That opinion received a blow three years later on January 21, 1968, however, when 20,000 NVA soldiers began their siege of the US air base outside the central Vietnamese city of Khe Sanh. Americans’ optimism was absolutely devastated nine days later; in the early morning hours of January 30, 70,000 Communist fighters—NVA and VC—attacked more than 100 Southern cities, towns, and military bases in what became known as the Tet Offensive because it began on Tet, the Vietnamese New Year.
The offensive—a complete surprise because the Communists had agreed to a cease-fire during this important national holiday—was a defeat for both sides. The Communists had hoped their show of military strength would rally Southerners to their side as they rose up together against the Americans and the Southern government. This didn’t happen. And what occurred in the Southern city of Hue during the Tet Offensive made the South Vietnamese fear, rather than welcome, the idea of a Northern takeover: while Hue was in their control, Communist forces conducted a brutal massacre of at least 3,000 previously targeted Vietnamese civilians.
The Communist forces were defeated in a matter of weeks. And because the VC had suffered greater losses than the NVA, the government in Hanoi realized it would have to send even more NVA troops south down Ho Chi Minh Trail.
Yet, in one important way, the Tet Offensive was a victory for the Communists: it signaled the end of American optimism regarding the Vietnam War by making it obvious that the Communist effort in the South was still strong. This war clearly had no end in sight.
And 1968 would bring more bad news to Americans. On April 4, 1968, Martin Luther King Jr., beloved civil rights leader and promoter of nonviolent civil disobedience, was assassinated. He had not only led his fellow African Americans in the struggle to end legalized racism but also publicly criticized US involvement in Vietnam as immoral.
News of his assassination was met with riots in more than 100 American cities; 43 people were killed, 3,500 injured, and entire city blocks destroyed. Army troops were called to the nation’s capital to restore order. In some instances, racial tensions erupted into fights within the integrated American forces stationed in Vietnam.
President Johnson, devastated by the Tet Offensive, had announced in March that he would not seek a second term in that year’s election. By that time two challengers for the Democratic presidential nomination had already stepped forward—Senators Eugene McCarthy and Robert F. Kennedy, brother of the slain president. The strong antiwar stance of these two senators had put President Johnson in the extremely uncomfortable position of appearing prowar.
When Senator Kennedy was gunned down by an assassin on June 5, minutes after winning the California primary, hopes of the United States pulling out of Vietnam were that much dimmer, and the nation seemed to be drowning in violence. One young police officer named Dennis Pierson claimed Kennedy’s death made many Americans believe that “there was no more law, order, or even sanity” in their country.
That summer’s continued violence proved this bleak outlook to be painfully accurate.
Antiwar activists decided to bring their message to the streets of Chicago; the city would be the focus of the nation’s attention during the Democratic National Convention. Knowing that the protestors were on their way and threatening violent disruptions, the Chicago police force was there to meet them in unusually large numbers, along with members of the Illinois National Guard.
The protestors despised the police and guardsmen, viewing them as ignorant supporters of a nation conducting an immoral war. The police, many of whom were veterans of previous wars, despised the protestors in equal measure, considering them to be spoiled, privileged, and—as they often burned flags as a symbol of protest—profoundly anti-American.
Violent clashes erupted, with neither side appearing in a positive light. The activists knew they would have to lie low until they could reemerge with more effective plans that might benefit the movement.
Hubert Humphrey, the politician nominated as the presidential candidate at the Democratic National Convention, narrowly lost the presidential election to Republican Richard M. Nixon, a politician who during his campaign had pledged “an honorable end to the war in Vietnam.”
KAY WILHELMY BAUER
American Survivor
LATE IN 1965, 28 YEAR-OLD Kay Wilhelmy was at the large Great Lakes Naval Hospital in Illinois explaining to its director of nursing service (DNS) that she was leaving the navy. After seven years of military service, she wanted to do mission work and had just accepted a position as director of a school of nursing in South America. The DNS at Great Lakes had other ideas for her. “Kay, just a minute,” she interrupted. “You have been in the Far East, haven’t you?”
Kay had. Before coming to Great Lakes in 1963, she had worked in naval hospitals in Guam and Japan, where she’d spent many off-duty hours with missionaries providing health care to local citizens.
The DNS explained that the navy was assembling a Vietnam-bound surgical team. Kay was aware of what was going on in that country: for the past two years she and the other Great Lakes nurses had pored daily over reports of those missing and killed in action, hoping the names of the young hospital corpsmen they knew would not appear. Too often they did. Many of these young men had been like younger brothers to the nurses, who had thrown bridal and baby showers for their wives. Kay and the other nurses at Great Lakes had also spent many tragic hours consoling these young women when they became widows.
Now Kay was being ordered into this war zone. She listened as the DNS called Washington, DC. She was assigned to a seven-member surgical team going to Kien Giang Province, in far South Vietnam, where there was currently no US military hospital. When not working with US casualties, the team would provide surgical care for the Vietnamese military and civilians at the Vietnamese Provincial Hospital in the city of Rach Gia, capital of the Kien Giang Province.
The surgical team would include a navy orthopedic surgeon, a navy general surgeon, a senior navy operating room nurse/instructor, a navy chief who was a laboratory and X-ray technician, a US Air Force nurse anesthetist, a US Army medical service officer, and Kay.
When Kay called home from Great Lakes to tell her parents about her new plans, her mother asked if she really wanted to go to Vietnam.
“I think so,” Kay answered. While that answer satisfied her mother, her father was clearly not pleased with his eldest daughter’s plans. Kay could hear him in the background shouting, “There’s a &%$+ war going on there!”
When the team first touched down in Saigon, in January 1966, several things made clear just how accurate his words had been. First, they learned that only a few weeks earlier, eight US Navy nurses had received Purple Heart medals for being wounded during a mortar attack on the Saigon Naval Hospital there. And the team, Kay was surprised to learn, would wear camouflage while working, not their usual white uniforms.
Kay giving shots on a nearby island after an outbreak of the plague. Kay Wilhelmy Bauer
The French had built the province hospital in Rach Gia during the early 20th century. There was no running water; the only water supply was rainwater that collected in cement cisterns outside. While the operating room ran on generator-provided electricity, the rest of the hospital had none. And the windows had no screens.
But the medics made it work, and when a wounded US serviceman was brought in, they conducted the three Ts, as they called it: triage, treat, and transport. That is, they would first make a decision regarding the odds of the man’s survival. If he could be saved, they quickly decided which type of emergency treatment to give before sending him by plane to the nearest US-run hospital.
The nurses soon made the acquaintance of Sergeant Phu, a medic from the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) who was fluent in several languages and who translated for them whenever necessary. One day Sergeant Phu presented them with a problem: the wives and children of the ARVN, being neither technically civilians nor members of the military, couldn’t receive treatment from the civilia
n doctor in the area nor the ARVN doctor.
Sergeant Phu proposed an idea to the nurses: if he and his medics built a new clinic for these women and children, would they agree to visit it once per week? The answer was yes, and once a week Kay and Brenda, the senior operating room nurse, examined and cared for everyone who visited the clinic. If anyone required further treatment, the nurses referred that patient to the Vietnamese chief of medicine or the navy surgeons.
On several occasions Sergeant Phu asked Kay and Brenda to visit a different clinic, this one in the jungle in a Vietcong (VC)-controlled area. Many sick and wounded Vietnamese were unable or afraid to travel through this territory to the province hospital for treatment. Were Kay and Brenda willing to do what the sick Vietnamese were not?
Sergeant Phu told them that a scout party would go ahead of them and Kay and Brenda would be escorted by his men. Plus, he said, everyone knew the American medical team was there to care for all Vietnamese people, regardless of their loyalties or affiliation, so there was little risk of the Americans being targeted.
Kay agreed but was still a bit apprehensive—until the uniformed escort arrived. These ARVN men were heavily armed with rockets and plenty of ammunition for their M14 rifles. Their destination was a green building marked with a large red cross on a white roof to identify it as a medical facility. There Kay and Brenda treated civilians for ringworm and internal parasites—common ailments in the area—along with wounds received from mines and other explosives.
Back in the relative safety of Rach Gia, Kay and the team were involved with far more serious cases. The VC had laid mines along the roads connecting cities in the area. Whenever a bus hit one of these mines, the surviving passengers—civilians or soldiers—would be taken to the province hospital. They were frequently covered in mud—the explosions often sent them flying into the nearby rice paddies—so the medical team had to first sponge them off, using buckets of water brought in from the outdoor cisterns, before they could assess the wounds.
Danger from the VC was always near but never predictable. One day Kay and a nurse named Kathie accepted an invitation to watch a film at an ARVN compound in nearby Rach Soi. A US Army captain who was training an ARVN unit there had a generator, a projector, and a new American film he wanted to show the two nurses.
The film was so engrossing none of them noticed that darkness was falling outside. Travel after nightfall was risky. While Rach Soi was only a 15-minute drive from Rach Gia, it was a very dangerous 15 minutes: they might be attacked by VC as they bounced their way along the rutted road in their jeep, but they were in equal danger from ARVN soldiers who guarded the road into Rach Gia after sundown and might mistake them for VC in the dark.
Kay and Kathie, to their great relief, returned safely to their quarters. Their phone was ringing when they arrived. It was the hospital. The Rach Soi compound had been partially blown up: while they had been watching the movie inside, the VC had laid claymore mines outside. The casualties—ARVN personnel and their families—were being transported to the hospital, and the nurses were needed immediately. The medical team worked all that night and saved many lives.
Just before the team’s yearlong tour of duty was over, the Republic of Vietnam decorated each of them with the Humanitarian Service Medal.
Kay after receiving the Humanitarian Service Medal in 1966. Kay Wilhelmy Bauer
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 protestors 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!
After two weeks’ leave at home in St. Paul, Minnesota, in February 1967, Kay was sent to the naval hospital at the marine base in Quantico, Virginia. She had many duties there but especially enjoyed working with marines who had just returned from Vietnam; her interactions with them helped both Kay and the marines process their recent experiences.
Later that year Quantico’s chief nurse called Kay to her office. Kay was going to the White House, the chief told her. President Lyndon B. Johnson had invited 20 military women to be present when he signed the H.R. 5894 bill, which removed restrictions on how far women could advance within the ranks of the military.
Kay represented the US Navy Nurse Corps at the ceremony, and President Johnson signed the bill with multiple pens so each woman present could take one home.
Three months later, in February 1968, Kay was assigned to recruiting duty in Minneapolis, Minnesota, the “sister city” of her hometown, St. Paul. Kay often accompanied male navy recruiters when they visited college campuses; the presence of a female sometimes diminished harassment from war protestors. When protestors confronted Kay, she would say, “Wait a minute. I just got back from Vietnam. Let me tell you what is going on there. If you don’t like the war, don’t talk to us. Talk to those who sign bills about war, your congressmen and your representatives.”
She may not have been responsible for the war, but Kay’s uniform and her job as a recruiter made her one of its tangible symbols to those who were actively opposing it. And for that, she nearly paid the ultimate price.
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!
Kay with President Lyndon B. Johnson on November 8, 1967. Kay Wilhelmy Bauer
A few months later, on the evening of October 4, she was watching television in her St. Paul home with Amy, her former roommate and longtime friend. Vern Bauer, Kay’s husband of four months, had already gone to bed. 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 blast had also dislodged a heavy oak door in Kay’s house and slammed it into the hallway, narrowly missing Vern, who had been awoken by the explosion.
The next-door neighbors, asleep in their bed, 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 [Lieutenant Commander] Bauer?” he asked.
“Who wants to know?” Kay said.
He showed Kay his badge, as did another man, also in a suit and tie, standing next to him. They were from the Office of Naval Intelligence. They told Kay that because the two incidents had occurred within two months, she needed to move away. In the meantime, she was to stop driving a navy car to and from work.
The next day the newspaper headlines related the blast incident. Inside one paper was a short, chilling article titled “‘Wrong House’ Idea Considered in Blast.” Although many of the neighbors believed the explosion had been an accident involving a faulty gas hookup, the Office of Naval Intelligence told Kay, Vern, and Amy that the remains of an explosive device had been discovered behind the refrigerator in the neighbors’ house.
While the terrorists who blew up Kay’s office were eventually caught, those who destroyed her neighbors’ home and took their lives were never found.
Kay reluctantly resigned her active military duty when she left her recruiting work in 1971 and accepted a Reserve commission; she and Vern wanted to adopt a child, but adoption a
gencies refused to allow active-duty female military personnel to become adoptive parents. In 1972 she and Vern adopted a one-year-old boy named Jeffery, and 11 months later, Kay gave birth to a son, whom they named Terry.
About 10 years after her Vietnam tour of duty, Kay began to have war-related flashbacks. For instance, during a Good Friday service, when her church was darkened and the simulated sounds of thunder and lightning filled the sanctuary, Kay suddenly saw in her mind’s eye helicopters filled with wounded men approaching the hospital in Rach Gia. She had to remind herself where she actually was. Similar incidents began to force their way into her consciousness with alarming suddenness.
To cope, Kay began to distance herself from her emotions. While she could chat with anyone about almost any topic, she kept her feelings private. Her emotional detachment started to affect her marriage, and Vern eventually gave her an ultimatum: they should seek counseling together, or he would divorce her. They went together for marriage counseling and stayed together, but Kay still didn’t feel the need to seek any therapy for herself, even as she continually urged her Vietnam veteran friends to get tested for post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). Finally, one fellow Vietnam veteran agreed to get tested only if Kay did, and she relented.
Kay tested positive for PTSD and sought professional help. While recovering, she became part of a Minnesota-based team, headed by fellow Vietnam nurse veteran Diane Carlson Evans, that sought to build a national monument in Washington, DC, dedicated to the American women who served in the Vietnam War. Kay was the committee secretary for their weekly meetings, and when the effort grew and Diane traveled the country to gain wider national support, Kay and other Minneapolis nurse veterans did what they could to support the effort locally.
Courageous Women of the Vietnam War Page 7
