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1998 On Their Own: Female Correspondents in Joyce Hoffmann Old Dominion University, [email protected]

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Repository Citation Hoffmann, Joyce, "On Their Own: Female Correspondents in Vietnam" (1998). English Faculty Publications. 20. https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/english_fac_pubs/20 Original Publication Citation Hoffmann, J. (Fall 1998). On their own: Female correspondents in Vietnam. Quest/Old Dominion University, 2(1), 2-5.

This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the English at ODU Digital Commons. It has been accepted for inclusion in English Faculty Publications by an authorized administrator of ODU Digital Commons. For more information, please contact [email protected]. ON THEIR OWN: Female Correspondents in Vietnam

By Joyce Hoffmann

COL. HOWARD B. AISON, PHOTOGRAPHER. WWOMEN WENT TO VIETNAM AS WAR CORRESPONDENTS Courtesy of Old Dominion in unprecedented numbers in the 1960s and early 1970s. A University Library Archive— combination of intellectual curiosity, professional longings to Special Collections be at the center of a big story and a simple lust for adventure drew women to the jungles of Southeast Asia, just as those same urges had long drawn men to the spectacle of war.

For a decade and a half, women begged, cajoled or simply paid their own way to Vietnam. Together they trans- formed the role of women as war correspondents from an aberration to a norm. But very few of them were acknowl- edged as the professional equals of their male counterparts — then or now.

Dickey Chappele, feature writer for National The military and media worlds female correspondents Geographic Magazine encountered in Vietnam were a mirror image of those they had left in the States. What they did while they were in Vietnam, says , is only half the story. How, in the male-dominated culture of American news- rooms in the 1960s and 1970s, they managed to get the Vietnam assignment is the other half, he maintains. For women associated with major news organizations, it was a dispiriting ordeal, one that demanded measures of persis- tence, tact and abundant patience.

2 OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY’S QUEST OLD DOMINION UNIVERSITY’S QUEST 3 Between the Lines tle if you had to, endured the heat, the jungle, the trench Unappreciated Still foot and, most of all, the fear. BECAUSE VIETNAM WAS THE MOST ACCESSIBLE WAR IN Many of the women correspondents — those whom ALTHOUGH THE INROADS ACHIEVED BY THE American history for reporters of either gender, women had in his book Dispatches dismissively refers to as women’s movement in the 1960s helped to compel few problems acquiring accreditation. The press had never “girl reporters” — were esteemed among the troops with editors to assign women to Vietnam and forced the before had such complete assistance in covering any other mil- whom they saw action, and the stories they told enriched the generals to suffer women on the battlefield, many of itary conflict. Until 1965, America continued to insist that its public understanding of the war and its enigmas. Gloria these women appear to have been at the very least role in Vietnam was purely advisory. To have restricted the Emerson of , for example, ennobled the indifferent to, if not downright contemptuous of, press or imposed censorship of any kind would have fighting man in a different, but no less remarkable way than feminism. Few would credit feminism with any part signaled that the Army of South columnist Ernie Pyle had done in World War II. Dickey of their success. They believed instead that they had Vietnam was receiving some- Chapelle, a middle-aged freelance photographer, carried her made it on their own. thing far more serious than own pack and dug her own trench and died on patrol with Both Emerson and NBC correspondent Liz advice. her beloved U.S. Marines when a land mine exploded. Trotta challenged the movement’s philosophy. While the military files are Elizabeth Pond and Based on her Vietnam experience, Emerson once incomplete, available records indi- were captured and held prisoner by wrote that no woman who has witnessed how the COL. HOWARD B. AISON, PHOTOGRAPHER. cate that upwards of 300 women the Viet Cong; unlike several cap- Army can crush and humble an enlisted man can ever were accredited to cover the war in tured male , they were muster any sympathy for the women’s movement. receive only perfunctory mention. Even though women who the decade between 1965 and released unharmed. And, perhaps “The real victims of men,” she concluded, “are other men.” covered the won some of journalism’s most 1975. Of those 300, a total of about most notably, Frances FitzGerald And in Trotta’s view, the “excessively liberal demands” made prestigious awards — a Pulitzer Prize and several George 70 women are identifiable as corre- explored the complexities of by leaders of the women’s movement “smacked of special- Polk Awards, the National Book Award and the Overseas spondents by their published or Vietnamese society and concluded interest crankiness masquerading as the Press Award — their role in Vietnam, at best, remains under- broadcast reports about the war. (long before many of her male col- people’s will.” stated. Women acquired letters from organi- leagues did) that the war was Beyond this collective view of the In the context of journalism history, these 70-odd zations as traditional as the North unwinnable. women’s movement and a shared desire women who covered the Vietnam War debunked the notion American Newspaper Alliance, as diverse as Mademoiselle and to avoid each other, there are few other that women had no place on the battlefield. Thanks to their True Adventure, or as obscure as the Lithuanian Daily Worker. characteristics common to the scores of accomplishments in Southeast Asia, the women correspon- The press identification issued by the Military Affairs women who were accredited to cover dents who are now routinely assigned to cover conflicts in Command, Vietnam (MACV), entitled the bearer access to the war. Numbered among them were the Persian Gulf, Yugoslavia, Albania and countries through- the army’s ground and air transportation system throughout high school graduates with little train- out Africa are hardly considered “the girl reporters.” the entire country. ing in or commitment to journalism No soldier would ever shout to CNN’s Christiane And that is where it became quite easy for women. and women with a Phi Beta Kappa Amanpour, as a Marine once did to in Although Supreme Commander General William C. key and a graduate degree from Vietnam, “What the hell did they send a woman here for? War Westmoreland tried — unsuccessfully — to have women Harvard. Like so many Americans is a man’s business!” In Vietnam, women proved otherwise. barred from overnight stays with troops on the battlefield, in the early and mid 1960s, at the arguing that women were an unacceptable distraction, far- outset at least, most of the women ther down the chain of command the resistance disap- correspondents thought America’s goals in peared. There was hardly a young helicopter pilot in Southeast Asia were both noble and just. Southeast Asia who refused a request from one of the Politically, they were both Republican and Democrat. many women accredited to cover the war. Ground troops Ideologically, their opinions ran from that of New York generally welcomed women, too, precisely because their Herald Tribune correspondent on the presence made so many of the commanding officers right, who believed Vietnam was “as much a front line of uncomfortable. freedom as Hawaii or San Francisco,” to Gloria Emerson’s Among their own male colleagues, female corre- vastly more dovish belief that the war was a huge, unrelent- spondents were often welcomed but rarely esteemed. No ing and avoidable tragedy. less than the generals, male correspondents in Vietnam During the two-plus decades after America’s with- perceived war as a man’s game. Among these macho drawal from Vietnam, years in which women have taken an media men, the approval of the “grunts” who fought the increasingly prominent role on covering wars, the achieve- ground war, and with whom they shared hardships, was a COL. HOWARD B. AISON, PHOTOGRAPHER. ments of female journalists in Vietnam have been considered badge of honor. Out on search-and-destroy missions with less noteworthy than those of their male colleagues. Among the troops, you carried your own pack, dug your own trench, historians who have written about the war and the media fired a .30-caliber automatic at the enemy in the heat of bat- coverage of it, women correspondents are largely ignored or Professor of English Joyce Hoffmann is writ- ing a book on the role and experiences of female journalists in Vietnam.

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