Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam

10. Homecoming

Homecoming In Washington State or California, the nurses wearily walked down the exits and headed for the customs offices located at the military air terminals. Once they completed customs inspections, they found taxis to civilianairports. It was allroutine. There were no signs, no one to say "Welcome home." The taxi rides gave the nurses an opportunity to look at their homeland. Cars drove at fast speeds. There was no concertina wire. There were doors and pay telephones everywhere. "I went into the airport coffee shop for awhile," said one nurse. "I was amazed at the color and all the people comingand going. Baloney sandwiches and real coffee and cream! I didn't even have to sit in the back of the restaurant facingthe door.'' Four nurses whoflew home in their combat fatigues went into the first bathroom they could find and changed into civilian dresses. They threw their fatigues and combat boots into trash cans. As children the nurses had listened to the war stories of their fathers and grandfathers. They heard about ticker-tape parades down Fifth Avenue in New York City and cheering dockside crowds in Boston and San Francisco. Embraces and tears and hugs greeted the "doughboys" and the "Yanks." As younggirls, they had watched their relatives march with the local American 10 114 Women at War Legion or Veterans of Foreign War units every Fourth of July. Neighbors had waved small flags and shouted as the men went past. War veterans were American heroes. But it was easy to dismiss the veterans who returned from Vietnam. There were no huge troop ships or airlifts. American military personnel traveled from Saigon or Da Nang alone or in small groups. They flew from the West Coast to their home towns on commercial airlines with civilianson business trips or families on vacations. On the whole, most people ignored them. Homecomings were quiet, sometimeshostile. In the airports, nurses saw long haired hippies wearing "love beads" around their necks and old army fatigue jackets. The women felt a twinge of anger as they thought of cutting the same type of jacket off men wounded in battles. These people, the nurses thought, seemed to be mocking the sacrifice of the wounded and dead. In the San Francisco airport, so near the college campuses where the antiwar movement blossomed, veterans and protesters mingled.1 The two groups usually avoided contact. A fragile truce existed. Militarypeople wanted to get home and protesters wanted their messages heard. There were times, however, when tempers flared. One nurse remembered a near nstfight between her husband, who was just offthe plane from Saigon, and a group of hippies. A navy nurse saw people carrying placards with the antiwar slogan, "Hell no, we won't go." "If one of those people had come up and talked to me," she said, "I would have strangled them." Although protesters directed their anger toward men in uniform , the nurses were not immuneto harassment. Ten women in the study told stories of hostile encounters in California airports. One incident involved a navy nurse on her way home to Pennsylvania . She was alone and clearly identifiablein her blueuniform. "The whole time [in the airport] I was followed by a group of hippies who did nothing but badger me with questions. They said, 'Where have you been?,' 'What are those ribbons for?,' 'Who do you think you are?' I know I should have stood up to them but it was such a shock for me. I was so happy to be home. It was a hard way to come back." Homecoming 115 When another navy nurse got off a plane in Los Angeles, she was knocked down by four people who called her a "fascist pig." They knocked off her glasses and quickly fled. It happened so fast, she never saw the people who hit her—or the people on the other side of the political fence who helped her up and brushed off her uniform. She, and most other nurses, quickly learned to conceal their military affiliation. Every time they wore their uniforms off military bases, there was a chance civilians would mistreat them. For example, another woman remembered getting out of her car at home to change a flat tire. She was in her military uniform: hat, fittedjacket, skirt, stockings, and high-heeled shoes. She knew it would be difficult to use a car jack and to turn wheel bolts in...