33. Donut Dollies

[00:00:00] Penni: And I was carrying papers to payroll and they were putting up these movable walls using some kind of a bolt gun to fire into the concrete, and they let two of those suckers off. As I'm approaching payroll, I hit the ground paper's flying all over the place, [00:00:20] and the lady in payroll is saying "They shot her! Oh my God, they shot her! That's when they first knew I'd been in Vietnam. [00:00:40] [00:01:00]

Early days

[00:01:09] Penni: I grew up in Danville, California, in the East San Francisco Bay area; horseback riding, hiking, being [00:01:20] gone from dawn to dusk. It was a wonderful time to grow up there. I do remember at times catching the ferry in Oakland to go across to the city, to San Francisco. I loved it. The only thing I didn't like about going into the city was [00:01:40] I had to wear a dress.

Joining American Red Cross

[00:01:41] Steve: This is Penni Evans. Fast forward to the end of the sixties. The Vietnam War was raging, as were the anti-war protests. She was approached by a lady at her college career centre who mentioned a potential posting with the American Red Cross. [00:02:00]

Penni at home today

[00:02:00] Penni:  She heard about the program that was in Korea and in Vietnam and I really liked the concept of the program. Had an interview. They offered me the job and so I finished college the end of December in '69,[00:02:20]  I was in Vietnam in March of '70, and I was 22. I was given the choice of Korea or Vietnam, but I chose Vietnam.

[00:02:31] Steve: Why did you choose Vietnam?

[00:02:34] Penni: It snowed in Korea and it was cold in Indianapolis.[00:02:40]

Donut Dollies

[00:02:41] Steve: Penni had joined the American Red Cross as part of the SRAO program, Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas, more endearingly known as the Donut Dollies. [00:03:00]

[00:03:05] Penni: The term came from the ladies in World War II that drove big three-quarter ton trucks. They had coffee and donut machines, because they were literally handing out donuts [00:03:20] from these trucks. They were in England quite a bit around all of the large air bases, but they were also in North Africa, in Italy, the China-India-Burma theatre, Alaska and the South Pacific.  

[00:03:37] Steve: So you are going to be a Donut Dolly. [00:03:40] Tell me about preparation.

[00:03:42] Penni: We got our uniforms, got our shots, our IDs, a new passport saying that we were employees of the American Red Cross. But I mean, two weeks training before we ended up in the war zone. No way you could prepare us [00:04:00] for what we faced when we got off that airplane.

[00:04:03] Steve: And what was the reaction to your decision to go to Vietnam?

[00:04:08] Penni: My father was quite proud of me. My mother was proud, but very worried. Other than that, I didn't tell that many people what I was doing. You just didn't.

Going to Vietnam

[00:04:19] Steve: [00:04:20] So then you left home. What do you remember about the journey?

[00:04:24] Penni: Well, we flew out of Washington DC wearing our uniforms, our class A uniforms with these silly little hats. People mistook us for stewardesses at times.  We stopped in Hawaii for a [00:04:40] brief layover and then I'm not sure if it was Guam or Okinawa, and then we ended up in Saigon. It got quiet and then the pilot said, "We're gonna be coming in at a very steep angle, but I don't want you to worry", or something to that effect.  [00:05:00] And so we did come in at a very steep angle. We got on a bus, it's just like a regular bus, but it had like chicken wire [00:05:20] mesh or something over the windows and somebody asked what that was for and they said that's to keep the Grenades and such being thrown in by the VC! And we're going, "Oh, well, hello".

[00:05:36] Steve: Welcome to the Viet Cong and to Vietnam. I [00:05:40] presume the steep dive was so you didn't get shot down?

[00:05:43] Penni: Yes, though we didn't know that.

[00:05:45] Steve: He left that bit out, didn't he?

[00:05:48] Steve: Now the Donut Dollies' role in Vietnam was primarily an attempt to give the troops a little slice of home, of homeliness. So tell [00:06:00] me what that looked like for you in those first few days.

Airline ticket, boarding pass and other memories

Arriving in Vietnam

[00:06:03] Penni: I think I was in Saigon for a couple of days and we were sent up to Cam Ranh Air Base on the South China Sea. [00:06:20] It was just a huge, huge base. We had two recreation centres  We had ping pong, played cards, a lending library. We would offer Kool-Aid and coffee and we had reel-to-reel music that we would tape [00:06:40] to play in the centres. We had eight girls to begin in the unit. It was very hot and muggy.

Rockets and mortars

[00:06:47] Steve: Yeah. And although you were at a central base, that didn't mean you were actually safe, did it?

[00:06:54] Penni: We'd get yellow alerts and then red alerts and we would get rocketed. [00:07:00] Sometimes mortared, but mostly it was rockets. We'd also get sapper attacks where they try and get through the wire and come and throw satchel charges in the hospital, which they did right before I got there. It took me a little bit to learn to know the sound of the outgoing rockets, and [00:07:20] distinguished the outgoing from the incoming. And once I did that, it was easier to either sleep through the night or not.  

[00:07:28] Steve: And as you say, there's a subtle difference between an outgoing rocket and an incoming rocket.

[00:07:34] Penni: Yes, And we also learned how to distinguish the sound of mortars coming in.[00:07:40]  Two girls were out at a fire base and they were programming and they stopped and said, "Mortars", and the guys are going, "What?" And all of a sudden, "Oh my God, yes". So the Donut Dollies heard the mortars before the guys did.

Penni with her Donut Dollie colleagues

Beyond the air bases

[00:07:53] Steve: Now, a significant part of your job was to visit the troops in the forward positions away from the [00:08:00] relative safety of the bases, wasn't it?

[00:08:02] Penni:  We went all the way up to Bambi Tuit and Ban Don and places out by the border. We'd land, get out of the chopper mostly, and... there were two of us, we always worked in pairs and we'd say, [00:08:20] "Hi, I'm Penni from California and I have 170 days to go", something like that. And the guys would love us and they'd hoot and holler because they had less time or more time or... whatever. And so that would sort of break the ice. Sometimes we'd do the little pocket [00:08:40] games with dice and the Zippo.  

[00:08:42] Steve: And the Zippos were the cigarette lighters that just about everyone carried, weren't they? What was the Zippo game?

[00:08:49] Penni: Everybody had a Zippo, so we'd have them get down on their knees, put their hands behind their back, and try and push over the Zippo with their nose.[00:09:00]  Almost invariably they would fall face forward because they were heavy muscular. Every once in a while a young, real lean kid would be able to do it without falling over.

Helicopter rides

[00:09:12] Steve: And you mentioned getting to the outpost by Chopper...

[00:09:15] Penni:  Yes. My first helicopter ride, you know, they [00:09:20] kind of go nose down to gain speed and then altitude. You don't know your first ride. You think, "Oh my God, we're not gonna make it".  But we did, and I got to love flying in the Huey. I just love that. So wonderful. [00:09:40]

[00:09:40] Steve: And how often would you do that?

[00:09:42] Penni: That was our... daily ride for the most part, especially if I was in a... unit that was all going out into the field. Or sometimes we'd go out with a Jet Ranger and once we flew one of those little Kiowa [00:10:00] scout helicopters. That was kind of interesting because the pilot saw an auto accident and swirled back and went down and we picked up an injured ARVN young woman. And she sat in my lap and I held her in my arms as we [00:10:20] flew to some Vietnamese hospital to... drop her off. I don't know whatever happened to her, but I held her in my arms for that flight.

Hospital visits

[00:10:29] Steve: One part of the job involved hospital visits, didn't it? Tell me about that.

[00:10:35] Penni: I have so much respect for my nurse sisters, especially dealing with what they [00:10:40] dealt with and the medics and the core men. The one visit at Long Binh at the hospital, we were taking a fella's stuff into him. We had programmed out to the unit the day before and he'd been injured, so we were taking it to him. And anyway, we walked through and it was the most badly injured people[00:11:00]  there. And some of them had such horrendous wounds. I don't know how they survived. And that has stayed with me all these years.  I just wanted to wave a magic wand and make 'em better and I couldn't, of course.

Hardest part of the job

AUDIOCLIP FROM DONUT DOLLIES
Smiling

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[00:11:15] Steve: What was the hardest part of the job?

[00:11:18] Penni: Smiling.[00:11:20] A few weeks after I got there, I was with a fellow that was in charge of the planes, the squadron. He was like a senior sergeant and he was waiting on word for when his birds, these were the Caribou's, the C-7s, when they would come back and two [00:11:40] of them didn't make it. They crashed and no survivors. I had been waiting with him for a couple of hours and so I went into our... little office and I was kind of teary-eyed, 'cause that was my real first wake-up shock. Whoever was there looked at me and says, "We don't cry. [00:12:00] We're here to smile. We're not here to cry". So I don't cry very easily at all now.

[00:12:06] Steve: It's tough, isn't it? Everything is swept under the carpet for the sake of overall morale.

[00:12:12] Penni: You never asked if you didn't see somebody. If you didn't see Billy from South Carolina, you just [00:12:20] never asked.

Engaging with soldiers

[00:12:20] Steve: Now, you're in a situation with young men and young women. Did much go on on a personal relationship level?

[00:12:29] Penni:  No, not really. I mean, I know some of the girls dated some of the men that they met over there and at least 15 married men [00:12:40] that they met in Vietnam, and most of them are still married. We were officer equivalent, I think is the term. We were like a first lieutenant and we could not socialize at the Enlisted Men Clubs because they were too rowdy [00:13:00] and there were a lot of bar fights and stuff. Some of the guys said, "You know, you're just looking, don't touch your officer's property" and "I know you charge $70 to be with an officer, how much would you charge to be, you know...?"  For the most part the enlisted men treated as far nicer than some of the [00:13:20] officers did. Some of the officers thought we were there for them and they didn't like hearing that we weren't.

[00:13:26] Steve: Did you have any direct experience of being harassed by men?

[00:13:30] Penni: I had one person at Long Binh. We had a gated fenced compound where we slept and this guy [00:13:40] was, he was an octopus. I couldn't get rid of him. And I mean, "No, I'm not... interested" and, "You've got too much to drink. Come on, let's just call it a night, thank you" type of thing. And I was finally able to get in, but that was kind of scary because he wasn't gonna take no for an answer.

Virginia Kirsch

CLIP 3 FROM DONUT DOLLIES
Ginny

[00:13:58] Steve: Sometimes the [00:14:00] drunken banter escalated. Sexual assaults did occur. And unfortunately, sometimes worse. Virginia Kirsch had only been in base camp for a few days.

[00:14:12] Penni: Several women were sexually assaulted while they were in Vietnam, and we lost Ginny. [00:14:20] I was on my way to Cu Chi to join the unit and she was murdered in the middle of the night by a soldier. And then they told the unit director, "Don't let her get on that airplane", and... then I was like forgotten, hanging in the wind, until they said, "Well, we'll find you [00:14:40] another place, 'cause they closed the unit down.  And then we reopened it, I was one of the ones to go reopen it. And I found the letters all the girls had written me welcoming me to the unit and one of them was from Ginny.

Tribute to Virginia Kirsch

No donuts

[00:14:55] Steve: [00:15:00] Now let's address the elephant in the room. There were no donuts were there?

[00:15:11] Penni:  No. I saw one set of donuts at the Bob Hope Show at Camp Eagle in December [00:15:20] of 1970, and we convoyed down from Quang Tri to Camp Eagle and apparently one of the cooks at Eagle had cooked up the donuts and we handed out donuts for five minutes before they were all gone. So those were the donuts... it was too [00:15:40] hot!

Penni in Quang Tri

Meeting Admiral McCain

[00:15:40] Steve: And not long after that Bob Hope show, it was Christmas Day. Tell me what happened that day.

[00:15:47] Penni:  I met Admiral McCain up at one of the fire bases by the DMZ.  

[00:15:54] Steve: The DMZ was the demilitarized zone that partitioned North and South Vietnam.[00:16:00] Admiral McCain was the father of John McCain, the United States Senator who, in later life, ran twice for the presidency and as a naval pilot during the Vietnam War, was shot down and experienced a harrowing five years as a prisoner of the North Vietnamese. [00:16:20]

[00:16:20] Penni: Admiral McCain was there because John was a POW. He'd been going up there every Christmas since John had been shot down, and he supported all of the grunts out there. He was so supportive and caring about the men and talked with them. I thought that was just wonderful. [00:16:40]

[00:16:40] Steve: By 1970, the mood of soldiers in Vietnam had in places become quite toxic, morale was fading and fragging became a threat - where soldiers would toss hand grenades into the sleeping areas of, usually, unit leaders and officers to kill [00:17:00] them.

[00:17:00] Penni: At Quang Tri, December of '70, there was one fragging because the officer had gone over to one of the hooches to ask them to turn their music down and two officers were killed. There were a couple other attempted ones that I think were [00:17:20] stopped. I know there was quite a bit of marijuana at Cam Rahn. At Quang Tri we had a stop at a maintenance unit and they worked on the tanks and the big trucks, and they were stoned, I think it was marijuana. But anyway, they threw two CS[00:17:40]  canisters at us when we arrived, and so we got hit pretty badly with that. And we never went back to that unit. I mean never.  It was a lot of anger. It was a lot of recognizing[00:18:00]  in 19 early 71 that the war was over and they didn't wanna be there. They didn't wanna be the last ones killed.  It was just, "Why can't we just get out of here?"

Going home

[00:18:12] Steve: And then it was your turn to get out of there...

[00:18:19] Penni: by the time [00:18:20] I was at Quang Tri, I was tired. I was losing friends and I just wanted to go home. When I got on the plane - it was a medevac plane - and I held IV poles as they were loading people in, I'm flying out and I'm going, "Oh God, I'm so glad I'm... going home". And the other [00:18:40] part of me is saying, "You're deserting everybody. You're deserting the Donut Dollies, you're deserting the men". And it took me a long time to figure out how to balance those two.  

Post-traumatic stress

[00:18:53] Steve: Penni had returned home, but clearly she'd been affected by her experiences in Vietnam. [00:19:00] She was having startle reactions and was later diagnosed with post-traumatic stress. But it was illadvised to mention that you'd been in Vietnam at that time, so she couldn't talk things out. She wasn't considered a Vietnam veteran, so there was no help on offer there either. Apart from one or [00:19:20] two encounters with Vietnam vets, she had to work out what was going on in her head, on her own. But then in 1983, Penni attended a reunion.

[00:19:33] Penni: I heard about a Red Cross reunion in San Francisco in 19 83. So I [00:19:40] contacted some people and I said, "I can help, volunteer, do what you want". So I did and I went to the reunion and it was like all these women, some of them I knew in country and most of 'em I didn't, and they're... talking about my thoughts and my feelings, you know, being alienated and angry and this and that. And I'm [00:20:00] going, "Oh my God, I'm not alone". And I cried that night. Not easily, not easy tears, in the arms of two of my Donut Dolly sisters. And, that began my healing.  

Reflections

[00:20:13] Steve: And is the Penni I'm talking to today still a product of her experience in Vietnam?

[00:20:19] Penni: Oh, [00:20:20] she's definitely a product of Vietnam, but in a much more positive and special way. For the most part, the support, the love, the honour, the appreciation has all come together in a very special box, I [00:20:40] guess, of memories. I was very much a square peg trying to be fitted into a very round hole. I have made my life meaningful and have shared much of who I am that has come from Vietnam.  And so I'm very proud [00:21:00] now to call myself a Vietnam veteran.