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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-05872 to 363-05880.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-05872 to 363-05880
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Title
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Article about being a woman correspondent in Vietnam
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Description
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Original title: "dateline magazine", Article about Keever's experience as a female journalist correspondant during Operation Starlight, written for Dateline
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AI Usage Disclosure
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Draft transcripts were automatically generated via Google Document AI and are currently under review. Please report significant errors to Archives & Special Collections at archives@unl.edu.
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Transcript
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Beverly Ann Deepe
64A Hong Thap Tu
Saigon, Vietnam
dateline magazine
page 1
SAIGON, VINALI
The biggest chewing-out I ever received was from a voton veteran
Marine Corps sergeant. Dressed in a camouflage uniform of the Vietnamese
airborne, and wearing their strawberry red bet beret, I waited at the
forward U. S. Marine Corps command post on "Operation Starlight" last
August.
"Why are you wearing that red beret," the sergeant, aveteran
of both Korea and World War II, yelped. "That will make a pretty target."
I explained that I had rushed to the battle area so quickly I didn't
have time to find a helmets that correspondents were not issued helmets.
"Didn't
taxmin
"What's wrong with you," he continued with high-pitched irritation.
ever teach you how to steal? What do you think this is--
a powder-puff war?"
(More)
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doope
dateline magasine
page 2
He then proceeded to curso thirty-some Marine privates, huddled around
the regimental radio sot-without their helments.
Hissed,
"We were never taught to fight a war like this," he spotterrey
as the battle casualties begain pouring into the rear area.
"And
even what we learned we never practice. Look at those snuffies," he said,
pointing at the privates. "We never taught them to huddle up in a bunch
like that."
Taking a final, firery glance at me,// he sputtered, "This just
is not the same Marine Corps." He turned on one heel and spun away.
I sheepishly hid my red boret in my uniform pocket and asked the
regimental commander if I could accompany the ground troops into the battle
aroa. I already know the mission would be to relieve an armored colum
two miles away that had been pinned down, ion and surrounded by the
Viet Cong for almost thirty hours.
"No, you can't go with the line companies but you can go with the
battalion headquarters," he said in a soft Southern drawl. I protested
vigorously--but decided that was better than northing.
I was introduced to the battalion commander, wearing a faded uniform
and carrying a huge plasticized map, who asked if I was sure I wanted
to go along.
(More)
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deopo
dateline magazine
page 3
"Oh, yes,
we the press are among the be blessed," I replied,
drawing an image imaginary halo above my head.
moved out through the helmet-high bushes;
He laughed; the troops
I stopped to take photographs
of the bullet-riddled, burned-out tank; several hours later, we arrived
relieved Supply Column No. 21--which is where I had wanted to go in the
first place. For thirty hours, the column was isolated by hopping
Viet Cong bands. ("It was just like whooping Indians encircling a
prairiex wagon convoy," one corporal explained.).
Several months later, I followed the sergeant's advice and
swiped a helmet. On the airstrip of the battered, once-besieged Plei
Me Special Forces camp, in October, I found the helmet of a dead
Vietnamese soldier with a dime-sized bullethole in the middle of it.
I knew he wouldn't need it anymore.
I was late days later to rue my words to the battalion commander that
correspondents are "among the blessed," when Dickey Chappelle was
(She died with a little flower in her
killed by a mine she never saw.
helmet).
(More)
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 4
Her death accentuated the ultra-protectiveness and super-chivalry
of American commanders in allowing a woman to accompany their units into
when I visit front-line units, I'm ordered to return
battle, or even,
to the base camp by dusk. ("Men grtzget killed all the time," one Marine
"But if a woman gets killed, it's a big insult to
captain explained.
the commander and he's asked alot of questions.")
This is just one of the problems of being a woman correspondent
in a war zone with nearly 200,000 American troops. The commanders are
more cautrious;
the old-time veterans are max openly insulted and
sometimes wh(won't even speak to me.
But, the multitudes of others are openly fascinated to have a woman
aroundm around. It's like living in a goldfimam bubble. It's often
insisted that I make a foxhole-to-foxhole tour in the frontline areas to talk
with the privates and corporals. These foxhole chitchats rather than
interviews with ambassadors and generals--are
personal rule of reporting is to listen to the "Saigon commandos", but to
talk with the privates and sergeantsto find out what's going on.
the most amazing. My
Automatically, the first two questions the privates ask are:
Where is your home in the States? (Nebraska and then New York).
How long have you been in Vietnam? (Four years).
(More)
How
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 5
I'm often more astonished with the troops than they are with me.
I remember in one foxhole, the private- had brought along his tape
recorder and listened to surf music throughout the day. In another
foxholes a private explained how the first night he couldn't
tell the difference between a duck and a Viet Cong paddling through the
water. ("Now, I can," he explained. "The Viet Cong swishes!)
Another
explained how he had nonchalantly sat through the whole night while
a Viet Cong sniper pumped small arms fire into his foxhole-and he
laughed the next morning that he hadn't been scratched.
One night, while the 173rd Airborne Brigade was bivouacked i
on its first offensive operation into the jungled Communist stronghold
of D-Zone, the company next to us-about 500 yards away received
mortar fire sporadically throughout the night. But, the Negro sergeant
was much more emotionally worried about the discrimination against his
white wife on Okinawa--and he cursed segregation as the mortar rounds
rained around us.
In another case, a young young private from Los
Angeles was much more upset about the autumn rioting in California
than the sniper bullets buzzing into the operational area.
(More)
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 6
naples, men in a man's world expect more from a woman.
9
Perhaps, my biggest challenge is that most of the fellows stationed
here expect me to be a living symbol of their wives and sweethearts
they left behind in the United States. And they expect it even in the
field.
I should be fene feminine, but not fragile; I should be able to
change from a sportsdress to a flightsuit as most women change
housedresses.
I should look fresh in fatigues during a 5 a.m. downpour.
Or scaling a slippery rice dike on a dark patrol.
They expect me to be typical Americana even with cold water
instead of cold creams soup chinoise instead of cheeseburgers,
fatigue uniforms instead of a cotton frooks. (In 1962, when I first
visited the Marine helicopter squadron in the Mekong Delta, the
commander snapped, "You'll wear fatigues all the time. We don't want
women wig with legs down here."). Always, it's more important to
wear lipstick than a pistol.
of all the men in the country, it is see the ones I have met
for only a moment that I remember the longest....U. S. Airborne medic
Levy, who so delicately bandaged a blister on my foot before an
over-night patrol... "You never take care of my footsies that way," the
sergeant cracked...the young medio went hom home "under a fifty-star
flag," killed by friendly artillery. There was the Airborne sergeant
who regard one once on an operation made my morming coffee in a
T
peach can now sent home with a wounded leg. There was the %-28 pilot who
took me on a bombing raid in 1963--and three missions later, made a low
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 7
strafing pass trying to cut off the heads of the Viet Cong with the
plane propellers-but he never pulled up. He His grave was a rice paddy
dike.
I arrived in Vietnam on Valentine's Day, 1962. It was golden luok
reinforced by women's intuition-I sensed that a major conflict would be
shpaing up in Asia before I left American in April, 1061.
My reporting life has vacillated with the gian flipflops in the
Vietnam situation. In early 1962, I traveled only in the provinces.
On
my first helicopter combat helicopter mission, in the old banana-shaped
H-21, the pilot explained that he used his "Grey Ghost" far to hunt
git tigers and "to chase butterflies." Today, exactly four years later,
divisions of America's most moder choppers roam that same high plateau
area, The correspondents' fad of riding helicopters quickly faded; today
they talk of B-52 SAC bombers and double-the-speed-of-sound Phantom jets.
In 1962, I remember driving ake without escort along dusty Route 19 in
the northern provinces; today, there are more than two American and Korean
divisions protecting the area. In 1962, I made trips to the
"revolutionary" strategic hamlets; today,
are securing those same villages.
American rid brigades
The Vietnamese generals I interviewed then are now out of power-or
out of the country. The colonels are now generals--working side-by-side
with American tactical units.
(M9re)
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deepe
dateline magazine
page i 8
Saigon;
Then, in 1963, the battle shifted to the streets and pagodas of
saffron-robed Buddhist boznes bonzes were more influential then
newsworthy than fatigue-clad generals. Then began the era of the coup d'etat....
on the first one in November, 1963, my apartment situated half-ablock
from the Presidential palace was looted by fleeing Diemist troops and
riddled with machinegun bullets. (One bullet shattered a book called
"Problems of Freedom-South Vietnam.").
I covered the September 13, 1964 abortive coup in a taxi, racing
MAKERS
to the Saigon suburbs to interview the Vietnamese coup-10ers and then
fleeing back to the center of the city to cable f before the tanks sealed
Escort
off the post office and the Vietnamese colonel kicked me out of the building.
So, to me, the war is not simply a war, but a hellish, dancing
madness.
Polition is as important as military operations; Vietnamese
Hupooses
One of the most
sentiment is more s pivotal than American theoricss
it difficult of all problems for a corespon correspondent is to twist one's
mind to feel-one can rarely understanda foreign culture of a different
century. To do that type of reporting, one must be lucky enough to work
with knowledgeable, professional Vietnamese journalists. In my case,
they are the unsinkable Pham Xuan An--the dean of the Vietnamese press
corps-and Nguyen Hung Vuong, who is always late--as sometimes as much as
a week. Together, we form the most undisciplined triumvirate in recent
Vietnamese history, spending hours sipping coffee with Vietnamese ex officers,
Buddhist leaders, or visiting fortune tellers, prayer meetings and an occasional
opium den.
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 9
Even as a Phi Beta Kappa and an honors graduate from the Columbia
University Graduate School of Journalism,
I find the classical
textbook rules inadequate in this Inscrutable War, who which permeates
every facet of Vietnamese life, every fabric of the society from which
no one can escape. It Is a War without an exit.
I live in a brown half-house made of teak, in a world mado of
tears, shattered dreams and everywhere the dead and the dyingx almost-
dead, where the American mon are so lonely and the Vietnamese are so
sad. My major personal difficulty is to laugh--if only occasionally-
for all of Vietnam orios.
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Date
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1965
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Subject
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Keever, Beverly Deepe; Reporters and reporting; War correspondents; Women war correspondents; Chapelle, Dickey, 1919-1965
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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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B191, F6
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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
