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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-07892 to 363-07894.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-07892 to 363-07894
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Title
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Article about Maj. Anne M. Deerling
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Description
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Article draft about Maj. Anne M. Deerling, the only WAC stationed in Vietnam at the time, for the Associated Press
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Transcript
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Bev Deepe
% Associated Press
Rue Pasteur 158 d/3
Saigon, Viet Nam
SAIGON--Maj.
Anne M. Doering has returned to her homeland of Viet Nam
after a 38-year furlough.
Arriving on March 30, the 54-year-old major is the only WACA to be
stationed in Viet Nam along with 5,000 + U. s. servicemen.
"I was almost a present to the command on April Fool's Day,"
laughed. She works in the Intelligence Division.
she
She and two U. S. Army nurses are the only American military females
in this small counttry of conflict.
MAJ.
Major Doering, who has "been close" to many other South Pacific
battlefields, was born in Haiphong, an important seaport now in the Communist-
controlled half of Viet Nam.
"I've come home," Major Doering explained.. "I'll be here for 15 months
I hope. I don't want to go back before that. For me, it's a great honor and
opportunity to be here."
Her French father died when she was young. He is buried in Hanoi, the
capital of North Viet Nam. Her German-born mother married in Saigon an
American accountant for an oil company.
A 15-year-old teenager, she left Saigon in 1924 for Europe and Texas,
where she completed high school and graduated from college.
Her Stateside home
is Georgetown, Tex., a small town of 5,000 only 26 miles north of Austin.
"I had a hard time at first in the States," she explained. "I was
trying to learn English. " Today, she is studying Vietnamese, her native language,
a three nights a week, "but I'm not doing at all well."
(More)
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Deepe
Page 2
She said U. S. servicemen ask her how she learned to speak French so
well. "I just tell them we have good French speaking schools in Texas. It
gets too involved to tell them where I was born.
said.
"When I cam back to Saigon, the whole place made me homesick," she
She looked in the shops along Tu-Do Street, where American servicemen
sit along the bars and sidewalk cafes or do the twist to booming bands.
It was
called Rue Catinat 38 years ago.
"I went to the old French church near the Presidential Palace that I
used to attend," she said. "Now it's Episcopalian."
She went to the Circle Sportif, where she used to pla y zix tennis
with her a teen-age companions. Today it is the most elite of Saigon's
vanishing social clubs where bikini-clad maidens parade around the swimming
pool that has been added in the past 38 years.
"There's
She visited one of the two houses her family used to live in.
a high fence around one of them now and I couldn't see much looking through the
gate, " she said. She's waiting to get access to a jeep to find the second
house.
She noticed that the large central market had more people now "and
they'vestuck skyscrapers up all around.
"We lived as part of the colony then," she explained. "We had a
pleasant and lazy life with all kinds of servants. We used to take the launch
up the river into the interior. Now it's very serious here. I haven't been out
of the city yet."
Saigon is a "very quiet, peaceful place" compared to her other 15 years
of military service, which were as hectic as those of any soldier.
was founded.
in Australia.
She joined the WAC in March, 1943, only 10 months after the Corps
The following year she was among 600 of the first WAC's to land
New G Guinea, Leyete and Manila were next on her itinerary.
She was one of the first group of WAC's to enter Tokyo к only a few months
after the Japanese surrendered.
(More)
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Deepe
Page 3
"I wasn't in any fighting,"
she said,
"but I was awfully close to it.
When we moved into Manila, they were still
Sghting ten miles out of the city."
After the war, she tasted civilian life, working for four years as a
secretary and studying for her Master's degree.
In 1950, she again put on her lime-green seer-sucker uniform to activate
the WAC detachment at Ft. Hood, Tex. A tour of France and an assignment at the
WAC training center, Ft. McClellan, Ala., was followed by a five-year
term with the U. S. Army Strategic Intelligence School in Washington, D. C.
"I don't know why I was selected to come here," she said.
tried to find out myself."
"I've
How does it feel to be one WAC among 5,000 servicement
"I've always been a woman among many men,"
she said. "I don't
consider myself an oddity here, but I guess I am.
12
she was asked.
"I did it out of
Why did she join the WAC's in the first place,
"Well, don't put this down," she laughed.
gratitude for my country. It showed me people with imagination, joie de vivre
(joy of life), ad and an interest in their fellow man.
of America."
Saigon.
That's my impression
She said she was interested in the reactions of other Americans to
"They expect it to be like the United States, and there's no other
country in the world like it," she said. "That's its charm.
to you.
"I'm more like the people here," she explained.
I've taken up their ways."
But then she should have. She was born here.
"Wait and it will come
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Date
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1962
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975; United States. Army. Women's Army Corps; Deerling, Anne M.; Women soldiers; Nurses
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Location
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Saigon, South Vietnam
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Coordinates
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10.8231; 106.6311
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Size
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20 x 26 cm
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Container
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B1, F5
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Format
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dispatches
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Collection Number
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MS 363
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Collection Title
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Beverly Deepe Keever, Journalism Papers
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Creator
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Collector
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Keever, Beverly Deepe
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Copyright Information
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These images are for educational use only. To inquire about usage or publication, please contact Archives & Special Collections.
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Publisher
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Archives & Special Collections, University of Nebraska-Lincoln Libraries
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Language
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English
