beach and this one guy showing us how the little kids come by and steal your sunglasses, because some kids just walked off with someone's —They sit there and talk to you and they take the glasses and they just throw them over their shoulder. And they talk to you and they'd get up and leave and pick your glasses up, which are now ten feet away from you type thing, but—This mama-san coming by with her basket of little pineapples and say, "We'll buy a pineapple for a dollar." Which was—probably was high at the time but we could certainly afford a dollar. And she would just sit there with a knife and just take those eyes out and carve it up, the whole thing, and slice it up and we just—
TS: In no time at all, right?
RB: Right, yeah. And just sit there in that [crazy thing?]. We—The food was—The food was—it was decent. When we ate at the officers' clubs a lot we—steak was a major thing. I remember one Christmas we served Christmas all—we hit a number of different places and literally did the food line of serving the guys type thing. And then we were scheduled to go back and join one of the units at our base to have Christmas with them and they already had had it; the food was gone, everything.
TS: Oh, really? You didn't have anything left? [both chuckle]
RB: Yeah. And so, word got out. And then one of these other units that was having a thing, and they had steak. And they would have these big barrels with grates on it and cooking steaks and [unclear] say, "Why don't you join us?"
And we said, "Oh, sure." We were hungry. Forget the turkey, we're going to eat steak. That would be fine with us. [both chuckle] And then they didn't have any utensils.
TS: Oh?
RB: So we sat there eating our steak with our fingers. And it was a good steak.
TS: I bet it was.
RB: I mean, there was planeloads that came over with just nothing but steaks in them.
TS: Is that right?
RB: Yeah. I mean—I mean, for the base. I mean, the guys out in the field didn't get it but when they came in—
TS: Right.
RB: —a lot of times there certainly would be steak. And then in Saigon—when we—because we ate—we could eat on the economy. I found a couple of French restaurants I really liked. We could eat at the off—various officers' club—up in one of these officers club[s] 79
up above, overlooking the landing field for the helicopters coming into the hospital. So you could be up there drinking wine, eating your steak, see the guys coming in. It was just—But you just—That was the war.
TS: Right.
RB: That was the way it was and you just can't—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: A little surreal but yet that's the—
RB: Yeah, yeah.
TS: —way it was.
RB: That was the whole thing. But—And a bottle of Mateus—Mateus wine—
[Mateus is a brand of medium-sweet frizzante rosé wine produced in Portugal. Lancers is a brand of medium-sweet, lightly sparkling wine produced in Portugal. ]
TS: Oh, how was that?
RB: —for a dollar. Lancers wine for a dollar. A bottle of vodka for a dollar. I mean, guys would get a whole twenty-four pack of Budweiser and trade it off for who knows what. The black market was quite active in Saigon when we were running around the city.
TS: Well, when you talked about first getting there, and actually, I think, when you got to Korea you were talking about all the—basically the drinking culture of the military.
RB: Yes, military.
TS: Did you kind of get sucked into that a little bit or—
RB: Well, it's a question of—I mean, you would have—certainly have drinks, but the thing is, again, that image of—that you—
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS: That you're STRAC, that's right. 80
RB: Right, you're not going to get falling down drunk.
TS: Right. Well, you weren't—
RB: Yeah.
TS: —but other women—
RB: A few—A few did but that was something that we really kept an eye on each other on that.
TS: Yeah.
RB: And we knew that was a problem, because I told you we'd sit down—
TS: Yes.
RB: —and the drinks were already there, and the guys would think—do you a favor and make you a killer drink, which wasn't any favor. I mean, I put—
TS: Right.
RB: —poured more than a few on the ground.
TS: Yeah.
RB: Because you just really couldn't function. But I remember mornings, too, getting up and going to the officers' club for a little breakfast. I said, "I'll have a coke."
TS: [chuckles]
RB: Your mouth is just like cotton.
TS: Right.
RB: That type thing. It was just—Yeah, I probably—I mean, I drank probably more there than I ever drank but I never got—
TS: Yeah.
RB: —falling down, sloppy drunk. We would—We occasionally would do it within the unit with ourselves without anyone around—
TS: Right.
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RB: —and just tell stories.
TS: It's less vulnerable to—
RB: "You know what that guy said to me today?"
TS: Yeah.
RB: Where you could do—be—a safe place to do it but we didn't—
TS: Right. We talked a little bit about the black market culture. What kind of—And you're the scrounger, so what kind of things did you come up with?
RB: Well, I didn't deal—I mean, I—My scrounging was within the military.
TS: Yes.
RB: I mean, I didn't deal with—there was a whole other world of—
TS: Was that something you were supposed to stay away from?
RB: Yeah, yeah. I mean, there was—even in some of the [unclear] they say certain places you see a interesting cigarette lighter laying on the ground, you don't pick it up because it could be booby-trapped.
TS: Yes.
RB: And that little stuff did go on too. The idea that I—You learn you go into a café to eat or something you always sit with your back to the wall so you could see the entrance, and preferably not right by the entrance. And I still do that.
TS: I was going to ask if that's something that stuck with you.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
RB: It's a safe—It's a comfortable place to sit. You can see everything.
TS: Yes.
RB: If someone throws something in you can see it. We used to go out in Saigon—because when we came back from the job—we were off at five, six o'clock every time we got back, and so we were on our own in Saigon with all these—all these officers' clubs around; all these guys around; Vietnamese restaurants. So it was—it was a social life that 82
you wanted to have. Sometimes you were just exhausted but you'd go for dinner and we'd usually hang out together.
TS: Right.
RB: And except those who did pair off type thing, some of them. But the assistant directors, there was only four of us and plus the director.
TS: Okay.
RB: So we—
TS: And over how many women all together?
RB: I think we had a hundred and twenty; I think our max was.
TS: Okay.
RB: So we just divided that up.
TS: We didn't get into what we talked a little bit on a little break about: 1968. And so, you had Tet and then you had the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
RB: The blacks just were pissed. They were just angry, angry, angry, angry, and just didn't want to go home. Several of them