Le Ly Hayslip: "The victory you must win."

Le Ly Hayslip, age 20. 

Credit: Le Ly Hayslip. 

Le Ly walked to the top of the hill behind their house where her father had once told her Vietnam's history and her place in it. The whole area, as far as the eye could see, was destroyed and the village empty of people her age. Many young men had been killed. Young women who couldn't find husbands, not wanting to burden their poverty-stricken parents, had moved to the city for work as housekeepers and hostesses, many of them, including her sister Lan, living with a string of American GI boyfriends. Others had become prostitutes.

Le Ly grieved to think of all the lives the war had destroyed and all the children who would never be born because of it. She wanted to blame someone and told her father so when she reentered the house.

"Are you so smart that you truly know who's to blame?" Trong asked. Everyone on all sides of the war, he said, had been blaming each other from the start. "Don't wonder about right and wrong," he continued. "Right is the goodness you carry in your heart--love for your ancestors and your baby and your family and for everything that lives. Wrong is anything that comes between you and that love. Go back to your little son. .Raise him the best way you can. That is the battle you were born to fight. That is the victory you must win."

From: "Le Ly Hayslip: Freedom is Never a Gift" from Courageous Women of the Vietnam War. 

A US Navy nurse experiences the ugly side of Vietnam War protests

Kay representing the US Navy Nurse Corps at a White House ceremony in which LBJ

signed the H.R. 5894 bill, removing restrictions on women's advancement in the military. 

Credit: Kay Wilhelmy Bauer

"On the morning of August 17, 1970, Kay received a shocking telephone call from her commanding officer telling her to stay home. A bomb had been detonated on the steps directly outside Kay's office door. She had survived a year in a war zone, but here, in what she thought was the safety of her home state, Kay's life was in danger! 

A few months later, on the evening of October 4, Kay was watching television in her St. Paul home with Amy, her former roommate and longtime friend. Suddenly Kay and Amy heard the sound of an explosion, and the house began to shake.

Kay went outside. The house next door had blown up. Fragments had landed on Kay's roof and in her front and back yards. The next-door neighbors, asleep in their beds, had been killed instantly. 

As Kay stood outside with the stunned crowd watching the burning remnants of the house, a man in a suit and tie tapped her on the shoulder.

'Are you LCDR Bauer?' he asked."

From "Kay Wilhelmy Bauer: American Survivor from Courageous Women of the Vietnam War. 

On her way home: Kay Wilhelmy Bauer

Kay, 1966, after receiving the Humanitarian Service Medal.

Credit: Kay Wilhelmy Bauer

"Just before the team's yearlong tour of duty was over, the Republic of Vietnam decorated each of them with the Humanitarian Service Medal.

As they prepared to leave, they were given some chilling advice: travel in civilian clothes and don't tell any fellow travelers where you've been. American war protesters were targeting returning veterans with verbal and physical abuse.

So Kay made sure every aspect of her appearance looked unmistakably civilian before boarding her first plane. But on her second flight, a male flight attendant asked her if she had just returned from Vietnam. 'I was so surprised, I...quickly scanned myself to see if I looked military, but could find nothing amiss,' Kay said later. 'I was afraid to say yes, but worried about saying no.'

She told him the truth and discovered he had no intention of harassing her. quite the opposite: he wanted to honor her with steak and ice cream and a special seat assignment!"

From "Kay Wilhelmy Bauer: American Survivor" from Courageous Women of the Vietnam War.