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Air Force Women in the Vietnam War

At the time of the Vietnam War military womenin the United States Air Force fell into three categories:female members of the Air Force NurseCorps (AFNC) and Bio-medical Science Corps(BSC), all of whom were offlcers. All others,offlcers and en-listed Women , were identified asWAF, an acronym (since discarded) that stood forWomen in the Air Force . In recognition of the factthat all of these Women were first and foremostintegral members of the Air Force , theauthors determined that a combined presentationof their participation in the Vietnam War one recalls the air war in Vietnam ,visions of combat pilots and returning prisoners of war come easily to mind.

At the time of the Vietnam War military women in the United States Air Force fell into three categories:female members of the Air Force Nurse Corps (AFNC) and Bio-medical Science Corps

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Transcription of Air Force Women in the Vietnam War

1 At the time of the Vietnam War military womenin the United States Air Force fell into three categories:female members of the Air Force NurseCorps (AFNC) and Bio-medical Science Corps(BSC), all of whom were offlcers. All others,offlcers and en-listed Women , were identified asWAF, an acronym (since discarded) that stood forWomen in the Air Force . In recognition of the factthat all of these Women were first and foremostintegral members of the Air Force , theauthors determined that a combined presentationof their participation in the Vietnam War one recalls the air war in Vietnam ,visions of combat pilots and returning prisoners of war come easily to mind.

2 Rarely doimages emerge of the thousands of other dedicated Air Force Women and men who performed the support roles essential to theoverall success of the air operations, or theflight crews who daily risked their lives to pickup casualties from the battle-field and transport them to medical facilities in-countryand to hospitals outside the war zone, or thepeople who participated in the repatriation ofour prisoners of war. Nor does one generallythink of the dedicated members of the AirForce Reserve and Guard aeromedical evacuation units who were called upon to putaside civilian pursuits to fly missions intoSoutheast Asia to bring the wounded the time forces were withdrawn fromthe Southeast Asia (SEA)

3 Theater of war, hundreds of Air Force Women had served toursin South Vietnam and neighboring side-by-side with their male comrades, they faced the same challenges andwere exposed to the same risks and hardshipsas the men in the same units. And, like themen, many received wartime citations and decorations. One gave her life. Many other AirForce Women volunteered for duty in the combat zone but, because of a lack of a coherent Air Force or Defense Department policy on the wartime deployment of Women ,their requests were Women had no military obligation,either legal or implied, all who joined the AirForce during the war were true volunteers inevery sense.

4 Most were willing to serve wherever they were needed. But when the firstAmerican troops began to deploy to the war inVietnam, the Air Force had no plans to send itsmilitary Women . It was contemplated that allUSAF military requirements in SEA would befilled by men, even positions traditionally considered Women s jobs. This was a curiousdecision indeed considering the Army AirCorps highly successful deployment of thousands of its military Women to the Pacificand Southeast Asia Theaters of war duringWorld War the became involved in Vietnam ,many Air Force Women saw no reason whythey should not take their fair share of duty inthe war zone wherever their skills were neededand insisted they were capable of coping withthe combat theater environment.

5 Command-ers, however, expressed practical concernsabout having to divert precious resources andenergy to provide for the Women s safety, housing and other special needs. While most ofthese concerns were without merit, they mightwell have foreclosed on the deployment of AirForce Women to SEA had it not been for growing shortages of men in some fields andfor the persistence of Women volunteering forSEA reality, female officers required little or nospecial arrangements. They could easily beaccommodated in bachelor officer quarters(BOQs) as were the female of ficers of the otherservices and the civilian Women (civil serviceemployees, Red Cross workers, librarians)working in the theater.

6 However, Air Forcepolicies dictated that lower grade enlistedwomen be quartered in separate all-female dormitories supervised by a WAF squadron,commanded by a female officer. As a result, enlisted Women with skills needed in the combat theater war were exempted from toursbecause of their gender. Meanwhile, many menAir Force Women in the Vietnam WarBy Jeanne M. Holm, Maj. Gen., USAF (Ret) and Sarah P. Wells, Brig. Gen. USAF NC (Ret)1in the same fields were facing involuntary second and third first Air Force Women to receive ordersfor SEA were the nurses.

7 Initially, as planned,only male nurses were deployed to the combattheater, but in very short order the demandoutstripped the supply a because Women great-ly outnumbered men in the Air Force NurseCorps. As the involvement in the VietnamWar escalated and casualties mounted, the supply of male nurses to meet theater require-ments in some specialties wassoon exhausted and the femalenurses began getting theirmarching 1966 the first sixteen femalenurses arrived in country forduty at the USAF base at CamRanh Bay in the new 12th USAFH ospital and the casualty stagingunit.

8 Within a short periodwomen were filling the full rangeof nursing specialties normallyfound in a modern military hospital. Alsoassigned to the hospital were female physicaltherapists to help in patient rehabilitation anddieticians to plan meals and provide specialdiets. Female nurses were soon serving at thedispensaries and casualty staging units at TanSon Nhut and Da Nang air bases, and in thepreviously all-male 903d AeromedicalSquadron (AMES) operating out of Tan SonNhut that provided crews for in-country airevacuation flights.

9 As USAF operationsexpanded into Thailand, some female nurseswere assigned to medical units at Korat, Udorn,and Ubon air bases and to the hospital at theStrategic Air Command (SAC) base at Women began to take up nursing duties inthe combat area, the Air Force soon discoveredwhat armies in earlier wars had learned: thatthe presence of the female nurse added a special dimension to the care of war men seemed to gain a sense of security andcomfort from the Women s presence, a sense ofa more normal way of life, a reminder of home. It s really something to see a lonely, hospitalized GI perk up when he looks up andsees that his nurse is a woman, said one of thefirst female nurses on duty in the hospital atCam Ranh Bay.

10 I have even had them take mypicture while I was on ward rounds. With the successful deployment of femalenurses the policy of excluding other militarywomen from SEA duty became moot. In June1967, at the request of the Military AssistanceCommand (MACV), the firstWAF, a lieutenant colonel andfive enlisted Women , arrived forduty with the headquarters inSaigon. Others soon followed forduty in the Saigon area in MACVand 7th Air Force headquartersand Tan Son Nhut air base on the outskirts of Saigon. A few officers were subsequentlyassigned to duty at Bien Hoa andCam Ranh Bay air of the requirement for WAFsquadrons and separate dormitories, only alimited number of enlisted Women were stationed in South Vietnam at any one enlisted Women served in Thailandassigned to units of the 13th Air Force at Korat,Udorn, Ubon, Nakhon Phanom, Takhli, andDon Muang.


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