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Part of Viet Women - Friends, Foes and Madame Nhu

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and Madame Nh1.J
_L_i_fe_o_f_c_.o_nf_Ii_ct_.___,

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By Beverly Deepe
A Special Correspondent

SAIGON.
At 10 she was carrying
·. messages to the Communists
for her elder brother. At 26
she helped supply weapons and
ammunition to Reds fighting
the French colonialists. Today, at 45, Mrs. Nguyen Thi
Dinh is deputy commander
of the communist-controlled
Viet Cong Armed Forces.
Since there have been no
official announcements naming a commander-in-chief of
the guerrilla military, some
experts suspect Mrs. Dinh's
appointment was a ploy to
gain more support from the
women of Viet Nam.
For more and more women
are playing an increasingly
important role in Viet Namon the government side, ibut
principally on the Viet Cong
side.
The guerrillas, using for the
most part women in the rural
areas where they are strongest, recruit females for gathering intelligence, liaison work
and sabotage.
Women suspected of serving
the Viet Cong act as maids or
coo~ for foreigners, as ibar
girls and hostesses in elegant
flowing gowns, as student
leaders or as peasant women
in shabby black pajamas.
As the war in the countryside grows more violent, more
of the population is becoming
involved-either in the government or Viet Cong forces.
The traditional close-knit
rural family life is withering
from the continuous process
of disintegration.
In some instances the Viet
Cong have used women as
fighters. In one o! ,t heir first
search a.nd destroy missions
35 miles north of Saigon,
United States troops of the
173.r Airborne Brigade was
astonished when three Vietnamese women started lobbing
White phosphorous grenades
at them.
"I wasn't going to shoot
them," an American paratrooper explained. "But when
they started throwing grenades at us, they were part of
the enemy. It doesn't bother
me to see 'dead women-I saw
a lot of them in Korea. But,
it made the young paratroopers sick to shoot women."
North Vietnamese women,

The women of Viet Nam long have been noted for their beauty. Now the war there has elicited other I
qualities. On both the 'government and Viet Cong sides, omen's functions have expanded from the
day they were expected only to till the rice and raise the children. The Herald Tribune's special
corresponde* in Saigon, Beverly Deepe, has analized this new Viet Nam woman and the war's impact
on her home and social life. In this first of five articles Miss l)eepe dissusses the women living in Viet
Cong territory.

wearing the traditional turbans around their hair, have
been reported fighting with
the recently-infiltrated Nortl}
Vietnamese units in the central highlands. One Viet Cong
female guerrilla was renowned
in Long An Province, only 15
miles south of Saigon, for
stalking the jungles carrying
a submachine gun with bandoliers wrapped around her
chest.
Women are also used for
smuggling and sabotage. Peasant women are reported to
often enter Saigon with grenades coiled inside the buns of
their hairdos. Others have
plastic explosives and mines
'in false bottoms of the wooden
buckets in which they tote
fresh fruits. One Vietnamese
typist working inside an
American compound was captured with poison hidden inside a packet of cigarettes.
She planned to use it to k111
Americans. Another Vietnamese woman entering an
American billet compound was
captured with a plastic explosive in her girdle.

FEMALE CADRE
One Viet Cong woman who
defected described the womens' roles:
"At the zone level ' (there
are eight Viet Cong military
zones in the country), I !heard
al;>out one woman platoon,
who were fighters and were
commanded by a woman.
They were dressed in green
fatigues and were hard~core
units. There were also women sewing uniforms and Viet
Cong flags. Many well-educated women from Saigon
came to our jungle zone to
"Then there are the medical corps women. Also the
Viet Cong have liaison teams
of women who take messages
in secret from one village to
the . next. Sometimes, the
women put the secret message
on the bottom o'f fl.sh sauce
(nuoc mam) jars andi simply
walk througlh the Saigon government's check points. How
can they ever be discovered?
"There are also women in
the quartermaster corps who
distribute rice and uniforms;
other women are political
cadre who help organize all.
the women's as~pciations in
the villages. These female
political cadre roundi up the
women in the village, talk to

The cruel war has many faces, facets and contrasts. On the left, a woman waits
with her children on a hilltop near Hiep Due where they were wounded. On ihe
right, the glittering Mme. Nhu and her daughter on one of their trips.
them, and help organize their
elections for vlllage leaders."
With the buildup of American troop strength, t'he numiber of •Vietnamese bars with
their bargirls, &ingers and
prostitutes has mushroomed.
Most of -these girls do not
possess the Saigon government's identification cards,
and high-ranking officials
st111 are uncertain how many
of the women are working
.for the Viet Cong.
One ·singer, Nguyen Thi
Nga-which
means
Miss
Moon-recently defected to
the Saigon government in the
Mekong Delta and told of how
she was recruited by the Viet
Cong three years ago when
she was 13.
First she acted as a liaison;
then she applied to be a
singer for a Viet Cong village
cultural group. She was

taught to sing such songs as
"Victory over the American
Aggressors," "The Ap-Bac
Bugle Sound" and "The
People in the North or in the
South are Living in the Same
House." Guitars and mandolins were her accompaniment.
Her theatrical group entertained villagers on .special occasions of meetings, ceremonial days and occasionally
. she entertai~ed the Viet Cong
guerrillas and the regular
Viet Cong troops that visited
her village. Two of her elder
·brothers were already serving
the Viet Cong, she explained.
The story of Miss Moon's
early recruitment recalled the
early enlistment of Mrs. Dinh,
the Viet Cong deputy commander, in the guerrilla
movement.
Born in Kien Hoa Province,

the richest and most beautiful
proviQ.ce south of Saigon in
the Mekong Delta region, Mrs.
Dinh-Dinh means "determined" or "pre-destined"served the Communist-dominated Viet Minh Front from
the beginning of their antiFrench fight in 1945 to 1954.
After the signing of the
Geneva agreements in 1954,
Mrs. Din remained in South
Viet Nam instead of going
North with the multitudes of
other Communist cadres. According 1o her official biography read over the Hanoi
radio, after 1954 she was in
constant hiding from government forces-at times sleeping in the bushes.
In 1960, she was one of the
first to .seize weapons fro9 1
the government and to arm
her own group in her native
province. On Dec. 20, 1960,

when the Viet Cong formed
their political organization
known as the National Liberation Front for South Viet
Nam, she was a,ppointed to
the provisional executive committee-and is still a member
at the central level.
In May of this year, Mrs.
Dinh was one of the two
women among 23 "Heroes o!
the Revolution" upon whom
were bestowed Viet Cong
honors.
Another famous Vietnamese
woman serving the Viet Cong
is Mrs. Nguyen Thi Binh. She
is unrelated to Mrs. Dinh, but
also is a member of the central executive committee. Mrs.
Binh has made numerous
visits to Communist and
neutralist countries in Europe,
Asia and Africa in attempts
to gain their support for the
Viet Cong cause.