>> we're going to learn a lot about barack obama in reading this book. but i think we also learn something about the country and this is my last question to you. in working on this project, what did you learn not just about president obama. what did you learn about america? >> well, it's either a very short answer or a very long one. you know, the essayist, the novelist as well that the essayist on race that means the most to not just me but to many people is ralph ellison. and you would always hear these -- these passages from him about americanists and african-americanists being indivisible. and i think there is no fact on american life that makes it plainer than the story of obama's assent. whether you are a fan of his politics or not. that the facts of his election and the fact of hillary's election if it had happened and

a woman, god willing, would be elected very soon, and i hope a qualified and a wonderful one -- [laughter] >> i didn't mean that as a shot at hillary at all and i mean that. this is an important moment in american history. it doesn't solve our problems in iraq and afghanistan and iran. it doesn't fix everything. it doesn't even fix everything about race. but it's enormously important if youare about america-esse and what that means. >> david, thank you. [applause] ..

>> laura browder author of "when janey comes marching home: portraits of women combat veterans," and kara vuic author of "officer, nurse, woman: the army nurse corps in the vietnam war," participate in a panel on women and war. from the 2010 virginia festival of the book in charlottesvle this is an hour. >> i'm excited to be moderating this panel. laura has changed things, boundaries, people's lives. and i think this is right. we have been at war now continuously for what i think is the longest period in our history as a country.

there aren't that many people working on figuring out how that is affecting us as a nation, how it has historically affected us that our speakers today are both speaking about the topic in history and in the present and what they're learning is important to all of us. i got interested in this general topic or this particular topic in 2007 when we had one of our speakers, laura browder. her project is "when janey comes marching home." she is a new book out with photos from that project, photography and oral history project and she did some writing with that. i got to work with her editing some of the ideal for the oral history interviews that she did what you. in the "virginia quarterly review," which is also here in charlottesville. laura browder teaches that the university. she is also author of slippery

characters, ethnic impersonators and american identities. she is also working on a film based on the real-life characters from the book, forrest carter and it will be absolutely fascinating. are other speaker is kara dixon vuic. she's the author of "officer, nurse, woman: the army nurse corps in the vietnam war." she's a professor of history at bridgewater college here in virginia and she is continuing to explore this topic, now working on a product of women who entertain soldiers throughout history. we'll ask care to present first. we'll have time for both of our offers to present. they will either talk totaled and they will have some time for your questions. as well. there will be some discussion. and, of course, after that there will be an opportunity to buy a book or two. and to get your book signed and to talk about this as well. and laura, would you start? >> i think kara. [laughter] >> you're right.

i changed it a. the original plan was for laura to start. so kara, sorry. >> can you hear me find? great. thank you for coming. really glad to be here. one of want to do is tell you about how i came to the topic and then tell you about the book itself. i'm going to read to you, not story are but i'll tell you about the book and a couple examples that i think illustrates the things i do with in the book. i'm an historian. i'm a women's historian and what i'm interested in our women's experience as an end with the military. so i'm interested in those women's experiences but what i'm also interested in our house broader social and cultural changes have shaped the way the military uses women. so interested in women's experiences but also policy. when i thought about this book, long ago an undergraduate an interest in the vietnam war and interested in women's history and realize the two go together.

and so what i was interested and in particular was all of the changes in the 1960s. particularly for women's lives. you have the birth of the pill, more women working, wives working, mothers working. what i wanted to do what did all this shape the way for military use women in the vietnam war. and that have any influence on what the military recruited women, the way it used women, in the war. it has historically one of the few options open to women which is quite different than today, was nursing. in the military. of course, by the '60s a lot had changed in terms of women's relationship to the military. i want a change in terms of nursing. but there were still many people in the army and the 1960s who still believe that nurses were to be sort of the modern florence nightingale. she is supposed to be chased, she supposed to be self-sacrificing, she supposed to be patriotic volunteering woman. but in the 1960s in the midst

of all these changes was that still true. and more particularly was that what women want and was that what men wanted and were now joined the nurse core for the first time. so those are my question. what i found was a lot of confliction. about how to use women, how to use men, how to commemorate work, all that. the title of the book, "officer, nurse, woman," brings all that together. the 1969 ad, the picture of the book comes from that add itself. it brings all of these issues together. how the army was changing, how nursing was changing and that also have gender was changing in the '60s. so in the book gets the start of about 5000 army nurses who served in vietnam but it's also the story of these broader social total changes. it's the story of the women's movement in the military. i expected changes in some cases it's the story about how conservative institutions deal with change.

so to illustrate that i want to take you stories, sort of bring together these issues. the first is about anna mae hayes, chief of the army, 1967 to 71 at the height of the war. and on june 11, 1970 the army promoted her to the rank of brigadier general. she became the first female general in the history of the nicest military. in terms of women's involvement in the military, data been something women have wanted for quite some time. particularly since the end of world war ii when women's groups made this an issue to push the army to open all ranks to women instead of limiting them to particular ranks. and so in 1967 president johnson open all ranks to women and three years later promoted general hayes to general. it was a profound event in terms of women's history in the military and one that shapes women's involvement even today.

it was also a profound event in terms of women's lives. if you think about it, if the military can promote women to generals, why can't other professions opened their doors to a profound event and many, many ways. but it's one the army has a process or it isn't quite comfortable with quite get. soccer promotion ceremony, a very public event at the pentagon, she came up for promotion. william westmoreland in her start on her shoulder and then and announced to the media that i hereby established a new protocol for congratulating lady generals. and instead of saluting her, he kissed her. and the media went wild. understandably. newspapers went crazy with a story. one called it the heretofore unthinkable account about one general kissing another. [laughter] >> several talk to the men in the crowd just loved it and thought it was completely fine. even the press leading up to

this have talked about what kind of clothes she wore, where she styled her hair, what size close you were actually. this would not get printed today i do believe. could she clean house, could she couldn't. it was all domestically. it was all traditionally feminine things to sort of balance this great profound event. the second event is sort of a story of how the vietnam women's memorial on the mall in d.c. came to be built. in the years after the war in the 1980s a group of nurse veterans got together and started to raise money to build a memorial. that movement was spearheaded by an army nurse, and for a decade these women raise money, they raise lots and lots of money. they lobby congress, federal agencies and had to gain the approval of two separate presidents to have this memorial built. when the vietnam war was built and dedicated in 1993 it was the

first memorial on the nation's mall to women. that is also a profound event. it's not just entering women into sort of our discussions about the vietnam war, but a memorial to women, the first one on the mall. it's a profound event. but as die in learned in terms of her experience in gaining support for the memorial, that came at the cost of casting women's roles in the war in a particular light. in 1984 the women's foundation was lobbying congress to pass a law that would direct that the memorial be built, and that's generally how these memorial get built his congressional -- anyway. she went to the vfw in 1984 because it was crucial for the women to have the support of the major veterans organizations. so she went to the vfw and she said, she went to the convention and she said, women serve in all these ways. if you were in the army we were

nurses. we were wax, we were in the navy. there were these many women doing these different things. we would really like your support for the memorial. and the vfw took a vote and voted it down. they said if we give them a more to women everybody will want one. [laughter] >> so she backed away onto the program the next day and she said she tried a different approach that and that time she said one thing. she went before the got and she said when i was in the non-some man's son died in my arms and i want to thought and his mother should know that i was there for him. and she laughed and devoted, and they voted to approve the memorial. what matters was not women had done, what barriers that broken, or how they had served, what mattered was that held the nation's dying sun. so all the stores of conflicti confliction, there are stories in women come in actual women's lives that illustrate these contradictions and these confliction's about what this really means. i hope to share some of those with you, but just in general

this is a kind of great confliction. it's a time of a lot of advantages that also a lot implications that were not quite comfortable with that it. so it's the army tanker in some ways. we're going forwards, backwards, trying to figure always out there. but it really shaped the nursing profession, and also the women and men who are the nurses and the war. thank you. [applause] >> my project, i have to say got tons and tons of support from the virginia foundation for the humanities. and without that support the book and the traveling exhibit associated with it would never have existed. so i just wanted to start by thanking the ds age for all that wonderful support. this book, "when janey comes marching home," is a project

that out of my previous book, her best shot, which is a cultural history of women and guns in america. and when i was working on the book, i noticed that there was a real thread running throughout american history from revolutionary war onward of women in combat being controversial. in the 1770s he that politicians like jamesburg sank the only thing that testing which is a citizen from a slave is the ability to bear arms in support of one nation in time of war. and 200 years later, when equal rights amendment was finally defeated, it was largely because americans could not swallow the idea of women in combat. yet even as politicians were using this issue as a way of denying women full rights of citizenship, there were plenty of pop cultural representations of female soldiers, whether in the early 19th century when

you had sort of trashy novels, pulp fiction if you would, about women who ran a way to war to joined their lovers and were discovered when they became pregnant. all the way through cartoons about what he the wac in world war ii that depicted wacks as being sort of sex starved maniacs to join the military as a way of getting close to soldiers. and, of course, by the '70s, '80s and '90s, you had images like g. gordon liddy's stacked and packed calendar featuring buxom women in campbell bikinis holding assault rifles. but these were clearly not real female soldiers. and as you all know, there has been a ban on women in combat that exists to this day. however, we are now involved in two wars in which over 220,000 women have served in combat zones. by way of illustration of how dramatic that is, during the

vietnam war there were only what, 7500 women who serve in the nursing court. so this is a radical shift. in the first gulf war there were 41,000 women. so we've entered a whole new era, and went into an era in which women are fighting and dying for their countries. there are now more than 100 women who have died in iraq and afghanistan, and surrounding regions. so we are at a watershed moment. and this was brought up in the "new york times" by lynette alvarez in 2006 when she wrote a big editorial piece about why the american public doesn't care that women are dying in war. because everyone had expected that there would be a big backlash against this. and it wasn't. so i got interested in this topic, and i set out to write an op-ed piece, and i was working on it when it went to pick my daughter up from photography saucers house which had gone for played it with his daughter.

they had been best friends since kindergarten. saw she and i had always tossed around idea of collaborating on something. and i suggested why don't we do a magazine article about women serving in iraq and afghanistan. and he thought there was an interesting idea. and i mentioned it to a curator friend, actually it was then generated at the visual arts center in richmond. she said instead of an article, why not work on an exhibit? i was really intrigued by the idea of an exhibit that would bring together world history narratives and full colored photographs of women who have served in wartime. and i love the idea of bringing peace activists and active duty military personnel in the same space to view these images and read these narratives. interestingly enough, when i first proposed this to the virginia foundation, people their loved the idea but they wanted me, before they gave me a grant, to sign a statement that

said that this was not exclusively an antiwar project. interestingly enough people in the military never thought of this as an antiwar project and, in fact, one public affairs officer suggested that it could be a great recruiting tool. so i thought it would be really interesting to work on a project that had this kind of residents from both sides. so sasha and i set off to interview and photograph 52 women in in from all branches of the military service, to talk about their lives and their military careers. and boy, was i in for some surprise. i thought the end of the project with very few preconceptions. but as i found out very early on, i have lots and lots of preconceptions. the first one being that these wars are so unpopular and his combat zones are so dangerous with all of the ied's and mortar

attacks that go on, i thought that women would be reluctant to go to iraq and afghanistan. and the first interview that i had that disabuse me of this idea was a colonel in the marines, one of 50 female colonels in the marines who told me that serving as a public affairs officer for the second battle of falluja was the high point of her life, apart from earth and her two children. and i thought she's a public affairs officer. of course, she's going to say that. but then i heard this from more and more women, including lots of women who have volunteered to go. and who volunteered to go to repeat tours of duty. one assistant chaplain in fact was home for only two weeks before she left again for iraq. and went on from there to do a third tour. so that surprised me. and i realized that while i had been thinking of female soldiers and marines has been marginal, they in no way saw themselves as

being marginal. they saw themselves as being soldiers first and women second. and is often extended into the way that the military became a place where they formed a bond that were closer than the ones they formed with their family members. there were women who were reluctant to return home when the kids had surgery or it was another family crisis, because they felt they were abandoning their unit. one woman i spoke to, jocelyn, was a marine sergeant who have been very reluctant to go to iraq and had been ducking out from deployment. she said she had a one year old at home. and she said that as soon as she got on the bus to go to cherry point and fly over there, the mommy mentality left me, the marine mentality hit me, and i thought, great, let's go, this is war. and she ended up extending her tour of duty because she really wanted to stay with her unit. and this unit cohesiveness

overrode, not only, but often the way that women felt about the nation that they were on. because i was interviewing active duty personnel, i couldn't ask them how they felt about the war, but many of them made it clear that they were antiwar. one of the most striking interviews i had was with a sailor, colleen, who had left the military and was in law school. and she was very antiwar, and talk about going to lots of protest when she was out of uniform. and made her feelings perfectly clear. but at the time the exhibit opened in the fall of 2008, colleen could not attend the opening because she was on a steamer headed to cyprus. should content officer candidate school, because she felt she needed to support her fellow sailors, no matter how she felt about the war effort. so there were many surprises along the way. i think that these wars and

women's involvement in them have really changed the way that we need to look at motherhood, the way we need to look at women in combat, and i think that we're going to to come out of these wars with women having broader role in the military. everyone in the military knows that women are in combat. many civilians don't. but they are, in fact, using explosives sniffing dogs to find hidden ied's. they are doing house to house searches. the military has a program called the line is program, which brings women into roles that men cannot take such as searching muslim women. because of course male soldiers cannot do that. so there are many, many ways in which women are serving and are in the line of danger. and the interviewed women who

have had a hearing destroyed by mortar attacks. one woman i interviewed had had her leg blown up by an ied, and she had 18 surgery to repair it. and she was considered deployment ready, even though she could no longer run or carry weight. she said, well, i'm sure they can find a place to deploy where i won't have to do any of that. i'm not so sure about that, but she was ready to deploy again. and she was dedicated to staying in the army and making that her career. the other surprise that i had, i will end with this come is that like many people outside the military, i hope i'm not the only one who was so ignorant coming in, i thought of them as being somewhat monolithic. and, of course, it is one of the most diverse workplaces that you can find in the united states. and recent study by boston

university sociologist actually found that within the army the people with the greatest job satisfaction are black women. and the people with the least job satisfaction are white men. and the sociologist hypothesized that this was perhaps because the military is one of the few, american life, that is a meritocracy. were white skin and being male will not necessarily give you an edge. and i think when you take that study and set it alongside the recent department of defense study that shows that rape, sexual abuse and sexual harassment are still very high in the military, a third of all women report being harassed or abused. i think you start to get the idea of how complicated the questions of women in the military are. so i'll end with that, and would love to take your questions.

[applause] >> we will have volunteers available with microphones, and because we are recording this for television broadcast, we want the questioners to speak into the microphone. and we want you to raise your hand and then i will acknowledge you and a volunteer will bring you a microphone. but i'm going to take advantage of my microphone here to get out the first couple of questions that i have one for each of you. and i'm going to go back to the vietnam era first. kara, if i think to some degree what laura is describing in terms of women being much more involved in combat than ever before has to do with the kind of wars we're fighting now, but also think it has to do with cultural changes. and so the vietnam war happen in the 1950s, 1960s, 1970s. this was a time when women's lives here were changing a great deal. and can you talk a little bit about how the military had to

adapt to accommodate those changes here? >> sure. when you think about -- when i think about nursing in the military, so the iconic for more more to come into my mind i always remembered the ads to recruit women and had this white clad nurse leaning over a bed and a wounded soldier, and it said save his life. very romanticized ideal. you might heal the boy and then go home and marry him. and in early 1960s when the army start to recruit for vietnam, that kind of image was going to cut it entirely. they tried a little bit of that. but they also needed to say if you become a nurse will help you specialize. we will pay for your education, you can become and tenacity is, you can become an all our nurse. you can g go to all of this specialized training. and in an xml be a women dancing with her position as a have a grand time in the army.

[laughter] >> there are these two contrasts. people have often asked did it progress from this romanticized recruitment ad to this more specialized. but it doesn't. they are all mixed up. at the same time. i think part of it is the army knows that a lot of the women, primarily women they're trying to recruit, 99% of the nurses in the country at the time were women, but 25 to 30% of the nurse corps was male which is a whole other issue. they really try to recruit women, and they knew that women lives were different. women wanted different things. they're going to college in greater numbers than their mothers had. a lot of the nurses i interviewed said i had three options. i could be a teacher, secretary or nurse. and i picked nursing. a lot of women say i want to go to med school, i couldn't afford it so i went to nursing. so they came at this traditionally feminine occupation, but a lot of women say, i don't want to get married and start having babies like my friends are. or i don't want to live in my

hometown anymore. i want to go see the world. so they joined the army for these kind of different reasons. these progressive reasons, even as they are still doing what was considered a traditionally woman job. but then once they get in the core a lot of women wanted to have marriages and they wanted to have children, and they didn't see that as an end to their career, which it had been before. so in the '60s you see the army adapting and relaxing its policies, that before had automatically kicked you out if you got married that if you are a woman and you got married you were gone. if you got -- was even relaxed the marriage, if you got pregnant you were gone. you could have children, you couldn't be a mother and a nurse. and they start to relax that. it take some time. it goes pretty small baby steps at times, but it starts to change in the air because they know they can't continue with -- they're not recruiting the same him if they had recruit in generations before. so you see a lot of substantial

changes that even after 1973 with the all volunteer army allowed for the army to exist. you know, after 1973 we would have an army if we didn't have women. the pentagon said that. and those i think probably shaped motherhood policy at all those issues with women in iraq today. >> is interesting, the director of the army women's museum once said to me the army has never changed its policy towards women because it wanted to, but only because it was forced to. and i think we're seeing that today, just as in vietnam. >> laura, i wanted to ask you, since you do this research and doing the interviews we have seen a shift in focus from iraq to afghanistan. i don't know what to expect, i expect you're still talking to her interviewees. we have heard these reports of women deploying and being used

for intelligence, talking to afghan women and villages who sort of know everything there is to know about the taliban and insurgents. i'm just wondering, have you talked to them about how that shift in focus is changing things? >> i haven't talked to anyone, to afghanistan recently. but struck by recent front-page vote in the "new york times," which showed a whole group of female marines in helmand province, afghanistan, one of the most dangerous places to be all sitting and eating lunch together. and as jesse says, women are absolutely crucial to the effort down in afghanistan, because women in the villages know everything there is to know. and they will not talk to male marines. they will only talk to women. and so i think that we will see women even more in harm's way. even more involved in these new kinds of efforts as the war in afghanistan goes on.

>> i think -- to have -- there's a question way in the back year. the microphone will make its way over there. >> thank you for this really informative talk. a couple of the families, i'm concerned about the other side of it, you know, it's great that these women are able and willing to do this and have their families. i'm wondering if they spoke about or if you know about the research about what has been the impact of that on the other end of it, on their families. and how that may differ from how it is for the men. i know there's been quite a bit of research about the really negative effects on relationships, and i wonder if you could tell us. >> you're absolutely right. the divorce rate in the military

is much higher for women than it is for men. and i can't immediately think of two stories. to women i interviewed who came back from the war, and there has been said, you've got to make a choice. between me and the military. and they pick the military. they got divorced because of that. i think the kind of frequent deployments we have been seeing have been an incredibly tough on families. i interviewed one woman whose baby was six months old and still breast-feeding when she and her husband were deployed to the same platoon in iraq, which is not supposed to happen. and they came back less than a year later to find that their daughter did not recognize them, and cried when she was left alone with him. and it took them months of weekend visits before they could get her to come home. and it was absolutely devastating. so i don't want to paint a rosy picture, think it's an extremely tough situation.

but i think that every time we see one of those front-page photographs of a male marine coming home and having a happy reunion with his children, we have to remember that there are many women in the same position in that once those initial hugs are over, times can get very, very tough. it's very interesting. i spoke once to a journalist who writes for the nation and does a lot of work on veterans issues. and he asked me, you know, did you talk to women about ptsd. and i said of course. and there were many, many women who would talk about their diagnoses of posttraumatic stress syndrome, but no mothers would. only childless women. i don't think that's because the mothers did not have ptsd. i think it's because they're such a societal taboo against being a bad mother, a mother who cannot take care of her

children. feel as though they could. >> we have a question right here, and i also will put in a plug for our program with good reason. also did an interview, and i don't remember the name, a nurse, a former and may be true and reservist nurse who was in the air force. is in the air force, and also a researcher and professor of nursing at george mason university who had done a pretty comprehensive study of this very question, looking specifically at mothers deployed and how that affected their families. and so if you go to the good reason radio and torture him for that. is a great interview. >> i'm sorry i got here late. i had intentions of being here on time, and i wanted to hear everything. also, i watched the show on the lies come in i'm still anxiously await for season four to come

out. in april so i can find out if one of the characters i really like, if she made it through who is a lieutenant colonel, if you made it through the ambush or not, if she is okay. also, i read an article in good housekeeping, conduct o unbecoming. about women getting help during rape cases. are women not getting good help in the house does. did you have any information on that? >> many women talk about the high incidence of soldier a soldier raped on their thoughts, their forward operating bases. they also said that military is taking rape much more she easily than it used to. you know, they were really a variety of responses. one woman talked about a young female friend of hers who was being sexually harassed by a

superior officer. and even though this officer was writing letters and touching her inappropriately and harassing other women, that complaint was dismissed, and this young woman was forced to apologize to her harasser. at the same time, there were many women who reported having very positive experiences. at this point is still unit by unit, and a woman's experience depends very much on the commanding officer. >> i found similar, different expenses in the vietnam era. for females come you got a list of things to take with you to vietnam. and how that list were two party dresses. and people were a bit confused by his. and it means that you are going to be required or suggested that you go to the highest officers parties. put on a dress and do. and a lot of women talked about feeling that they were being used for the sexuality.

and a lot of women complained about it. of the women said, you know what, when i got to vietnam i was one of few women in the whole country, few american women in the entire country and i really like that. and so there was this big difference in terms of how people perceived it in terms of sexual assault. i only found one rape case in the entire vietnam era in the criminal investigation. and away the army dealt with that was to bring the woman who had alleged that she had been raped, essentially to our commanding officers office, along with a man she accused of raping her. and they were told to work it out. and so i think when we say the army did with that that much better today, they certainly are. the rates of sexual assault are really appalling. and i think if we can deal with what's causing that and the gender issues behind that, then we would really get somewhere.

but certainly even more reports are an improvement because we are even talking about it as opposed to just shoving it under the rug. >> that's right that i think as more and more women get into places where they are generals, with our commanding officer, the culture is going to change. i mean, i think about when i started teaching at a university 15 years ago, and it was extremely common for male professors to use the classroom as a dating pool. and i don't think it's that common anymore. when you look at the military, which was a very heavily male culture, you know, i think the same kind of positive changes are going to take place as women move up the ranks. >> we have a question up front here, too. and i should say we actually, we are well on schedule. so we will have time i think for a fair amount of questions. that's great. go ahead. >> i want to follow-up about the

questions before on families, but specifically children. because it occurred to me that as time goes on, will there be any studies of how the children are affected? it's already been eight years, and probably for the future, but i fear that the children are being, mothers especially, will be affected. >> there's no question about it. i spoke to one mother of four who had three year-long deployment to the persian gulf, and she talked about one of her children was so stressed out that he ended up having to stay back a year in school. many, many mothers talk about how difficult it was for their children, and how difficult it was for them to reenter their children's lives. you know, how awkward they felt it parent teachers coverage is when they really did know what the teacher was talking about because they had been gone for a year or more.

[inaudible] >> i think it absolutely will. and i think that the military is now implementing more programs for schools and their bases to help deal with the trauma of separation, which is very real. >> we were hearing on the program about military programs, when people in families are about to deploy of doing family counseling, to bring the entire family and and figure some things you will have difficulties with. so it seems like just even in the last three or four years that have become a lot more active, or proactive on that specific question. why do we have this question? >> don't ask, don't tell also applies to women. and i'm wondering if you, what you found out about women who woman relationships and woman to man relationships. >> well, because of don't ask, don't tell i couldn't ask any

direct question. [laughter] >> but women would sometimes bring their girlfriends to the interview, or afterwards i would go out in the field with a woman and her girlfriend. and one woman i talked to, she and her girlfriend socialize with her command officer and his wife. so again, very much unit by unit. but i think a don't ask, don't tell is on the verge of falling apart, because it has to. because the military can't afford to keep so many qualified gay soldiers and marines out of service. is untenable. >> we have a question right here. >> is the motivation for women going into the military, did you find it any different than the reasons that men go into the military, other than nurses? >> well, i think there are a

whole range of reasons. some women told me it sounds very much like kara's nurses, they really wanted to escape their small towns your they didn't want to live like the friends who were marrying young and having lots of babies that other women wanted adventure. they wanted to go to war. they really wanted to fight. i talked to one woman who was a gentleman who had actually emigrated to the united states because she was too old for the gentleman military, and she really wanted to fight in war. [inaudible] >> some of it was also economic, there were many women i talked to who came from real poverty. i mean, very serious poverty. and for them the military was a way out. i spoke with many, many women who had been teenage mothers. and had children very, very young, and they saw this as a career path. and it was a good career path.

in light of the current debates over health care, right? there were several women who had children with diseases or health conditions, and they needed good insurance. and that's why they chose the military. >> that just makes me think, what is the socioeconomic background of the women who are joining as nurses? >> it was pretty widespread as well. economic factor was a big motivator for most youngers. does a split large in the vietnam war for career nurses have been for a long time. and the young nurses recruited straight out of nursing school, most of those had signed up to the army nurse program which is essentially the rotc for nurses. both nurses have signed up for those educational benefits. again, it's a whole range of motivation. men who were nurses signed up because they knew if they were drafted the army might decide they would make good infantrymen as opposed to good nurses. so the draft is essentially

explains the men's motivation. women were quite different. >> we have a question in the back, the far back and work our way forward again. >> i have a question. if we were to bring back the draft, do you think that the united states has changed its stance in such it would be like israel, where they would draft both men and women equally? and then i have a second. i live in a big navy area, and they just are now announcing that possibly women are going to serve on submarines, which is a big departure from anything the navy has done. they been on aircraft carriers, other vessels, but not on subs. comment on both of those. >> well, the draft question is a great one. and i will have to answer with a

not great answer, which is i don't know. it's very hard to say. but i do think that as women are able to enter more and more positions in the military, bit by bit, the barriers are really coming down. and as far as submarines go, your question reminds me of a young soldier, a national guard woman i talked to who was a convoy governor, and said that when she and members of her little unit went out on convoys and they went to other fobs, people wanted to separate them by sex with a slight. and they refuse. they said we are a unit. we sleep together, we eat together, we worked together. and she reported that there really wasn't very much sexual tension, that they were more like brothers and sisters. and i heard that from many women as well. so i think on subs they should work out just fine. i don't have a good answer for the draft either but what i have

heard and i wish i had more specific information is that if the draft question were to open up again that there are all sorts of constitutional issues that would arise. the very constitutionality of requiring service of one sex and not another would probably not work. i know, i'm not sure which congressman has proposed bringing back the draft essentially to end the war, as less into the war through drafting women move, but that hasn't worked either. i have a feeling if the draft were to come back everybody -- it would be sticky. >> we have a question right here. >> i was an infantry officer in vietnam, and i remember that era when women were not integrated in the army in the way they are now. they were there, but you had the women's army core, which were all administrative clerical type

jobs. and army nurses. and they were largely, in my experience, all female. i never saw a male nurse. and you had the women's army corps. everybody else was us guys. and it's interesting that you said the relationships now in the next unit are sort of sisterly-brotherly together as, at least from the infantryman's perspective, you love an army nurse, because you knew that they were there in your darkest hour. and it was a very -- the mail that was there with you was like your buddy, but this woman, if you never had an experience, if you are that likely to have been

need of an army nurse, but especially if you need one, was much more fell as your sister. i mean, you would have bonded with both of them. you were protected either one of them equally. and actually, it was somewhat painful later, in later years to realize how much many army nurses of that era felt they were not sufficiently respected. you know, had difficulty with the memorial and that sort of thing. and anytime i have ever been to the -- at the vietnam memorial and the nurses memorial off to one side, any time where there is a large gathering of veterans, guys are all over those women, you know, patting them on the back and in helping them in their sense of oneness.

i wouldn't want anybody to think that because women were in the army nurse corps during the vietnam era, or in world war ii, that -- by the people at least who they were there to help, that they were decremented anyway. they were incredibly voluble people. and the question that i had about the current era, women in the service, is, while you can have this idea sort of sisterly or the medial and a feeling, to what degree do they feel truly integrated in the unit at the time with regard to how their

brother or sister look at them and depend on them, is there an equivalent c. you know, do the women feel like the guys are looking after them more than their sisters would? i mean, you know, is it evenly shared responsibility state? i think the women make sure that it is evenly shared. one marine was a master gunnery sergeant, actually i heard the sentiment after by many women, said that when she went for the invasion of on jurors she was the only female among 2200 marines. and she made a point of saying if you be in the bushes, i'm going to be in the bushes. if you're going to go without a shower for a month, i'm going to go without a shower. and women today feel very strongly that they should not accept any kind of special protection from men if they want

to be taken seriously as soldiers. and they very much want to be taken seriously. so i think that that kind of brother-a sister relationship grows through the women's insistence that they not be given special consideration. the convoy governor that i was talking about earlier, a woman named paige baumgartner, was involved in an ambush. her unit was ambushed, and one of her best friend was killed, and her unit took many casualties. and she was the woman who kind of held it all together, you know. cleaned up the human remains, called in for reinforcements. and she said before that, you know, she was in the national guard and so there were people from all walks of life in her unit. and she said there was one older cop who have consistently made sexist remarks to a. she said after that moment, it changed and everyone respected her. and they said we will follow you anywhere. so i think that women are proving themselves in combat,

and that's also helping to change that dynamic. >> kara, in light of the comment about the appreciation of nurses, it just brings up a lot complexity i think because anybody who has ever needed and benefited from a, nurses care, man or woman appreciates that care. i mean, that's part of what nurses do is help you feel better when you're not feeling well. and i just wonder if you want to comment about that because there's also the obvious agenda issues that come up in that appreciation. >> i have several stories were women, female nurses, patients would wake up and had been injured on the field, brought to the hospital, wake up and say i'm a bit i die? are you my mother? [laughter] >> you smell nice. where am i? what happened? but they don't talk that way about their physician who was a male.

so they appreciation is serving there, and allow these talk about feeling very professionally valued for their nursing skills. that was a big contrast between military nursing and civilian nursing, was the in the military they felt the physicians respected their opinions, the patient appreciated them. and civilian nursing they felt very different about that. comeback from the were ever told you have to practice getting an i.v. to an orange. i've done it 10,000 times in the last month. and so that professional value was certainly a highlight of most nurses expenses in the war. it's always hand she with this, you know, you're a woman. you represent home. you are clearly different than other things around, particularly for a time where there were few wacs in the army at the time. and isolated and saigon or in particular cases. american female nurses

represented home to american soldiers. >> this is a great discussion. i think we have time probably two, one or two more questions. we have one right here, and at that point we may wind down. so we have one over here, too. >> i wanted to ask kara. we know that many vietnam soldiers return to kind of a hostile atmosphere because of the nature of the war. how about nurses? did they have the same hostility or did they come home to a different type of public? >> i don't think it received the same sort of obvious association of the war -- the war was associate with soldiers. i don't think nurses got that same association that soldiers did. what i found was interesting in terms of how their memories were shaved was in the 1980s when a lot of them really start to talk about this, particularly with the building of the vietnam women's memorial, that their expenses were now couched in a

more conservative era, post feminism, but any more conservative climate. and so their experiences got shaved back with the memorial that memorial needs to be women holding dying boys. it can't be a memorial to women, serving not with weapons, certainly not doing more progressive banks. but we are back to those images of more traditional images. >> there was a question over here. >> should we make this the last question is this will be our last question. >> thanks. i'm interested in pursuing something that you hated about about the women today, and that is you are talking about somebody who she and her husband had both been deployed at the same time it and they had a child that had to be taken care of in some fashion. so my question is, what we're

looking at is an organization like others that was structured for the one wage earner. i mean, the underlying assumption our process that every one wage earner, usually male, and the other one was being held in taking care of kids. what direction is the military taking, if any, to kind of restructure the way things operate? you hinted in one way that they're not supposed to deployed to parents at the same time, or something. are there other ways in which the military, from what you saw, is changing kind of the way it operates, that given the new reality, that there could be to parents both in the military, or the fact that one, there isn't somebody coming in, back home waiting. have you seen any indications of what they're thinking about or doing? >> well, i think in response to recent public scandals, having to do with women who have deployed and found that their

child custody was taken away from them, that they were considered unfit mothers, the military is now having to deal with that situation. much more. yes, that's happened to a number of women. and again, it really points to how, in some ways would come along way, but in others we really have not. and we are at a moment of real change in the military, and i think five years, 10 years from now, if anyone how long the war goes on, things are going to look very different. and we also have to remember that many of the women who are deployed joined the national guard or the reserves for college benefits. they did not necessarily think that what they would ever be going to work, and then suddenly there they were, deployed once or more than once. and so the entire structure of the military is changing in response to these wars, which have gone on and on.

[inaudible] >> to suggest they will limit the number of these deployments whether for men or women which i know has been difficult on all of those people and their families? >> well, as you know the military is stretched very, very thin, almost to the breaking point now. and unfortunately, the military, to continue to function and keep these wars going, have to keep deploying people. and many soldiers have had their deployments extended once they were over there. you know, the army deploys soldiers for up to 18 months, which is a really long time. and with a stoploss, the rule that says even though you thought you left the military, you really didn't. many people who thought that they were retired are being called back into action. and so that changes things as well.