 Good afternoon. I'm David Ferry, archivist of the United States and I'm pleased to welcome you to the William G. McGowan Theater here at the National Archives, whether you're here in the room or participating through Facebook and YouTube, we're glad you could join us. Before we begin today's talk about the girls next door, bringing the home front to the front lines, I'd like to let you know about two other programs coming up next week here in the McGowan Theater. On Thursday, February 14th, we're hosting two programs at noon we'll present the documentary film Chisholm 72 Unbound and Unbossed. The film chronicles the 1972 presidential campaign of Shirley Chisholm, the first black woman elected to Congress and the first to seek nomination for the presidency. In honor of the 50th anniversary of her election to the House, we also have a featured document display of her 1969 oath of office that display is upstairs in the East Rotunda Gallery. At 7 p.m. on the 14th, we'll look at music in the life of President Lincoln. In partnership with the Virginia Chamber Orchestra and the Lincoln Group of the District of Columbia, we'll explore President Lincoln's musical tastes. Accompanied by video clips of the orchestra, a distinguished panel will discuss music in the Lincoln White House, the many performances Lincoln attended and the role music played in his life during the Civil War. Check our website, archives.gov, or sign up at the table outside to get email updates. You'll also find information about other National Archives programs and activities. Another way to get more involved with the National Archives is to become a member of the National Archives Foundation. The Foundation supports all of our education and outreach activities. Upon opening a new book, some people first scan the table of contents, others may head for the index or plunge straight into Chapter 1, Page 1. I like to take a look first at acknowledgments. And so often there's a wonderful payoff for that detour. On so many occasions, the names of National Archives staff appear on those pages. And I'm very proud of the work our staff do every day to help researchers navigate through the records. And this sort of public recognition signs the light on their dedication to the mission of this institution. In the acknowledgment section of the Girls Next Door, Kara Buick remarks that finding one's way through military and civilian records of several wars at the National Archives was a daunting task. The Tab Lewis, Will Mahoney, Martin Gedra, and Eric Venslander helped her find her way so she could uncover information she needed. Even the retired archivist Rick Bowden gets a mention for continuing to help even after he retired from the National Archives. Whether you're a published author, a student, or a beginning genealogist, our staff are there for you to help you find your own way through the formidable volume of records in our care. And we're gratified each time a researcher publishes a work that couldn't have been told without access to those records. Because that book, that article, that blog post means the stories once locked in folders and files are now out in the world touching unknown numbers of readers. Now let's hear from Dr. Buick about her new book and the stories of the women who volunteered to work in war zones from the First World War to Iraq and Afghanistan. Kara is the Lance Corporal Benjamin W. Schmidt Professor of War Conflict and Society in 20th Century America at Texas Christian University where she teaches courses on U.S. wars and American society, gender and war and memory and war. Her first book, Officer Nurse Woman, the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War won the Lavinia L.Doc Book Award from the American Association of the History of Nursing, was named the book of the year in the history and public policy by the American Journal of Nursing and was a finalist for the Army Historical Foundation Distinguished Writing Award. She also edited the handbook on Gender War and the U.S. Military and is co-editor of the University of Nebraska Press's book series Studies in War Society and the Military. She is currently co-editing a collection Managing Sex in the U.S. Military. She currently serves on the advisory board to the Eastern National for the Vietnam Women's Memorial. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Cara Dixon-Villic. Hi, good afternoon and thanks for coming. I appreciate you coming. This weather would have shut down the entire state of Texas where I now live so I appreciate the fortitude of folks coming out today. I want to thank Douglas Swanson for the invitation and David for that very kind introduction. I'll also apologize in advance. That is my one-year-old up in the corner and I make no guarantees about her behavior this afternoon, but we hope she'll be okay. I'm going to start with a short passage from the book and then use that as a way of introducing several questions and themes that I want to talk about today. We'll just go ahead and get started. The men of Company B had had a rough few weeks. The Bravo Bulls, as they called themselves, were part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade, the combat units assigned to Vietnam in early 1965. They were doing their best to defend an airstrip at Benoit, a few miles northeast of Saigon, but their new M16 rifles kept jamming, making that job more difficult than it was already. When the men weren't in firefights, they waged a war of attrition against the leeches and spiders that crept into their uniforms. Although the men's newly arrived young Lieutenant Jack Harris could not do much to stop the insects, he did manage to get the cleaning rods they needed to keep their rifles firing by calling in a favor from a college buddy. Price's resourcefulness earned the men's appreciation and convinced them that he could deliver another item that they believed would make their war more indurable. On a whim, the men told Price that what they really needed was a personal visit from one of Playboy Magazine's playmates. A few years earlier, Magazine had launched a promotion that anyone who bought a lifetime subscription would have the first issue personally delivered by a playmate. It seemed a long shot, but Price sent a formal request to Hugh Hefner from the depths of the hearts of 180 officers and men. Price mused that loneliness in a man's heart is a terrible thing and would be particularly acute during the upcoming holidays. Although the beauty of Vietnamese women is unquestionable, he admitted, what the men needed was a real living, breathing American girl. And after very careful consideration, they had unanimously decided that the girl they most wanted to see was Joe Collins, 1965 playmate of the year. That was her cover and I promise all of this is suitable for work. But Price promised that if Joe Collins couldn't come, that any playmate of the month would be received with open arms. He enclosed the $150 subscription fee enclosed by saying that if the men's request could not be met, Hefner should just please forget about us, return our money order and we will fade back into the jungle. Collins didn't make it in time for Christmas or for New Years, but she did fulfill the men's dreams when she made a personal visit early the next year. After delivering the first issue to Price, who by then was hospitalized with a devastating arm wound, she greeted the Bravo Bulls as they returned from patrol. One confident grunt locked her in a long kiss on behalf of his cheering and probably very jealous comrades. They renamed their unit Playboy Company in her honor. This is a picture from Playboy magazine's Twitter feed that they ran on Veterans Day a couple years ago to show how much they support the troops. Peace from their store bar guys. So what exactly is a Playboy model doing in Vietnam? That's a pretty good question, right? Here she is sort of with the men wearing her Playboy shirt. This is her flying in. They've painted on the side of a U.S. government property helicopter by the way. Playboy special. She's visiting the men's billets and pointing out her own center fold there. Now, it sounds more like something out of the scene from Apocalypse Now, right, where the Playboy bunnies come in on the helicopter, chaos ensues. It sounds more like something out of fiction than it does out of a history book. But in fact, Collins was only one and one of the most famous of thousands of American women who went to Vietnam to entertain American soldiers, sailors, airmen and Marines. Now Collins, women like Raquel Welch, these women were among the most famous. They captured most of the headlines. But far more common are average girls from home. These are young women in their early 20s who had a desire to do something for the war effort. Many of these women perform musical and theatrical acts under the U.S.O. Many of them are special services hostesses. Others known as Donut Dollies worked for the Red Cross and operated Red Cross recreation centers where men could find coffee and donuts, music, games, friendly smiles from home. And the women continued what was by then a very long tradition of sending women to war zones to entertain soldiers. Thousands and thousands of women have done this since World War I. Like these women in World War I, they opened canteens where soldiers could find a friendly face, coffee and donuts. They performed on stage with the U.S.O., sometimes even on beaches as here in World War II in the Pacific. They played games. They made small talk. And when possible, they brought a bit of a brief reprieve to the battlefield. But why? Why did the military spend a lot of money and devote a considerable amount of time and resources to bring thousands of women to entertain soldiers to drink coffee and dance with them on far-flung battlefields? And what was that work like for the women who are asked to do it? Those are the kinds of questions I ask in the book and we're not going to answer all of them today, of course, but I thought we might look at a couple of them. So first, why are these women here? Why is the military spending all this time and money to send young American women to war zones? And to understand that, we have to go back to World War I. And it's sort of a shift in the ways that we think about the military. But before the Americans entered World War I, most Americans didn't think of the U.S. military in the way that we do today. If your children joined the military, you're very proud. This is kind of them growing up becoming adults. It's very respectable and honorable work. Before World War I, enlisted men in particular were not thought of as very honorable. Officers were one thing that was different, but enlisted men were generally sent to the western frontier. They were on the southern border, Native American wars, chasing poncho via, doing that kind of work. And there were often reports that kind of surfaced of these guys getting into a wee bit of trouble. And most people didn't want that for their children. On the other hand, if you thought of these men at all, you probably thought, well, they're kind of hard scrabble men, they do dirty work, and they deserve a little bit of fun. So most people just didn't think about it. On the other hand, when the United States got close to joining the Allied effort in World War I, and Selective Service came up, now all of a sudden your son might be drafted. And now all of a sudden you care a great deal about what happens in army camps. You care a whole lot about what kinds of things are going to surround your son. And so people started to really pay attention, and very optimistic progressive organizations got involved. The other thing to kind of keep in mind is that the Selective Service Act was very unpopular on the eve of World War I. The Americans had not had a draft since the Civil War. That didn't go so well in many ways. And Americans were very skeptical about a draft. So you combine the fear among many people that you're going to now draft my son, and he's going to get in trouble, and then you're going to send him to France, which most Americans thought of as just this land of debauchery and insanity, craziness, everybody got into trouble in Paris. That made a lot of Americans very nervous. And so organizations like the YMCA and the Salvation Army worked with the military to send women abroad. They sent about 3,500 women, most with the YMCA, about 100 with the Salvation Army. And these women opened canteens and huts all across the western front. And the organizations explained these women's work as sort of sending reminders of home. We're going to send American women, they're going to remind these young boys of why they're there, why they're fighting, what they have to return to. It's a symbol of a supportive home front. And most importantly, these women are going to keep the boys out of trouble. The boys are going to come to a YMCA hut, and they're going to get coffee and donuts and talk with girls from home. They're not going to go to Paris. And this is sort of the PG version. But hopefully everybody's with me on this and knows what going to Paris might entail. And so this, to us today might sound very naive, just send girls from home and it'll all be fine. Everybody will behave themselves. It might sound a bit optimistic. But in World War I, this was very much the thought. These women are going to sort of entice these men to come stay in the hut, not go to Paris, right? Men must be furnished with healthful amusement, or they will turn to the first petticoat they see. It was a Red Cross official who explained this program, right? Healthful amusement, or they'll turn to the first petticoat they see. I have to explain petticoats to undergrads sometimes. That gets fun. Now, some of this optimism is not borne out exactly by World War I. Lots of men get into trouble going to Paris in World War I. But a couple decades later, as the United States sort of looked to World War II, they again turned to civilian organizations to send women to war zones. And by World War II these women are going through the Red Cross. Think of the Red Cross Club Mobile program that women are driving double-decker buses and converted military jeeps and trucks that are equipped with doughnut machines. They're driving these all over the western front. They're driving them all over the China Burma India Theater. They're opening clubs where you can come and get doughnuts and coffee. You can dance the jitterbug with girls from home. In 1941 the USO formed and started to send entertainers to war zones. And most of the women that we think of like Marlene Dietrich are the famous women who did USO tours. But far, far, far more common were ordinary women we've never heard of. These are women who had a singing talent, who could act, who had some sort of talent signed up with the USO and went to the war zones in hopes that after the war they would come home and that would kind of boost their entertainment career. But the vast majority of USO women are not women we've heard of. They didn't make the headlines except in their local newspapers. But thousands of these women go to war zones. And by World War II, again there's not really a hope on the military's part that this is going to keep the boys out of trouble. They kind of have forgotten that goal in World War II. But what they are concerned about is long deployments. What will it mean to send men abroad in these deployments for the foreseeable future? Because we know how long the deployments were but at the time of course they did not. And so there was a lot of concern on the military's part that we need to send women from home to kind of help ease the stresses of long deployments. Particularly in non-Western theaters. There was a lot more concern about getting women to the Pacific, getting women to the China Burma India than there was, say, getting them to Britain. So in non-Western theaters that concern was very, very pronounced. A general, an Army Air Force general in Burma in 1945 said that the presence of women in these far away outposts made the difference for the servicemen between savagery and civilization. And so the women are being sent to do largely the same kinds of things but it takes on a bit of a different purpose in World War II. Now this model of the USO and the Red Cross continues in the Korean War. Again, famous women, Marilyn Monroe makes a lot of splash in the press. But most of the women are like these two Red Cross women serving coffee. We wouldn't know their names. This is kind of the model. That continues in the Vietnam War where you have Red Cross women by then they're known as Donut Dolly's and USO women. And this woman traveled on a USO tour and the purpose of her act was essentially fashion shows. And so you can see sort of the USO model is everything under the sun. From Marilyn Monroe to fashion shows. And in the Korean and the Vietnam War there's a lot of talk in the military on the importance of these women being American women and not Asian women. There's a lot of, as the men said in their letter to Hugh Hefner, there are lots of women around that they can look at, but what they really want are living, breathing American girls. Now at the end of the Vietnam War when the draft ended and the United States switched to an all volunteer force, these kinds of programs that use essentially Donut Dolly's, those kinds of programs go away. But it still travels around. It's a little different today. The military is made up of far more women. It's a much more diverse force and it includes a whole lot of families. And so today, Elmo goes on tour with the USO. Elmo was not in Korea, but Elmo tours around military bases today. At the same time the USO still sends famous women. The USO only sends famous tours today. And we've still got some rather scantily clad performers including the Dallas Cowboy cheerleaders who've traveled abroad annually since 1979. So in some ways these programs seem rather innocuous. These are kind of symbols of the all-American image that the nation wants to project kind of mom and apple pie. This is, I guess, mom watermelon in this case. But this is kind of the image that Americans want. This is a reassuring image to families who are worried about sending their sons, their sweethearts, their husbands, their brothers to war. This is what you want to think happens in war. Johnny from home goes to the USO club and has watermelon with Susie from Kansas or whoever. This is a very comforting image. It's also a very comforting image of American women in war zones. In wars that frequently introduce all sorts of changes to women's lives and lots of changes that are not welcomed by everybody. This is a very conventional image of American womanhood. They're always in dresses. They're looking very professional. They're doing kind of conventional work even with wars demand that women do all sorts of unconventional work. It's also a very reassuring image of the American home front. This is the image of a supportive American home front. The nation is behind you and this image becomes far more important, I think, later in Korea and especially in the Vietnam War when the home front wasn't necessarily united in support of that war. Sending this kind of work abroad suggests to not just the servicemen that yes, we are behind you, but it also is sort of a reassuring image to the home front itself that this is what we do. And it's interesting all of the organizations the YMCA uses this, the USO, the Red Cross, all of these organizations use this phrase that they are sending or creating a home away from home for these men in war zones. This is something that they use consistently across the century and these women do do that. They absolutely do. But I think their work is a bit more complicated. And so I'd like to talk a little bit about sort of what this work demands of the women, right? What is this work like for this woman who is probably in her mid-20s? She's very likely single. She's probably never traveled far from home. It's probably her first time abroad, right? And now she is doing this kind of work in a war zone. And that must have been a pretty interesting experience for her. These women are asked to represent mama, sister and sweetheart. And that all sounds good until you stop to think how do you represent mama and sweetheart at the same time? That's a little complicated. These women are to help the men relax in a very stressful environment. They're to help them sort of decompress. They're to make the men feel comforted and supported and welcomed. They're to keep them from going to Paris. And how are you supposed to do that? What you're doing is respectable. These are upright, respectable young women from home. There's nothing nefarious going on. They're very, very clear about that. And every aspect of these women's lives is very carefully regulated. So the uniforms they wear are carefully designed to suggest they are professionals. Their hairstyles are regulated. In World War II, there's this big blow-up in the Red Cross because the men wanted to wear bangs. They had the Veronica Lake hairstyle. And the Red Cross officials said, oh, no, that's a little too much. But these men making these decisions so we'll let the women figure that out. They said, women, you need to have your nails manicured so your nails look nice. But don't wear red nail polish. That's a little too risqué. They're micromanaging lots of aspects of these women's lives to make sure that nobody can ever say these women have sort of unwholesome motives or they're there for the wrong reasons or anything like that. The women are also taught in their training before they go abroad to wear perfume, wear ribbons in your hair. Do things to make you look conventionally feminine. To look the part of all American womanhood. But your work also asks that you do things you've been told all of your life never to do. As respectable young women from home you never talk to strange men. You're never to talk to men who you ordinarily wouldn't socialize with. World War I, you don't talk to if you're from the upper class, you don't talk to immigrant men. But this work demands that you do that. It asks women to come out of their comfort zones to initiate conversation with strangers but not just to initiate conversation but to make these men feel as though they are the center of the universe. Some of their duties involve fashion shows like the picture from the Vietnam War. In several different wars they run what we would think of as the dating game from the 70s where the Red Cross woman is selecting from three GIs and then they go on a date that's paid for by these programs. It's a very conflicting set of goals and how are the women to manage all of that at the same time? How are you supposed to walk this fine line between respectable and maybe a little too friendly? You're supposed to be friendly but not too friendly. You're supposed to be cute but not too cute. How do you do that? For women like this woman here, Emma Young-Dixon she was with the YMCA in World War I. She was from a very privileged background she grew up with everything she could ever imagine and desperately wanted to do her part in the war effort. I love this picture of her because she gets sent to France and she opens a hut for the 7th Machine Gun Battalion and on the opening day she stands up and she makes a speech to all of these Doughboys. The YMCA would have been very proud of her because everything that the program was intended to do. She says, I'm here. I'm your surrogate sister. I will do everything your sisters and your mamas would do for you if they only had the chance. And then you turn the page in her diary that's housed at the YMCA archives and you see pictures like this. And I think to myself, now Emma you said you're to be their sister but I suspect that either of these two men are not looking at you in the same way that they look at their sister. I don't have their diaries but I'm pretty sure that's not how they look at their sister. And Emma knew that. Her diary is filled with accounts of men coming into her hut and staying a bit too long or proposing marriage again. She writes about these two men in her diary and she said that one night she said that two men Marine Lieutenant Palmer and Lieutenant Peck took Helen and me for a walk and we sat by the river. Helen was a woman in her hut that she worked with. They went for a walk by the river. She said it is a most romantic spot so we didn't linger long. She's figuring out very quickly how to keep the men at arm's length. How do you make them feel comforted and supported and as though you have a personal connection with them without letting them get too close. These are the kinds of things she has to learn how to manage every day. There's another entry in her diary that's heartbreaking. There's a man who somehow got himself a motorcycle and he shows up everywhere she goes and he's always visiting her at the hut. He sends a message one day that he wants to come tell her something and she knew what he wanted to say and she'd heard it from him before and she'd heard it from thousands of other men and she said that he was on his way to the front and so she decided that she should just let him say it anyway. So he comes by and he proposes marriage again and she says I'm entirely too busy to get married right now. She just deflects it. But it's heartbreaking in that she says he's going to the front. She knows he might not come back to just let him unload that emotional burden. And so that's another element of what these women are doing is that what they're doing is very emotional work. It's helping the men with their emotions but it's very emotional work for the women and that's never a concern on the part of the organizations. Women are to relieve men's boredom but they're also to help them process war. They're to help them grieve. They're to help them decompress. They are to help them transition at the war's end from soldier back to civilian. And how are you to do that? You've been taught in your training how to play cards and you've read up on all of the sports teams so that you can talk to these men about their favorite baseball team but nobody's trained you in grief counseling. The military has grief counselors but often what happens is that they arrest Red Cross women or USO women or special services women to come in and sit with the men. In World War II the Red Cross used women to work with pilots and I think this is an interesting case because pilots were sort of a new beast for the military in World War II. New air war, they were really kind of figuring out what it meant to be a pilot and how stressful that was. And so the military operated what they called rest homes for pilots and after a set number of missions or when a physician said that the pilot needed a break they would send these men to these rest homes and the Red Cross staffed the clubs or these homes with women and it's interesting that in these clubs the Red Cross always insisted that women be in uniform. The uniform was in many ways sort of the outward sign that you were a respectable person and that was your professional status but in the rest homes the Red Cross said do not wear uniforms we want you to wear dresses we want you to wear ribbons we want you to be as girly essentially as you can be because the rest homes were to help the men kind of transition out of this very stressful environment and back into civilian life and they told the women to operate dances essentially so that the men could kind of test themselves out and the Red Cross women who did this work talked about how horribly hard that was because a lot of these men would then go again on missions and not come back and several of the women who work with pilots talk about how at the beginning of their time with the pilots they knew everybody's name they knew where they were from they knew all about them and they quickly realized that the way they were going to make it was to stop learning names and to not get to know those men as men and that was how they coped and so it's heart breaking to see these women kind of try to do this work while trying to manage their own emotions a couple decades later in Vietnam commanders would call for the Red Cross donut dollies to come out when their units had been through heavy firefights and so women in their early 20s again with no experience in counseling to essentially be counselors and this woman Emily Strange she wrote that like the Beatles song she said that every morning she put on her Eleanor Rigby face and so no matter what happened in the morning she put on her smile and her makeup and she just went out and did her job and then she had to figure out in the evenings how to come down from that how to manage that kind of work and remember that these women are doing all of this work in the middle of a war zone I love this picture because the women are surrounded literally surrounded by the machinery of war and they are doing this work in very dangerous places and it's interesting to me that the women embrace the danger donut dollies helicoptered all over the place in Vietnam into landing zones into fire support bases they helicoptered all over the place in World War I Emma Dixon lived the woman I just talked about she lived in a home with a French family and her diary just kind of mentions casually one day that the home down the street was hit by a bomb they are living and working in very dangerous environments but they embrace that danger in many ways as a sign that they are in it as with the men that they are in the war just as the men and they are there with them they kind of see it as their comradery with these men Emma wrote for example when the 7th machine gun battalion was sent to Chateau Thierry in the late stages of World War I she writes that all of the reports coming back from the front are horrible the men are under fire it's very dangerous and in the next line she says I want to go too why are the women being held back why can't we go to support our men and so in all of these wars these women embrace the danger as a sign of their commitment their comradery with the men their commitment to the war but what the women are afraid of in terms of danger is not the war you never see women talk about how scared they are of the war when they talk about being scared it's being scared of the men that they have to serve and that is not to say that the vast majority of men were not well intentioned and appreciative of these women coming to spend a little bit of time with them it's not to suggest that but the women in all of these wars they often use this phrase they say that they are living in a goldfish bowl they are not anonymous they can't be anonymous in the war everywhere they go they are very visible and all of that attention on young women far from home is fun for many of them for about a week or two it's nice that all of these guys think you are the coolest thing in the world and you're the prettiest thing they've ever seen and that's nice for a while and then it gets old but your job is to make that man feel like he is also the center of the universe and so you can't ever say I'm tired I want you to go away I've seen way too many men this week could I just have some time to myself you can't do that that's not your job several of the women actually swear that they are going to go join convents when they get home because they've had enough of men and they just can't stand to see another one and so part of what these women are doing is trying to figure out again how to balance that what a lot of guys might have thought of as harmless pranks panty raids were apparently all of the rage in the 60s and so that goes on in Vietnam I thought it was hilarious but the women don't think it's quite that hilarious and so anything from that to much, much worse that you might imagine that gets old and the women what's really frustrating for them is that they don't feel they have much recourse in Cameron Air Base in Vietnam the women a woman in the USO put on a show and some of the GIs in the crowd got very rowdy and started shouting obscenities and very violent threats at the women and their commanders who were in the audience did absolutely nothing and when the USO women complained they were told that basically you should have seen it coming what else did you expect would happen and so that kind of dismissal like boys will be boys dismissal really rubbed them the wrong way and that didn't make them feel safe or protected but they also had to manage that and so what can we learn from all of this right this is actually a picture of some of the women's billets in World War II surrounded by barbed wire armed guards but what can we learn from all of it I think these women show us a new way of thinking about war time many people if they think about women in war they think of nurses or they think of Rosie the Riveter they think of something more familiar but these women I think have a very unique war experience and it's one we don't often think about but perhaps we should they seek out a way to do their part for the war effort and they seek out a way to be as involved and as close to the war as possible and so I think that is interesting I think they also tell us something about men in war time as well the women are there because of the men and we learned something about what the military thinks men should be right in World War I men are supposed to not go to Paris by World War II the military really didn't care if you went to Paris again the PG version but they're you know sort of evolving understandings of what men are supposed to do how men are supposed to be in war time what they need to be reminded of that kind of thing I think it also opens a window into thinking about the relationship between the military and civilian society in war time what did the American public think that it owed the military during these wars how did that relationship change and as we think about how to apply the lessons of the 20th century to the 21st our military today as I said is a much more diverse force it relies increasingly on women and on families and we currently have military personnel that have stayed to conflicts around the world that have no end in sight they still go to war with the USO as I mentioned but they no longer go to war with women like the donut dollies or the Red Cross club mobile girls or the YMCA lassies from World War I those programs ended after the Vietnam War and I don't think it's a bad thing that they did end in using women as symbols of the family which men fought and to which they hoped to return the military and civilian organizations associate women with the home front even when they're in war sort of suggesting that women belong in the home even when they're not in the home but programs employing women to serve hot chocolate and Kool-Aid to soldiers also positions them as men's supporters and not their equals organizations that held up women as symbols of both wholesome and sexualized ideals sort of mom and sweetheart all at the same time places women in untenable and often dangerous situations and recreation and entertainment programs that offer women as antidotes to the military sort of an escape from military life for a moment suggests that women have no place in it but maybe these women also teach us something important about offering a warm smile and a sympathetic ear about reminding those who serve on our behalf that they are remembered and appreciated so I thank you for your attention and I would welcome your questions I guess I'll start thank you very much for coming I'm sure you've spoken to some of these women who are now even safe in the Vietnam era who are now still very much alive maybe in their 70s what's their recollection of these experiences in denying or camera wherever they were 50 years ago one of the most fun parts of this project has been actually interviewing a lot of these women and so it's interesting to talk to them this for many of them was the time of their life it was one year of their life it's been a year in Vietnam and in many ways it's such a short part of your life but they think of it sort of as having a much more pronounced influence on their life than a year might suggest a lot of them really had a great time they enjoyed the adrenaline of it every day somewhere new you're being choppered here and there you're meeting new people from all over the United States and in the middle of what was the event of their generation and so they really for the most part feel that they did their part for that war and what's been interesting for me is that the women all have very different opinions on the war itself but they universally believe that their job was to go and support those men whatever they thought of the politics of the war their job was to be there what's also interesting to me is that if you ask them would you want say your daughter to go do this the answer is often absolutely not so that kind of contrast has been really interesting that it was this great, very exciting stressful time I wouldn't have changed it for the world but I don't want my daughter to experience it as well and I think that's also illuminating I realize it the way the women are received over the years and depending on the situation the times that I'm sure things change but was there any studies done with respect to another you dealt with the US particularly particularly when we had coalition partners in countries in Afghanistan, Iraq the Middle East, for instance how women in other countries were received and also how Americans were received culturally when you went into these Middle East countries with a very different way of looking at women that's been really interesting in the post-Vietnam era when most of the United States involvement abroad is in the Middle East in the first Gulf War for example there was a lot of hand wringing over what are we going to do we can't send over the stereotypical social that was forbidden by the Saudis for example they screened the mail of GIs they made sure that nothing sort of untoward was coming in even Bob Hope's wife couldn't get into the country for a while they wanted to send Brooke Shields and the Saudis took her visa away she was not getting in country and so that's kind of interesting in earlier wars the reception wasn't it didn't have that kind of cultural disconnect but at the same time you've got women who are often being sent to be sort of the proper example of what women are supposed to be in contrast to local women so the Pacific theater in World War II anywhere non-western these women the military says it's absolutely urgent we have to get American women there because they're supposed to be the idealized woman for the American soldiers but it also suggests to local women that what they are doing is inappropriate or not idealized so it's interesting in different theaters and in different cultures how this plays out but yeah that's a great question I think they want you to the mic a couple not many there was a woman in World War I who got bronchitis on the boat going to France and was recovering was actually on her way to recovering in a hospital and the hospital was bombed and the YMCA she was with the YMCA and the YMCA praised her as a soldier they said her death was a soldier's death and all of the articles about her as being the first woman in this line of work to be killed really praised her for her sacrifice for her dedication that she knew this kind of danger might come other women I'm trying to think off the top of my head there was a woman in Vietnam who was killed by an American GI who was mentally ill she was just the first person he saw basically and she was murdered but it hasn't been that many often what would happen would be something like you get sick you get influenza World War I that kind of thing so a handful but not too many no, not that kind of no, no they do it's been interesting being from Texas I'm sort of afraid that they're going to find me and take away my driver's license if I criticize desk halfway cheerleaders in any way but they do still make tours in the 80's and there are lots of NFL that do travel abroad in the 80's they start to realize especially with more women in uniform in the military they start to realize that cheerleaders on stage scantily clad that that's a little dicey and so what they started to do was organize cheerleading camps for little kids they made it more of a sporting tour but they still do the dance show they spend far more of their time signing autographs just chatting with folks taking pictures that kind of thing but they still tour and when they dance they do their the same thing you would see half time I guess at NFL show they're still there thank you and I appreciate the complexity you've brought to the issue in your comments so I basically have two questions and one of them is around treatment of the women themselves this is me too territory today the idea of putting women in this kind of situation I realize that this is supposed to be protective and that they're idealized instead of purely objectified but I am curious if you would go into a little bit more about how were the women treated, were there rapes, were there assaults, were there what we would consider inappropriate behavior was that part of the job or was in some way the were there enough protections in place or were people on their good behavior I'm very interested in that part of the experience which you haven't really touched on and then the other is the almost it seems as though going to Paris and the Asian women as contracted contrasted to these girls if you would comment also on the perception or intent to separate American women and the appropriate treatment of American women to local women thank you so it's complicated as you just said and trying to tease out those various threads has been really interesting but also difficult in many ways because the language we use the words that we say today to describe these things assault harassment didn't exist for most of these women before the mid 70s sexual harassment was not in our vocabulary part of this process has been sort of looking backward in many many earlier decades and trying to figure out how people talk about that officially there would never be any official in the military in the Red Cross anyone who would ever suggest or intend that anything untoward is happening here right when they think of using women even as objects on stage to be looked at or whatever it all kind of fits with the ways that women are used in wartime as motivation as recruitment that have women right I want you for the U.S. Navy your painting pin ups on airplane noses I mean women's bodies get used as wartime imagery in lots of ways so they know they absolutely know that this is introducing the possibility of danger and they do they do I think what they believe they can do to protect the women right so the guarded billets not going around and escorted not traveling alone those kinds of things but none of that protects everybody at all times right and what's most common are you know women who for 365 days are cat called at and whistled at and leered at and guys following you around and asking you on dates over and over and over you know that kind of thing escalating to men who genuinely believed in various wars that the women were there for the entertainment of officers and that that was unfair and they should also be available to enlisted men as well you know so assumptions that they are there as prostitutes basically some men genuinely believe that there are lots of rumors about how much they cost and very specific rumors about that you know and so trying to figure that out you know there are a few women who have ever openly talked about harassment or rape we know that it has happened you know a few women talk about it but trying to find that in records is difficult trying to find I mean even today it's the least reported one of the least reported crimes in our society for all sorts of reasons and so women who feel that it's their job to be there to make the men feel welcomed and supported don't often feel that they can report things that they are uncomfortable with and it puts them in a position where they feel that it's their job to just deal with it right and they kind of even in the ways they talk about it have a set of letters from a woman who was a Red Cross woman in World War II I have her letters and I have her diary and she describes in her letters home to her parents she was at the Isle of Right and they were on a boat and this port commander took the women all the Red Cross women on the boat they went out they had sandwiches they wrote in her letters home this was a fine time and he was a nice guy and whatever and in her diary she says very specifically he was a little too handsy he's putting his hands all over her he's pressuring her and that she's not telling her parents at home because she doesn't want them to worry and so you kind of take lessons from something like that and think okay well in all of the newspaper articles maybe they're shielding us from some of that and so you're trying to read between the lines and find things that you actually don't want to find at all but you know we're there and so I think that's the tension here is that you take women who really genuinely want to do something nice for people who are lonely and you're putting them in difficult situations where they have to figure that out on their own and it's yeah that doesn't actually give you a definite answer to your question yeah the last interviews I did were really a little bit before that yeah that would have been interesting how that clouded kind of the ways that people thought about it though yeah and do you actually want to tell a total stranger that kind of thing especially if you know that the interviews that I did end up digitized on the internet and is that something you want to talk about if you know that the entire planet could see it in a few years maybe not it's a great question oh yeah in comparison to foreign women yeah how we think of these women in relationship to foreign women and Asian women in particular in Korea and in Vietnam this becomes a big issue I kind of see precursors of it in the Pacific in World War II there's this great moment where these Red Cross women come to come to the Pacific and the commander in the area puts them in the Jeep and he tells them to put their hair up in the helmets so that the men won't notice that they're women and he says I can't do any if these guys like hundreds of thousands of men in this region find out that women are here I can't protect you I'm thinking okay well you're the commander it's kind of your job he says that they haven't seen women in so many years and you think well they've seen lots and lots of women they just haven't seen American women and so there's a lot of concern when they talk about especially non-Western Asian theaters that we need American women who are not in camp towns right we need to get that these men can all go visit the camp towns and they can see all the Asian women they want but we need to get them some model of wholesome sort of girl next door American womanhood and so they're always even when they're not World War I is sort of this moment when the military kind of becomes very moralistic about prostitution and says no we're not doing that they don't really care later they care later about illnesses but not about prostitution itself per se but even later they're still using these women as counter-images to prostitutes right even if they don't really care and even if the medical staff are out screening prostitutes so they're not getting people sick they're managing it in lots of ways but they still want these women right this kind of pigtailed girl from home to symbolize what they want in womanhood yes oh yeah so on a more positive note if some of these women did meet future husbands and they did there were women in World War II who married and women in Korean Vietnam in World War II if you married that was all fine and good but then they wouldn't allow you to serve in the same theater as your spouse which is an interesting thing in that if you were married you were no longer everybody's sweetheart right you were one person's sweetheart and so you couldn't serve in the same theater because they worried that your attentions wouldn't be focused on all of these men if your husband is around right and probably vice versa that he might not be so pleased with seeing his wife go in the club and all of these guys wanting to dance with his wife by Vietnam you had to be single to be in the program and so if you married you went home so another interesting way of kind of deflecting that but yeah lots of women I don't have a number but lots of women met husbands and got married and it all worked out yeah well I appreciate you coming thanks a lot there will be a book signing one level up at the archives bookstore the books are at the cash registers