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derivative filename/jpeg
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363-08352 to 363-08360.pdf
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Digital Object Identifier
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363-08352 to 363-08360
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Title
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Article about Keever's experence in Vietnam
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Description
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Original title: N/A, Keever's title: N/A, Article draft about Keever's experence in Vietnam, for Newsweek Magazine
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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 megazine
page 1
SAIGH, VI T NAM
The biggest chewing-out I over received was from a veter veteran
Marine Corps sergeant.
Dressed in a camouflage uniform of the Vietnamese
airborne, and wearing their strawberry rod bat beret, I waited at the
forward U. s. Karine 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 runhod to tho battle area so quickly I didn't
have time to find a helmet; that corromponents were not issued helmets.
'Didn't they
yaxin
"What's wrong with you," he continued with high-pitched irritation.
ever teach you how to steal? What do you think this is-
powder-puff war?"
(More)
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deepe
deteline ne mine
page 2
He then proceeded to curso thirty-some Marine privates, huddled around
w the regimental radio set--without their helmonts.
Hissed,
"We were never taught to fight a war like this," he spattery
as the battle culties begain pouring into the rear area.
"And
even what to le rned we never practice. Look at those snuffies," he said,
pointing at the privaton. "We never taught them to huddle up in a bunch
like that."
Taking a final, firozy glance at me,// he sputtered, "This just
is not the same Marine Corps." He turnod on one heel and spun away.
I sheepishly hid my red boret in my wiform podkot and asked the
regimental commander if I could accomr ny the ground troops into the battle
aron. I lroniy know the mission would be to relieve an armored colum
two miles away that had been pinned down, intern 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 coft Southern dral. I protested
vigorously-but decided that man bettor than northing.
I was introduced to the battalion commander, wearing a faded uniform
and carrying a huge plasticized map, tho aked # if I was sure I wanted
to go along.
(More)
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deepo
dateline magazine
page 3
"Oh, yes,
we the press are among the be blessed," I replied,
drawing an image imaginary halo above my head. He laughed; the troops
moved out through the helmet-high bushes; I stopped to take photographs
of the bullet-riddled, burned-out tank; several hours later, we arrived
roliovod Supply Column No. 21--which in there I had wanted to go in the
first place. For thirty hours, the column was isolated by hopping
Diet Cong bands. ("It a just like whooping Indians encircling a
prairier wagon convoy," one corporal explained.).
Several months later, I followed the sergeant's advice and
swiped a helmet. On the airstrip of the battered, one-besieged Plei
Ho 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,"
killed by a mine oho never
hon Diakoy Chappello
(he died with a little flower in her
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
battle, or even, When I visit front-line units, I'm ordered to return
to the base camp by dusk. ("Men grt get killed all the time," one Marine
captain explained. "But if a woman gets killed, it's a big insult to
the commander and he's asked alot of questions.")
This is just one of the problems of being a woman correspondent
The commanders are
in a war zone with nearly 200,000 American troops.
more cautrious;
the old-time veterans are openly insultod and
sometimes wh won't even speak to me.
But, the multitudes of others are openly fascinated to have a woman
aroun around. It's like living in a goh 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 ohitchats rather than
interviews with ambassadors and generals--are
the most amazing. My
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.
Automatically, the first two questions the privates ask are:
Where is your home in the States? (Nebraska and then New York).
(Four years).
How long have you been in Vietnam?
(More)
How
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deepe
dateline magazine
p 5
I'm often more astonished with the troops than they are with me.
I remembo in one foxhole, the private- had brought along his tape
recorder and listened to surf music throughout the day. In another
foxholo, a private explained how the first night he couldn't
tell the difference betroen a duck and a Viet Cong paddling through the
water. ("Now, I on," he explained. The Viet Cong swishes!) Another
explained how he had nonchalantly at through the whole night while
a Viet Cong sniper pumped all arms fire into his foxhole and he
loughed the n xt morning that he hadn't been scrato he.
One night, while the 173rd Airborne rigade s bivouacked i
on its first offensive operation into the jungled Communist stronghold
of D-Zone,
the company next to us about 500 yards awayreceived
mortar fire sporadically throughout the night. But, the Negro sergent
was much more omotionally worried about the discrimination against his
white wife on dinan-and he cursed segregation as the mortar rounds
rained aroun 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.
(M9re)
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 6
Andee en in a man's world expect more from a woman.
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 oven in the
field.
I should be fone feminine, but not fragile; I should be able to
change from a sportsdress to a flightsuit as most women change
housedress05.
I should look fresh in fatiguos during 5 a.m. downpour.
Or scaling a slippery rice dike on a dark patrol.
They expect me to be typical Amerionna even with cold water
instead of gold creams soup chinoise instead of cheeseburgers,
fatigue uniforms instead of a cotton frocks. (In 1962, when I first
visited the Morine 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 hors."). Always, it's more important to
wear lipstick than a pistol.
Of all the men in the country, it is
the one I have met
for only a moment that I remember the longest....U. 8. Airborne medio
Lovy, who no delicately bandaged a blinter on my foot before an
over-night patrol..."You never take care of my footsies that way," the
sergeant cracked...the young medic wont ho home "under a fifty-star
flag," killed by friendly artillery. There was the Airborne sergeant
who only one once on an operation made my morning coffee in a
T
peach can-now sent home with a wounded leg. There was the -28 pilot
took me on a bombing raid in 1963--and three missions lator, made a low
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deepe
dateline magazine
page 7
strafing pass trying to out 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 golden luok
reinforced by women's intuition-I sensed that a major conflict would be
shping up in Asia before I left American in April, 1061.
On
My reporting life has vacillated with the glan flipflops in the
Vietnam situation. In early 1962, I traveled only in the provinces.
my first helicopter combat helicopter mission, in the old banana-shaped
H-21,
the pilot explained that he used his "Grey Ghost" to hunt
git tigers and "to chase butterflies." Today, exactly four years later,
divisions of Amerion'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-mound Phantom jets.
In 1962, I remember driving an without escort along dusty Route 19 in
the northern provinces; today, there are more than two Amerioan and Korean
divisions proteo ting the area. In 1962, I mado trips to the
"revolutionary" strategio hamlets; today,
are meouring those same villages.
American bid 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 uni to.
(19re)
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deepe
dateline magazine
page ± 8
Saigon;
Then, in 1963, the battle shifted to the streets and pagodas of
saffron-robed Buddhist bosnes bonzes were more influential
newsworthy then fatigue-clad generals. Then began the era of the cap d'etat....
on the first one in November, 1963, my apartment situated half-ablock
from the Presidential palace was looted b 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
to the Saigon suburbs to interview the Vietnamese coup-1efore and then
fleeing back to the center of the city to omble f before the tanks soaled
off the pont office and the Vietnamese colonel kid 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
sentiment is more s pivotal than American theoriesy One of the most
✰ difficult of all problems for a corespon correspondent is to twist one's
mind to feel-one can rarely understand a 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 pross
corps— nd Nguyen Hung Vuong, ho is always late-sometimes as much as
a week. Together, we form the most undiqciplined triumvirate in recent
Vietname so history, spending hours sipping coffee with Vietnamese officers,
Buddhist leaders, or visiting fortune tellers, prayer meetings and an occasional
opium den.
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Date
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Unknown
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Subject
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Vietnam War, 1961-1975
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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, F7
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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
