Donut Dolly: An American Red Cross Girl's War in Vietnam

Preface

ix Preface Donut Dolly: An American Red Cross Girl’s War in Vietnam1 is my personal view of the early days of the war. I kept a journal for a year while a program director for the American Red Cross. I wrote what I saw and did, what I felt and thought—a faithful representation of that time. The comedian Jeff Foxworthy said, “The best stuff is not stuff you make up. It’s true stuff.”2 This book is based primarily on that diary and other confirmed sources. The story unfolds day by day as I lived it. What happened on one day usually had no connection to what happened on the next. I included only information that I experienced first-hand. Later I expanded the original diary into a book-length narrative . I hope this book will convey the twists and turns of a turbulent time. While filling in the notes of my Vietnam diary I used the internet extensively. My searches led me throughout the country to renew friendships with people I knew well or casually. These people were good representatives of the 2.6 million who served in the war. More about my old new friends in the chapter, “Whatever Happened To . . . ?” however. Through our shared experiences we are forever young. Before I went to Vietnam, my mother, a well-published writer, told me, “Keep a diary. You think you will remember, but you won’t.” She was right. More than once when reading the diary years later, I found a story in my handwriting that I did not recall. Ernie Pyle, the World War II Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist wrote, “I haven’t written anything about the ‘Big Picture,’ because I don’t x Donut Dolly know anything about it. I only know what we see from our worm’s-eye view, and our segment of the picture consists only of tired and dirty soldiers who are alive and don’t want to die. . . .”3 Most of the time, I didn’t reflect much on why anything happened. I was too busy keeping my head down and trying not to get anybody killed. A senior Army officer who served with me in Vietnam advised, “Focus on your experiences. People have written about the soldier’s view. Your story should be the way you saw it, as you lived it.” I served in Korea for 14 months and in Vietnam for a year, from May 10, 1966, to May 10, 1967, in the American Red Cross Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas (SRAO). The first Vietnam SRAO unit opened at Danang in September 1965.4 Military Assistance Command Vietnam (MACV) ordered that we could take recreation to the military anywhere in the combat zone, with permission of the local commander.5 No one acknowledged that this was the first time any women had been formally allowed in a combat zone. Eight months later I was the 45th Donut Dolly of 627 in the program’s seven-year Vietnam history. Early in the Vietnam effort, the Red Cross drew its resources from the SRAO program in Korea. Most of the girls had served there. Our recreation activities were designed for able-bodied soldiers, not hospital patients, and to allow the men to interact with the girls. In Korea in April 1965, at the 1st Cavalry Division, I had written a program about numbers with simple problems and geometric shapes. Other topics that were popular with the men included sports, dogs, history , and not surprisingly, women. Another girl and I gave the numbers program one day to a group of about 30 men in a mess hall. The mess sergeant had coffee ready. We served each man a cup and gave him two donuts with a smile and a friendly word. We made small talk as we set up our props. I started the program with a paper and pencil game of several “Pick a Number” activities. The men loved the mysterious results. We followed with trivia about numbers and their history, and then we Preface xi played a quiz game of story problems. The men tackled the challenge with amazing speed. Ironically, when I was a Math teacher, my students hated story problems. But outside the classroom, numbers became relevant . The program had a couple of other activities that kept the men enthusiastic, competitive, and mentally sharp. When the hour ended we reminded the soldiers that the...