Oral History Interview with Jeanne Marie Bokina Christie

[Interview Begins]

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. Today is March 24th, 2023, and this is an interview with-- and I'm going to ask you to please state your full name to include your maiden name.

CHRISTIE: Jeanne Marie Bokina Christie. Better known as Sam.

BOWERS HEALEY: Thank you. And please spell Bokina?

CHRISTIE: B-O-K-I-N-A.

BOWERS HEALEY: And also spell Christie, please.

CHRISTIE: C-H-R-I-S-T-I-E.

BOWERS HEALEY: Thank you very much. All right. So, Sam served with the American Red Cross as part of the Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas, otherwise known as the SRAO. This was a unit in Vietnam and she served from January 1967 through February 1968. Do I have that correct?

CHRISTIE: Correct.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. This interview is being conducted by Ellen Healey in Madison, Wisconsin, for the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History Program. And 00:01:00this is a Zoom interview. At present, there is no one else present for this interview other than Jeanne and myself. All right, we'll start with a little bit of background. Jeanne, where were you born?

CHRISTIE: I was born in Madison, Wisconsin.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. And did you grow up in Madison, Wisconsin?

CHRISTIE: I did. As a matter of fact, I was born at St. Mary's Hospital in Madison, Wisconsin.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. But St. Mary's, as you well probably know, still exists.

CHRISTIE: Yes.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Who else was in your immediate family?

CHRISTIE: I had an older sister, Lorraine. She was about-- I think she's two and a half, three years older than I am. Two and a half. And then I have two younger brothers about ten years younger than I am. So, there were four of us. Two girls and then two boys.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And where did you go to school for grade school and high school?

CHRISTIE: Oh, gosh. I went to school-- elementary school with Longfellow. I don't even know if it's still there. And then I went to Madison West. West High School. For junior and senior years. Junior and senior high. Whatever. There was no intermediate.

BOWERS HEALEY: When did you graduate from high school?

CHRISTIE: 1967.

BOWERS HEALEY: And from there, did you go to work or did you go continue with schooling?

CHRISTIE: It's an interesting story. I actually took a course that first summer at the University of Wisconsin. I took chemistry and I was very good at roasting hot dogs over the Bunsen burners, let's put it that way. The professor knew my father and said, "Don't even tell her to come in for the final exam. There's just no way [laughs] this girl is going to pass." Didn't do well in chemistry, 00:03:00one might say. So, my dad said, "Well, I'm not paying for school. You've got to get a job." And I found a job at Macy's. I worked in the fabric department, and the alteration department was right next door. So, the guys and ladies and men in the alteration department taught me a lot about sewing. I don't know how well I did on selling fabrics, but-- [laughs] and eventually I managed to-- I had managed to find a small scholarship and I went away to Stout up in Menomonie, Wisconsin, for my freshman year. And I was very hungry that year because my father would not pay for the food. And so, it was tough love. But he said, "If you're going to do it, you're going to do it on your own." And I was a cocky 00:04:00little thing. And I said, "All right, I will." And off I went. And then I transferred back to-- I really wasn't into home economics, let's put it that way. I spent a lot of time in the men's industrial arts departments. So, I transferred back to Milwaukee. I wanted to get into education. And if you were, at that time, you couldn't teach or the student intern teaching in your hometown. So, I couldn't come back to Madison and I went to Milwaukee. I started to get squared away, graduated over there and did my student teaching over there. And that's kind of where this story led to Vietnam. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: How did you-- well, you graduated. What year did you graduate from college?

CHRISTIE: What did I say before? I said '67 was when I went to high school. Graduated college in '67.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: That makes more sense.

BOWERS HEALEY: Thanks for that clarification.

CHRISTIE: Yeah, it was kind of one of those senior moments. Okay.

BOWERS HEALEY: So how did you hear about the Red Cross program and what got you interested in it?

CHRISTIE: I was always interested in people. I was active in the People to People organization in Milwaukee. I really thought Peace Corps was wonderful. I wanted to do the Peace Corps, but I didn't speak a foreign language. And the art department had classes up on the third or fourth floor, and then studios down in the basement of the building that I was in. And I would go from one level to the other and I would pass this woman's office. And she always had a very pretty suit on. And I thought, one of these days I'm going to stop and just say, I 00:06:00really think your fabric is beautiful, you know, type of thing. Well, I did. And it turned out she was the daughter of a lady that my father knew. So, the plot thickened. [laughs] And she said, "Well, what do you want to do?" And I told her that I was interested in Peace Corps or something overseas and whatever. So, she started looking. She's the one that found the Red Cross information. And she said, "You want to apply for it?" And I'm like, well, it's a tropical country. It's overseas. You know, sure, why not? And I got accepted. So that's how it-- I mean, the lady in the beautiful suit. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Let me back up. I neglected to ask you, what was your major? What degree did you graduate with?

CHRISTIE: I started out, as I said, home economics is where I started, didn't stay there. Went into art, then went into art education so I could become a teacher.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And so, you did student teaching in Milwaukee?

CHRISTIE: Yes.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: And you find out about the Red Cross. Did you really consider student-- actually teaching in the art field or weren't there jobs available?

CHRISTIE: No, I had an offer to go to Michigan and teach, but it was cold in Michigan. It's cold in Wisconsin. [laughs] I had my eyes set on someplace warm. [laughs] You know, I hesitated, and I had to go through a bunch of interviews. I had to get recommendations. I actually talked to a woman who had returned from Vietnam. So that kind of helped. And I cannot remember her name at this point. She was very helpful about the realities of what it was and the country and the 00:08:00people and serving for the Red Cross. So that was very, very helpful. But I just really kind of-- I was curious. We didn't know what was going on in the other part of the world at that point. I mean, I was in the ivory tower. The freshmen may have been writing in Madison, but I was out of it at that-- you know, I had moved on at that point. So, it was just like, okay, let's do it.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. So how long was the hiring process? A month or two or three months?

CHRISTIE: Oh, it took a couple of months.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: I had four very serious interviews. I remember going down to I think it was St. Louis, and that was a very strange interview. It was a gentleman. And halfway through the interview, he said, "Can you squat on the floor?" And I 00:09:00thought, that's really strange. But, you know, okay. I can squat on the floor, so I'll show you. I can do that. I don't know if he did it to see if I would comply or how I would react to something like that. But I did. And I just always thought it was a very strange interview. Came back to Madison, and then it was shortly thereafter I got a phone call and said, you've been accepted into the program. And I went, oh, okay. You know, type thing. I called my-- because I was then, that day I was in Milwaukee, and I called my folks and told them and my mother was dead silent. She didn't say a word. And my father said, if you do this, it will be the biggest decision you ever make in your life. And it was.

BOWERS HEALEY: It was.

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So that was it. There was no discussion. There was no argument. There 00:10:00was no, you know, let's talk about this. It was just if you do this, it's your big decision.

BOWERS HEALEY: It sounds as though you focused on Vietnam right away. Did you consider any other locations or was that the only place offered?

CHRISTIE: The program was offered in Korea and Vietnam.

BOWERS HEALEY: Mm-hm.

CHRISTIE: I'm going to go someplace warm. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, you know, it was tropical. And as I said, I had no clue whatsoever.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you sign a contract with the Red Cross?

CHRISTIE: Yes.

BOWERS HEALEY: And what was that? What were the terms of the contract?

CHRISTIE: You know, at this point, none of us seem to remember. Which is very interesting. It was a basic commitment for a year. The amount of pay we would get, all the health benefits and insurance is a mystery. They're still trying to 00:11:00figure that out. We knew we would get orders from the military and that they would take care of us while we were there. But beyond that, no idea anymore. And if we could answer that question, it would solve a lot of problems for a lot of ladies.

BOWERS HEALEY: Why do you say that?

CHRISTIE: Well, because they had health issues. They have health issues.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And the number one-- there were 627 of us in total. We're down to about 400 and some odd now. So, they're dying off. And many of them said, I wish we had remembered that. I wish we had had copies of it. I wish we had made better notes of it, but we didn't. We were just 21 years old or 21 to 25, I guess, was the range, and oblivious to so many things in the world.

BOWERS HEALEY: Sam, when you say there were about 600 of you, does that include just those that served in Vietnam?

CHRISTIE: 627 in Vietnam.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And three were killed during the term and one was killed right afterwards, she was helping with Operation Babylift. So, there were four in our program that were gone.

BOWERS HEALEY: Do you know how the others were killed?

CHRISTIE: One was ill. One was in a Jeep accident and the other was stabbed to death. Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Tell me a little bit more about your training. Where and when did you receive training for the SRAO program?

CHRISTIE: It's a mouthful, isn't it?

BOWERS HEALEY: Yes.

CHRISTIE: [Laughs] Now, you can understand why, even though it's kind of demeaning, Donut Dollies, it's much faster and easier to say. We had a training 00:13:00in Washington, D.C. We were given a list of things that we had to have before we showed up in D.C. And we were there a good two weeks. I don't even remember how many ladies were there total, but it was done by former people who had been there. And it was-- some women came from military families, so they had an idea of rank and which service did what, you know, what the names and terms were. The rest of us were totally oblivious. So, to figure out who's a sergeant, who's a major, what branch of service is that is, how many stripes on this sleeve. And so, it was a lot of that very basic stuff. They didn't do a lot of speaking about how to do a program. More the ambiance of this is what you're going to do 00:14:00and the technality and techniques were yet to be discovered, one might say. We got that when we got to Vietnam. But it was pretty basic. I remember how to take a drink, when to take a drink, if you're in uniform, what do you do? What don't you do? That type of stuff. And a funny story. The day I got to Washington, I'm riding up in the elevator and I have my perky little navy blue suit on with a red and white blouse with a fluffy tie here. And I'm chattering away with this woman on the elevator, going up to the third floor or whatever it was. Turned out to be the director. [laughs] So I put my foot in it right off the start. What can I say?

BOWERS HEALEY: Where was your training in Washington, D.C.? Does the [inaudible]--

CHRISTIE: Some hotel or the Red Cross headquarters, I don't remember.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Truthfully.

BOWERS HEALEY: After you received your two weeks or so of training in D.C., did you go directly to Vietnam or not?

CHRISTIE: The doctor came in and gave us-- we had to have had a bunch of shots before we even got to Washington. GG was the last shot that they would give us before we left. So, they made sure it was current. And the doctor came in and we swore he was just-- he loved every miserable minute of it. Drop the back side of your skirts and he would get right in the butt. And so, then it was like, see ya! And they loaded us up, took us to the airport, put us on a plane, flew us to Travis, and we sat on that GG the whole time. [laughs] We cursed them all the way. So we went to Travis, got on another flight with the men at that point, and 00:16:00they flew us off to Saigon.

BOWERS HEALEY: What are your first memories of Saigon?

CHRISTIE: Hot. A different smell. I was curious though, so it was kind of like, wow, this is cool. But they open the door and just that blast of heat coming in from outside into an air-conditioned plane or a plane that had been closed up was, I mean, it just like hit you in the face type thing. It was amazing. But it was night. We flew in at blackout and blackout. So, we couldn't see anything really. I mean, we didn't know where we were. And they took the women off first and we were escorted to a BOQ [Bachelor Officers Quarters?].

BOWERS HEALEY: That's a civilian plane or military plane? Do you know?

CHRISTIE: I don't know. It was probably a civilian plane at that point, but it was all military men.

BOWERS HEALEY: And they were in uniform?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And frightened to death. I remember them being very nervous. And a lot of them were returning to Vietnam. And they knew what they were facing. We had [laughs] no clue. So, we were happy and chipper and talking to them. And they were silent, and stone faced and very nervous. Very nervous.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, you were taken off first. How many of the Donut Dollies or the Red Cross workers were there?

CHRISTIE: There were 13 of us.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And where did you go?

CHRISTIE: Well, as I said, we landed in Saigon, and they put us in a [BOQ??] that night. Probably close by on the airbase.

BOWERS HEALEY: What was the next thing that you recall?

CHRISTIE: Next thing I recall in morning we got up and I opened the front door and I saw a guy sitting there with guns and it was just like, oh! [laughs] We're 00:18:00in a war zone.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And then they had a bus come get us. And the buses all had mesh wire on the windows and things. And the reality was we were learning about the war zone at that point. But we had not been prepared for that. Or if we did, it went right over our heads. We didn't understand it. So, it was kind of an adventure. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Where did the bus take you that first morning?

CHRISTIE: We went to the Red Cross facility or headquarters at that point in Saigon where they would do more training. And then we had other documents that we had to sign. We had to go over to the Navy and get OD green uniforms and combat boots and little hats and things like that. So, we all had our pictures 00:19:00taken in OD green which, you know, that's as far as it ever went. The Red Cross uniforms, I think we were given them when we got to Washington because they didn't fit. And they were baby blue. Fabric. Very sturdy fabric. And we had two outfits. Well, three. We had a class-A uniform which had a buttoned fitted jacket and a little hat and a straight skirt. Then we had the Red Cross dress, which probably they're still using. Very basic, kind of a A-line with a huge pocket which can put junk in in the front. And then we had a [culotte??] uniform, which was a boxy jacket and a pair of culotte pants. So, we had the 00:20:00three different outfits, and every once in a while, we had to put the class-As on. But for the most part, we just wore the dress or the culottes.

BOWERS HEALEY: How did you maintain those uniforms?

CHRISTIE: Mama-sans would wash them. By the end of the year, they were lavender in color because of the red dirt and very stained. And I think the one you have there in Madison has a dark spot on it from something.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Did the mama-sans do the ironing or did they--

CHRISTIE: It didn't require ironing.

BOWERS HEALEY: Oh, it didn't require ironing.

CHRISTIE: No. You just threw it over a bush and let it dry. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. So which uniforms did you wear on a daily basis?

CHRISTIE: Most of the time we probably had the dress on. Because it was comfortable and it had big, huge pockets. If we were doing flights out, a lot of times we would wear the culottes. And then once I was there, I also learned that 00:21:00men will ask you to climb in and out of planes. Men will ask you to climb towers. Men will ask you to do things. And you need something underneath [laughs] to block the view, as they say. So a lot of us had-- I don't even know if they make them anymore. Pettipants. And they were like shorts underneath your dress so that if you had to climb up and things got exposed, at least you had a pair of shorts on underneath it.

BOWERS HEALEY: Were the pettipants issued or did you buy them on your own?

CHRISTIE: No, no. We had to get them on our own.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And it was just one of those things that the older girls would tell the younger girls. That's how most of the training was, is the older ones would take us and say, "This is what you do. This is how it works. This is, you know, be aware of this. You need to talk to him. You need to leave that one alone." You know, a lot of that stuff. So it was an interesting learning experience.

BOWERS HEALEY: Let me go back to the training. You mentioned that you did get additional training when you arrived in Vietnam. What was that training about?

CHRISTIE: That was primarily the older, more experienced ladies teaching us how to actually put a program together, how to engage the men, what would work, what wouldn't work. What's protocol when you get to a base? Who do you talk to first? Who do you, you know, how do you get the men that are standing around to come and join you? That type of training. Real hands on.

BOWERS HEALEY: What was the protocol in terms of who you approached when you went to a base?

CHRISTIE: Normally, it was a commanding officer that would meet us or greet us and welcome us to a firebase. Usually, it was a lieutenant or a captain. If we were on base, it would be who were the colonels, who's a ranking officer in the 00:23:00group? Just different protocol for different situations. But we were usually briefed before we went by the older women. You learn.

BOWERS HEALEY: You mentioned that the older women, the training that they passed on to you, they would indicate what you should do, what you should not do, what you should not say. Do you specifically remember any of the things that you should not do or should not say? [Christie shakes head] No?

CHRISTIE: No. Every once in a while, I have a brief moment of something that flashes through my brain about, oh, there were some words and things that I knew at the time we knew that we weren't supposed to say. I can't remember now. Something-- you know, how is your day? Well, that's not very good when you've 00:24:00lost half your unit. So, it depended on what the group was that you were going to go see. And again, there was nothing hard and fast that worked one day next to the next one. It always changed. It was very flexible, very fluid. We knew in the programs that some of the women did, for example, the Playboy bunnies were always very popular. The foldouts. We knew not to take them, [laughs] even though there are photos of some of the ladies programing and the Playboy bunnies are posted up above. That was somebody else's job to do, not us. So, we tried not to bring that element. But it was there. It was prevalent. So, you had to 00:25:00kind of go with the flow. I mean, you never knew from one group to the next what was going to happen. And if you followed the mail truck yet, or the mail bus or chopper, you knew you had your hands full because you'd get the Dear John letters. Forget the program at that point. Just sit with them and talk to them and get the guys to talk. So, it changed all the time and all of us changed. Then sometimes we actually got to do our programs. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: After you arrived in Saigon, when did you get your first assignment and where was it?

CHRISTIE: It was about a week later. It was about a week. And when we were sitting there-- as a Wisconsin person, you should laugh. I'm sitting in training after we get our Navy uniforms, our OD greens, and we're sitting there and the 00:26:00phone rings. Now, I'm half a world away. And they say, "Jeanne, it's a phone call for you." Like, who's calling me? I don't know anybody here. And it was a fellow from Wisconsin who worked for the Red Cross, and he said he managed to get me out of class. He said, "If I can get you out, you want to go see Saigon?" And I'm like, "Sure." So, he had a motor scooter, and we got on his motorcycle and drove all over Saigon and showed me the zoo and the national buildings and downtown. And I mean, I got a great tour. It was wonderful. But yeah, I'm sitting in Saigon and the phone rings for me. [laughs] You never know.

BOWERS HEALEY: It sounds like you were anxious to go to get out of training. Any concerns about your security at that time?

CHRISTIE: Not at that time. Security was always an issue. I mean, we knew we 00:27:00were in a war zone. And when your roommate, you're staying in a hotel and right outside your room is a gun rack. It starts dawning on you that [laughs] maybe there could be some problems. That guy's walking around the street with guns. We didn't see that in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, very often. Or Madison. So, you know, you learned to be aware. And I think that was part of the training, too. How to become aware. If situations happen, if people scatter, get out of there. You know, people are running away. Don't stand and say, "What's going on here?" You know, you leave. So, there was a lot of that. But again, most of that came on the job. On the job. And again, it was situational.

BOWERS HEALEY: And did that occur to you personally where the situations seem not to be a comfortable situation and you just left?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Often or infrequent?

CHRISTIE: Enough that if I see a large crowd scattering to this day, I'll get out of there.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: If I hear a very loud noise, I don't say, "Oh, what's that about?" I leave. When the dumpster dumps stuff outside or pick things up and I hear a big boom. I'm like-- I don't like fireworks. It happened enough.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. All right. Tell me about your first duty assignment.

CHRISTIE: First assignment. I was given 20 minutes to get on the flight, and they said, get your bags. You're leaving. And they kind of assessed who would go. Different units rotated people in and out. And if somebody was DEROSing, you then became a replacement for that unit. So, they would assess the personalities with the units that they knew about. And this is what I was told, 20 minutes to 00:29:00grab my bag, get out to the flight line, get on the flight. You're going to Nha Trang. Got to Nha Trang, they met me. Two of them, probably the unit director and the program director, met me and we went back to the porters, which was on the third Field House hospital base that point, and I was given a roommate. I'm sure she was thrilled to death [laughs], but she turned out to be a great roommate. And then they probably took us around the base and then they probably took us to the center to show us where we would work at Nha Trang.

BOWERS HEALEY: Would you spell the name of that base, please?

CHRISTIE: N-H-A T-R-A-N-G.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. And before getting assigned there, had you ever heard of that?

CHRISTIE: Nope.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you know what kind of a base it was?

CHRISTIE: No.

BOWERS HEALEY: So what kind of a base was it?

CHRISTIE: It had, well, it has a Third Field hospital there, had the Air Force 00:30:00there, it had Special Forces there, which we later did some programing at and had interaction with. It had Navy units, Hawk missile sites were there. So, we had Air Force, Army, and Navy there basically. No Marines. And then it was attached-- the town was right there, of Nha Trang, which was a beautiful old French town when the French ran Vietnam. So it had a lot of restaurants and offices and buildings and things like that. It was right on the beach. It's gorgeous. And as a country was beautiful-- I mean, even though it was a war zone, it was a beautiful country. So, it was hard not to kind of like Nha Trang. But we had liberty enough that we could-- if we were with somebody, we could go into town. We never went by ourselves. We could wander around. Eventually, I 00:31:00became friends with the mama-san and when I had my day off, which is never a day off in the war zone, as you know, we would go into town and go shopping. So that was a real treat. And she was a very nice lady. Very nice lady. A lot of stories that go with her. But it was a chance to see someplace different. Someplace different. And a different culture that I had not been exposed to before. So, the temples were very different. There were schools that were run by-- they were orphanages, really. And that kind of, you go, oh, there are a lot of homeless 00:32:00kids. They have no family anymore. And they were being raised. So, it was a different culture and different thing. Special Forces was-- they were a different kettle of fish.

BOWERS HEALEY: Why do you say that?

CHRISTIE: Well, they were different from the Air Force and their mission was totally different. But we had some very good friends, and they were the ones that would take us up into the Montagnard villages. It's like, let's go up there. So, we would go with Special Forces up to the Montagnard villages and the Army wouldn't do that, but the Special Forces would and would get out and the Vietnamese children would just come up and they would touch your hair because I was very blond and they had never seen a blond person before. So, it's a totally different cultural experience and the day we went up there, one of the days that 00:33:00we went up there, the men that went with us there inside the tent with the chief negotiating for a water buffalo so they could trade me. [laughs] Wait a minute here. [laughs] So when they came back out, the guys from Special Forces said, no, we're not going to make trades today. [laughs] But, you know, you never knew what was going to go on.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did they indicate how many water buffaloes they were willing to trade for you?

CHRISTIE: I was only worth one. One really good one, though. [laughs] Yup.

BOWERS HEALEY: Well, that's quite an experience. The shopping. It leads me to ask this question. How were you paid and when you went shopping, were you using American dollars or what script?

CHRISTIE: Well, I've received $4,856 for the year. It changed every year. The 00:34:00price. Salary went up for the ladies. Why I remember that number, I don't know. Can't remember my phone number half the time. But I believe the money went to an American account. Stateside account. We may have gotten like, $20 and we had peace or military money that we could shop on the market with. We had PXs and BXs, so we could go in and shop there.

BOWERS HEALEY: And you used dollars, or you used what to do shopping?

CHRISTIE: I don't truthfully remember.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: I truthfully don't remember. It was such a minor element. It was probably military MPC [Military Payment Certificate].

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Because they wouldn't have had cash to deal with at that point. And we 00:35:00didn't need a lot of money because everything was provided pretty much.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was the food and chow provided?

CHRISTIE: Yes. We were supposed to buy our own but walk into an officer's mess and you didn't have to buy dinner. [laughs] Somebody will buy your dinner. We could buy-- obviously we could buy our own food and, but it was more fun to be out. If we went to a restaurant, somebody was paying for it. And in Nha Trang, there were a lot of restaurants. There were a lot of French restaurants. So, we did an awful lot. Good enough that I got dysentery. But you know.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was that a one-time thing or did that occur more often?

CHRISTIE: That was pretty much a one-time thing. Thank you very much. [laughs] I ended up in the hospital with that one. But it was that community was much more 00:36:00accessible than some of the other locations. So, I think that had a lot to do with it.

BOWERS HEALEY: How long were you at Nha Trang?

CHRISTIE: I was there almost six months.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Almost six months. So, I could get into a lot of mischief while I was there.

BOWERS HEALEY: Other than mischief, tell me about your daily activities while you were there.

CHRISTIE: We would get up, shower, get dressed. We knew the night before who was making a run. Who was working in the center. So, the girls that we're making-- and we were girls at that point. We weren't women. We weren't ladies. We were still girls. The women or the girls that were making the runs would meet the-- would go outside and sit and wait for the drivers to pick us up. And we had two drivers that worked with us regularly, and they had a deuce-and-a-half.

BOWERS HEALEY: You say you knew the night before. How did you get the information as to what your assignment was going to be?

CHRISTIE: From the unit director. Unit or program director would say, you, you, and you are going. So and so.

BOWERS HEALEY: The Red Cross unit director.

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: And was that unit director right there on site with you or somewhere else?

CHRISTIE: Yes, yeah. Yes. And I didn't know what their role really was when I first got there. I became a unit program director at the end. Boy, did I learn a lot. We'll talk about that later. But they pretty much figured out, well, I need two to go to out here. I need four to go there. And we were always in pairs. We're never sent alone. So, it just varied. And they would have a schedule, they'd get calls from military units, and they would say, we need somebody back here. We've lost half the unit. Send somebody there. We had a few regular stops that if nothing happened, you would go there. So, it rotated.

BOWERS HEALEY: When you showed up at these sites, usually was somebody there to greet you or did you ever show up and nobody there?

CHRISTIE: No, there was always somebody that would show up and again, those are very interesting stories because depending on the situation. Most of the time there was some notice that the Donut Dollies were coming in.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did they call you Donut Dollies?

CHRISTIE: Some did. It's hard to say Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas. [laughs] The girls are coming in. Red Cross girls.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: As opposed to-- it varies. It varied. The old timers knew of Donut Dollies from Korea and in World War Two. So that's kind of how that term rolled into Vietnam. Gosh. But it would change as a situation changed. If you went into 00:39:00a unit that was very busy, their commanding officer, who may be a lieutenant or captain, would say, the girls are coming in. You need to take a break. They'll be here for-- we were there for an hour. We do six or seven stops in a day. And so, we had a regular program that we would do. Sometimes the men would come over and participate, and sometimes they would just sit in the background and watch. So, you never knew.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did the men come in with their rifles? Were they armed?

CHRISTIE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And when you went from place to place, did you have a guard with you?

CHRISTIE: We did. We always had an armed guard with us.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And interestingly enough, this discussion came up the other night with somebody. We were not trained. We were non-combatant. We had a little white card 00:40:00that if anything happened, we were supposed to hold up to a Vietnamese or the Viet Cong, and he was supposed to be able to read it, that said under the Geneva Convention we're protected type thing.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was it an English or Vietnamese?

CHRISTIE: It was in English. [laughs] And it may have had some Vietnamese in it but doubt that it's going to help you a lot. But when I got to the Marines, it's another next stop type thing. They took me out on the firing line. They said, "You're out there. Anything happens, you need to know how to fire a weapon." And they were very aware of the fact that something could happen or go wrong when we were out in the field, and they wanted us to know how to at least fire a weapon. Where the Army didn't. They just gave us an armed guard and that was it.

BOWERS HEALEY: When you traveled around, did you have a flak jacket or a helmet?

CHRISTIE: Some days they did. Some ladies did, some didn't. I don't ever remember wearing a helmet. I do remember a couple of times having a flak jacket on.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: You had bunkers. If anything happened, you would go. Your flak jacket and helmets were in the bunkers normally for us so that we could get there, be prepared.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. I interrupted you. You were talking about being trained. The Marines training you.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. And that's not supposed to be known [laughs] because we were non-combatants. But they felt compelled that we needed to know how to protect ourselves. If anything happened.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, they--

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: One would say that they may have taught you how to load a gun and hold a gun and fire a gun?

CHRISTIE: And fire. Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Hm. Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, we actually had experience doing that. Pinch comes to shove. Could 00:42:00be pretty tight, but it was better than nothing at all. You know, it was just one of those elements.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. So back to your daily routine. When you were at your first installation, you made maybe five or six stops a day. What types of things did you do?

CHRISTIE: We did the programs for the most part. They may be quiz boards. They may be picture boards. They're fairly basic, fairly easy, easy to engage individuals with. It could be like the match game that's on television. It was a lot of that. What could you remember? How would you do this? Where did you see that image before? Can you match that one up? And that was a type of thing that would be frequently done. Word games, picture games. If all else came, all else 00:43:00failed. We had a couple of idiot games. We had-- [showing rubber band wrapped around her hand] Can you see that?

BOWERS HEALEY: Yes, I can. Thank you.

CHRISTIE: We always carried rubber bands with us. And you put it on somebody's hand, especially when they were a little hesitant to talk to you. You would walk up to a guy and put a rubber band on his hand. He'd go, "What are you doing?" And then the guys next to him would see it and start giving them a hard time. I say, "Oh, you think this is easy?" So, then we'd put a rubber band on his hand. Before you know it, you've got six guys standing there trying to get a rubber band off their hand. Which you can do if you're very flexible. But guys hands are too big for the most part. So, they couldn't get it off. And that was, I mean, you could always put rubber bands in your pockets. If we could get bubblegum, that was another thing that would also work and just give somebody-- 00:44:00because you can't blow a bubble when you first start chewing it. You have to chew it for a while to really get the bubble gum to hold together and then try and blow bubbles. And then each-- the buddies would start giving them a hard time about it. "Oh, yeah?" So then we'd give them bubble gum, and then you've got a whole group standing there blowing bubbles and laughing each other. There were dumb things. Dumb, silly things. If we could get them to laugh, they couldn't cry. It was very simple. They could laugh at us, they could laugh at each other, or they could laugh all together and have a sense of camaraderie. But if we could break that serious mindset, it really helped a lot. So, the games were kind of meant to engage them and let the others harass them. And "Oh, I know where that is," and tease each other a little bit about it. They didn't 00:45:00all want to play, and some would just sit back and watch you and you would try and at least say hello to them or talk to them before or after. Just so they can have some connection with a female. And we were home. I mean, we were their sisters and their wives. As corny as it sounds, their mothers. We were their family back home. And if it was a tight situation, if again, if the mail chopper came in, those Dear John letters came in. We knew we had our work cut out for us and that we would have to sit and really forget the game. Just get them to talk. Just debrief. How do you feel about it? What happened? Can you tell me about it? It was a lot of stress release for them. So, there was no one day that was 00:46:00always picture perfect. Nothing ever stayed the same. You just had to go with the flow.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you visit hospitals?

CHRISTIE: We did sometimes. We were not the hospital workers. There were three branches of Red Cross there: SMI, which was the field reps, SMH, which were the hospital ladies, and then we were the wackos, the SRAOs. So, the hospital had their own group of Red Cross personnel there. They would write letters for the guys and do things like that. When we would-- if we had time at the end of the day, they would take us and drop off at a hospital and we would go in, get the quick lay of the land, where we should go, don't go over in that ward, or people here need to see you more than others. Don't touch. Never touch, because that 00:47:00could be a problem. And who do you talk to? Has he heard anything from home? Everybody loves you, yada, yada, yada. Sometimes it was difficult. I learned about burn wards. That's an interesting-- you could smell it as soon as you walk in. The amputees, the Stryker beds, I mean, we would just go along and we weren't working there. We were just visiting. So that was a different attitude.

BOWERS HEALEY: What were Stryker beds?

CHRISTIE: The brown beds when they were totally incapacitated, and they would be in the rotating beds.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And [laughs] heads would be at the other end of the circle sometimes, so you had to talk them down there. I mean, we learned about hospital equipment, but the head nurse would usually, or the corpsman would tell us who needed help, 00:48:00where to go, who to talk to most, and who to leave alone. So that was at the end of the day.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Couple of acronyms that you mentioned, and I don't know if you're going to know these: SMI, SMH, and wackos? What are those things?

CHRISTIE: Wackos are crazy people. SMI is service to military installations. It is now SAF, Service to Armed Forces. They are the ones that will get the communication to and from home.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Okay. SMH is service to military hospitals.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. Thank you. A little bit of a shift. You're traveling around all day long. Restroom facilities. And sometimes you're out in the mountains.

CHRISTIE: [Laughs] Pee tubes didn't work. [laughs] I was listening the other 00:49:00night on the Veterans Breakfast Club, and they were talking about the new devices that they have. We didn't have those funnel devices, but we would frequently have a piece of cloth. And the guys, honest to God, they were so good and gracious. If there wasn't ahead someplace we could use, they would hold up a fabric and we would have the privacy behind the fabric.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And they, I mean, nobody ever violated it. They were always gentlemen. But [laughs] it was an issue. And sometimes we needed to use that piece of fabric. So, we had a very large green cloth bag also that when we went out to the fields that I believe they were old map bags and we would take those out and they could even hold that up and we could have privacy behind the bag. But a lot 00:50:00of times, if there was ahead, they would clean it out or clear it out and we would get to use ahead. But it wasn't [laughs] something that had to be done. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: I understand that sometimes you were serving coffee and Kool-Aid. Where did the coffee and Kool-Aid come from? Did you take it with you? Was it there?

CHRISTIE: Usually that would be on base, and we would get it from the mess hall. And we would have-- I believe there's a picture with me and the dog and there's a big container next to me that would have been Kool-Aid. And if it was a flight line, it was hot out there, we would take the Kool-Lite. And if it was someplace that was fairly cool, and it did get cool over there, we would take coffee. Then you need cream and sugar or anything else, but you get black coffee.

BOWERS HEALEY: And you mentioned that you didn't have to buy your own food for 00:51:00the most part unless you wanted to. Did you partake in rations? Were those provided to you?

CHRISTIE: No, no. No rations. Most of the time we ate on base and we were allowed to do that. But as I said, if you were in a place like Nha Trang, the town was right there, and somebody always wanted to take you out for dinner. So, let's go out for dinner.

BOWERS HEALEY: And going back a little bit to shopping. How did you get the necessary things that you needed?

CHRISTIE: [Laughs] I wish we had an Amazon at that point. We didn't. The Sears catalog was very good. And every once in a while, somebody from home would send a magazine. We would shop through the magazines and write letters or write letters home and say, please, find such and such and such and where it could be found, and they would have to send things from home.

BOWERS HEALEY: How did you get a Sears catalog in Vietnam?

CHRISTIE: I have no idea how it got there, but it passed around. I don't even think they make them anymore, do they? [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Probably not. A little bit more about the travel. Sometimes you were driven around. Sometimes you flew when you were at your first base in Nha Trang. Did you fly places or not?

CHRISTIE: We did. We could fly. Quarter ton truck was fairly safe. I mean, we could use that. If you were on base, you could use a jeep or a truck, a pickup truck. Again, it varied. It varied. Chopper was the main airplane that we used a lot.

BOWERS HEALEY: Before you got onto a chopper, did you get briefings about the flight?

CHRISTIE: No. We just got up and trusted the guys and off we went.

BOWERS HEALEY: No helmets or did you have helmets?

CHRISTIE: Well, there might have been a helmet in the plane. [laughs] Hair flying. You know, we were girls. You were supposed to-- your hair was supposed to be above your collar. And there were a few gals that had long hair. And I had one of them with me in [inaudible] and headquarters would call and they'd say, "Is Pat's hair up?" And Pat would take her ponytail or long hair and go, "Yeah, it's up." [laughs] Men love the long hair. So, she wore it in pigtails, I think, most of the time. But no, not unless it was a serious issue coming. The flak jackets and the helmets stayed in the choppers.

BOWERS HEALEY: You mentioned your uniform, it basically being kind of what the Navy had. Did you have patches or something to identify you as Red Cross?

CHRISTIE: Yes, we had a patch on our left shoulder. Red Cross. We had pins, ARC and Red Cross. We had our name tags. We were allowed to wear unit patches of the unit. So, if that was a situation. The women that were-- gals that were with the 101st, one of the worst, had the patch on. 1st MARDIV I had, a 1st MARDIV patch. So, it depended on the unit.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And how intense it was as far as where they were.

BOWERS HEALEY: At the end of your almost six months at Nha Trang, did you know you were about to get rotated or--?

CHRISTIE: Well, we had been told three rotations for the year.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, it was time. Time to move on.

BOWERS HEALEY: Anything else you want to say about Nha Trang or your experiences 00:55:00there before we move on to the next?

CHRISTIE: How many hours do we have? [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: As long as you want.

CHRISTIE: Well, there are some funny, funny stories. Some funny, some not funny. There was, first of all, [Bien??] the housemate became very good friends. And when I did have dysentery, she was the one that took care of me. I mean, she got the mess, as one would say, and then they had to carry me over to the hospital and they put me in a ward. I was in the room outside one of the men's wards. The ladies latrine was down the hall, down the walkway. So you had to be pretty desperate to make it down there. And as I got better, they started to bring food in. And all I remember to this day, onion soup. They brought in a bowl of onion 00:56:00soup for me to drink, to eat. And I'm like, oh, [laughs] I can't get that down. But then as I got better, I remember walking out to the ward area and seeing some of the guys. And I thought they had the most magnificent tans.

BOWERS-HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: It wasn't a tan [laughs], but, you know, it was fun at that point. Once you felt better that you could go talk to them. So, then it was time to send me back to my quarters.

BOWERS HEALEY: How long were you in the hospital?

CHRISTIE: I don't remember.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: I don't remember. So that image is kind of fun. And every time I see onion soup, I think of being in the hospital and smelling that the first day. There were some-- we had two living situations in Nha Trang. When we first got there, we were on the base with the nurses. And so, we lived with some of the 00:57:00nurses. And we became friends. And that was a delight. That was very nice. But then as things escalated, they had to move us out because they needed the quarters. So, we got moved into town and it wasn't too far off the road from where a lot of other ladies worked, one might say. So, we had a lot of jokes, and we were told to be very careful walking around. You know, because things could happen, and you could be mistaken. So, we always tried to be with somebody else. [Bien??] was a good friend of mine at that point. I went to her-- I was invited to her family's home, which was a one room house with half a dozen kids and her husband. We had tea and I got to meet her children and then her husband tried to give me a ride home on his motorcycle, but I weighed more than he did. 00:58:00So [laughs] that didn't work very well. And they had to find me a ride home. So that was kind of funny. But when we were in Nha Trang in that house, I remember one night being-- you sleep with an ear open, and I heard a click. The gun safety coming off and our guard came into our room, with full gun, loaded gun. And I watched, I mean, I'm dead silent watching this whole thing. And he is taking my jewelry and money off the-- everything off the dresser. And I didn't say anything. I just laid silent. But we found out later who it was. And they beat up Bien. So, we were very protective of her and that upset us a lot. And I 00:59:00think they replace a guard at that point, obviously.

BOWERS HEALEY: And was this guard American or South Vietnamese?

CHRISTIE: No, he was South Vietnamese.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, you hear that safety come off and you know, just don't do anything. So that image stays with me a lot. A great story, and I think you have the photo that you can use of going to dinner. The lieutenant, Navy lieutenant up at the Hawk site had a group of guys, and they were always very willing to have us come and visit. They were a lot of fun, and he was a lot of fun. He was just-- I can say it to you. He was a good buddy. He took care of us all, he watched out for us, he helped out whenever we needed. Just a good buddy. And he 01:00:00would sometimes say, he'd come down and say, "What do you want to do today? What do you want your time off? What do you want to do?" So, we'd frequently go for dinner and two stories with him on going to dinner. Which one do you want first? The funny one or the not so funny one?

BOWERS HEALEY: Oh, the not so funny one.

CHRISTIE: Okay, not so funny one. We're going into dinner at one of the restaurants downtown Nha Trang, and we hear a scuffle. We hear a bang. We kept on walking. We went into the restaurant. We heard that a 14-year-old boy had been shot. He had a grenade. Okay, that's what happens. We all had dinner. The restaurant was fine. Too bad that they lost somebody but if he's going to throw a grenade in, they're going to shoot them. And 40 some years later, I'm teaching 01:01:00at Western Connecticut, and I know the police department. I'm teaching nonverbal communication, other things like that. So, the cops would come in and we had a good friend, and he is cleaning up after one of the sessions that we had, and he was making a fuss. And he says, "Oh, my boss is a hardass. He's a Vietnam vet." And I went [looking away], you know, picking up on that one, I said, "Oh, really?" When I sent my thank you note, I sent a box of donuts to the chief of police, thinking I'll be getting parking tickets forever or he'll understand the connection. And three days later I get a call from the chief of police, and we do the usual banter. Where were you in? Who'd you serve with? Blah, blah, blah. And we get to-- well, he was in Nha Trang, I was in Nha Trang. When were you in 01:02:00Nha Trang? Same time I was in Nha Trang. And I start telling the story about going to dinner one night, and he said, "Stop." He said, "The hair on my arm has gone up." Hair's just all-- He said, "I was the cop on duty that night. I was MP on duty. And he said the kid was 14 years old and only somebody who had been there would ever know that child's, that person's age. He had taken that life and he saved myself, the lieutenant, restaurant full of people. And he passed away several years after that. And when I went to the funeral, his sister said he was so surly and mean until that day. Because instead of taking life, he had saved lives. Which is, you know, it's a wonderful, sweet ending to the whole 01:03:00thing, but he just-- when he first met me, if he walked in, I wouldn't have known who he was. But here's a chief and he just cried that day. Just tears poured out of his eyes and then he pulled back together again. But yeah, he was the MP on duty that night. So that's a Nha Trang story with the lieutenant. Funny other one. Lieutenant picked me up one afternoon. "What do you want to do today?" Well, I said, "I want to go to get Saigon tea." [laughs] I'd never been to a whorehouse. [laughs] And he's a big, big guy, so you could pull this off. Said, "Okay, we'll go down." So, we go to one of the local establishments and we walk in, and the madam is like, now what do I do? There's a woman here with him, 01:04:00and he said, "We've come to get Saigon tea." But as we walk in, his men are there, and they don't know if they should stand up and salute or cry. [laughs] So we kind of graciously smiled and walked past and sat down and had our little glass of Saigon tea [laughs] and left. But we laughed about that for a long time afterwards. They were just-- they didn't know what to do.

BOWERS HEALEY: And what is Saigon Tea?

CHRISTIE: It's a brothel. Saigon Tea is a shot of liquor basically. [laughs] But it was just a funny, funny thing. And his troops were-- his men were also the guys; they would take me scuba diving to get shells off the bottom of the river 01:05:00and the ocean. And then they showed me how to put them under the iron plates to rot out the bodies of the sea-- the living meat in there. And I still have some of the shells from that. But I mean, he was just-- he was fun. He was always up to help and do anything that you needed. Just a good guy. And so, he was--

BOWERS HEALEY: Describe that more, iron plates, put the shells under the iron plates. What iron plates?

CHRISTIE: You put them underneath big metal sheets. The sun would bake up the-- heat up the plate and it would cook the urchin or the sea critter out of it and then rot out. And then it'd fall into the sand, and you could pick up the shell about a week or two later and it'd be clean.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. But he was just a character in Nha Trang. Other stories in Nha Trang. I had Major Jutz from Wisconsin. Was a chopper pilot for Special Forces. 01:06:00If I wanted to go any place special, if I wanted to see anybody down at Cam Ranh or whatever, Major Jutz would fly.

BOWERS HEALEY: Spell Major Jutz? Jutz please?

CHRISTIE: J-U-T-Z.

BOWERS HEALEY: Thank you. Go ahead.

CHRISTIE: And he passed away. my husband and I ran into him in O'Hare many years later, and he was flying for American Airlines. And then we stayed in touch. He lived in Florida for a long time as he got much older. We stayed in touch with him until virtually he died. He came back to Wisconsin, and we got a notice from his brother that he had passed away. But he was just a sweetheart. He took me under his wing. And you're a girl from Wisconsin. So, what do you need? Type thing. But he was a Special Forces connection, and that kind of made things interesting. Let's see, other stories. We had two Air America pilots who used to 01:07:00come and visit the ladies, the house full of nurses and women, the gals. And I remember sitting with them and talking a long time. One of them was-- one of them was very good looking. And he was in love with some nurse, a civilian nurse, and she worked in Nha Trang. And he killed her one day, and then he shot himself and the friend came back to tell me about it. And just, he's not here anymore and this is what happened. But they used to talk about what it was like to be a kicker. And I never knew what a kicker was. Do you know what the kicker is?

BOWERS HEALEY: I don't. What's the kicker?

CHRISTIE: They take him up, take the VC up in the airplane to get information?

BOWERS HEALEY: Hmm.

CHRISTIE: Kick them out the door if they didn't tell. So that's what they did 01:08:00for a job. And here I am innocent as to this is what's going on in the war out there. So, you start to learn, you start to learn a lot about what different jobs are and what it means to people. I don't know whatever happened to his friend, but they were with Air America. They weren't military per se. So, we have, I mean, that's a wide range of things that would happen in Nha Trang type.

BOWERS HEALEY: What was Air America? If it wasn't military, what was it?

CHRISTIE: Well, may have been quasi-military. It was an air service. They probably ran illegal things. I don't know. But it wasn't-- it had on the sides of the plane; it would have Air America. And I really would have to look it up to see what it was. But it was not-- they were not regular troops.

BOWERS HEALEY: I did read in some of your background material hazing or sexual harassment. [Christie laughs] Your comments?

CHRISTIE: We can talk about those later, too. But hazing took place in Nha Trang. When I first got there, they gave me a helmet. The ladies in the unit put the helmet on, sit outside on the front steps, and there was barbed wire and then the village. So, I was given the helmet and told to sit out there, and a whistle and I was supposed to blow the whistle if I saw any VC coming that night. So, they all had a good giggle and laugh over the whole thing. You know, that was like, I don't even know what they look like. [laughs] So they let me sit out there for a while and do that. There was no other hazing at any of the other units. That's the only incident I remember of hazing. But as I became 01:10:00older and wiser as a unit director, we'll talk about the other.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right.

CHRISTIE: That'll come in there.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. You mentioned Navy nurses. Were there any other service women that you came in contact with during your stint in Vietnam?

CHRISTIE: There were Army nurses and Navy nurses. For the most part we gave each other distance. They thought we were silly. We thought they were too serious. In reality, that was the role. We did live with them to start with in Nha Trang. We lived with Army nurses. But after that we were always in separate billets.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Cam Ranh had shared billets for a while, but I was only passing through.

BOWERS HEALEY: After having been there for six months at this first base, Nha Trang, is there anything that you would or did recommend to change procedures or do you feel that it was well run?

CHRISTIE: I think it was well run. I think the gals that ran the unit had a pretty good handle on everything.

BOWERS HEALEY: Were they all gals or did you have any in the hierarchy? Were there any men?

CHRISTIE: There were in SMI. In the service to military installations, or the SAF now. There were men in the unit, but not in SRAO.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: They were all Donut Dollies.

BOWERS HEALEY: And some of them were more senior. They have served for more than one year?

CHRISTIE: Yup.

BOWERS HEALEY: Other countries?

CHRISTIE: They had served, a lot of them came-- because I was there early, they had come from Korea. And they brought people down from Korea to do another tour. 01:12:00They had served a tour in Korea then they would come to Vietnam to have a second tour. Then they would go home. Several women went back and served a different tour for a second tour. A couple of the ladies went back and served with SMH or SMI, I should say, and did the field service reps. So, it varied.

BOWERS HEALEY: Do they all tend to be fairly young, like under 30?

CHRISTIE: Yes.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. I don't know if there is an age restriction now on SAF. I think it's probably an older age limit, but you have to be willing to go. And usually, if you're 35, 40, you've probably got a family. So that makes it difficult.

BOWERS HEALEY: Sure. You talked about some of the military people that you met that were your good buddies. Any memorable coworkers from your time in Nha Trang?

CHRISTIE: Oh, yeah. My roommate. [laughs] Well, a couple of them.

BOWERS HEALEY: And who is she?

CHRISTIE: Kathy Wickstrom. She's dead now. She was a beautiful girl. She was from Illinois, and she always wore her hair cuffed up on top of her head because she had long hair. And funny story with Kathy, we're out in the field, and she walks past some type of tree or branch. And because women worn stockings, they didn't wear pantyhose back then, she used to stuff her hair with stockings to keep it puffed up and she caught it on a branch and she's walking out. The stocking is coming off [laughs] and the guys gave her a hard time about that. And Kathy just politely and calmly picked it up, put it back on her head and off she went, did her thing, never got flustered, never got flustered. And we all laughed about that one. And she was fun. [Bunny Revere??] was there, a good 01:14:00teacher. She would sit down and let me do this first, watch and see what I do. Then you do it type thing, rather than try and explain it. But how do you sit next to somebody who's had trauma? How do you talk to somebody? Sit next to them, never confront them. So, we always learn to sit next to somebody as opposed to confronting them. To eliminate that nonverbal. She was good. Gail Allen. She was from Valdosta, Georgia. Crazy as a loon, full of energy. She did not want to sleep inside the house. She went to sleep on the roof of the house. So, at night, when she went to bed, she would sleep on the roof of the house. [laughs] You know, just fun ladies like that in Nha Trang. [Maddie Frandsen??] 01:15:00was the unit director. She had come from Korea. I think she may have served in Europe at some point. She was a little older and wiser than the rest of us. Joni was there. She had also served Peace Corps and I think another branch. So, she had some experience. So, we had a variety of ladies.

BOWERS HEALEY: Now, you signed up for a one-year contract. Was that the contract with most of the ladies?

CHRISTIE: Yes, it was a one-year deal.

BOWERS HEALEY: And did any not make that one year for whatever reason?

CHRISTIE: Some washed out. Some met a man and got married, went home to get married. So, they resigned. Not many, but I think most of the women stuck it out for the year. But there were a few that dropped out. There's one, I can't figure out where she was-- She was from Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and I can't find her at 01:16:00all. So, we think she probably dropped out and disappeared.

BOWERS HEALEY: Mm. Just the trauma of the war? Being in a war zone? Homesick?

CHRISTIE: Probably just personal issues. Just not meant to deal with it.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. From your first six months at Nha Trang, you mentioned some of your buddies. Were there any memorable soldiers or Navy men or Air Force men that you met and that you encountered when you were out doing your duties?

CHRISTIE: Well, as I just said, Major Jutz and Lieutenant G. Those were two that are very memorable. Lieutenant Letterman was another one. Why I remember some of 01:17:00their names and can't remember others, I don't know. But they were good souls. As far as being out, when we went out, because the rate was so great for people rotating in and out or dying, we learned to not learn their names. They were Joe, Harry, Slick, or we would do, "Oh, you're from the South," and then we'd call them Georgia or, "You're from Tennessee, we'll call you Tennessee." So, we didn't use our names. We did a lot of where they were from or Joe, Harry, and Slick were the most common. That way you would do, which is too bad because it'd be nice to know whatever happened to them and where they went.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you see some people repeatedly that showed up at the rec centers or [inaudible]?

CHRISTIE: There were. There were. There were guys that would show up on a regular basis. In Nha Trang, when I first got there, we had Sergeant Cox, don't 01:18:00know his first name, never learned it. But he hung around the rec center a lot. Now, I don't know what his MOS was, I don't know what he was supposed to be doing, but he was at the rec center a lot. But again, you know, we didn't normally use their real names. Hi, Joe. Hi, Harry. You make a joke out of it, and you get along with it. I don't know if that makes sense, but it worked.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. Let's move on to your second assignment. Tell me about that.

CHRISTIE: You're going to love this one. 1st MARDIV in Da Nang.

BOWERS HEALEY: When did you arrive?

CHRISTIE: What, six months after Nha Trang.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: I don't remember getting at the flight line. I don't remember 01:19:00anything. I do remember that we had a driver. He drove a little red and white Volkswagen bus. And so, I remember the red and white Volkswagen bus picking me up at the airport, at the field, and taking me to the center. We had two centers to start with. We had the Freedom Hill one, and then we had one with the Marine Corps on the air base right on the flight line. And so, again, we would rotate back and forth. Don't really remember how many women were in that unit. That's terrible. [inaudible] One, two, three, four-- probably seven of us maybe? Seven or eight. Probably eight. Because it would be an even number then. And Ginger Andrews was our unit director. Margot Looney was the program director. She was 01:20:00Black. And dumbfounded me that she would go out and sunbathe. It's like, why do you want to-- you know? But that was Margot. Margot, we think, joined the CIA afterwards. So, she had an awful lot on the ball. She was very, very savvy and smart. Ginger was a Southern girl and very diplomatic. And then there was Cammy, Nancy, Loretta, myself. That's six. Probably two others. There should be two others in there. Anyway, so we would rotate again with duties and obligations. They loved having me because I was an art student. Could make posters. That was easy. You know, the flight line center got blown up shortly after I was there. 01:21:00And I actually have a souvenir of that. [Christie moves off camera to grab a piece of shrapnel] Here's my souvenir.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And describe what your souvenir is.

CHRISTIE: This is a piece of shrapnel. And we used to go to the hospitals and the guys would be-- the injured guys would be peppered with the stuff. I'm like, hm, ground pepper. How did they get--? You know? And then they said, oh, no, it's shrapnel. But not being aware of what shrapnel was until the center was blown up, and I went back in after it was destroyed and I remember seeing the huge chunks and all the small pieces. I picked this one up. And one of the guys 01:22:00put it on a pin for me.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, I have it as my souvenir. And I think--

BOWERS HEALEY: Where were you when the flight line center got blown up?

CHRISTIE: Yeah. So that's kind of my souvenir of that flight line. But the Freedom Hill was a big recreation center, and we have images of those. It was overrun a couple of times. They came up the back hill and they threw us in a jeep and got us out of there a couple of times. But for the most part, we lived downtown Da Nang in a villa down by the Naval Officers Club down there. We could walk home at night if we had to, but it was every day this little red and white van would show up and pick us all up, and we would go back up the hill and through Dogpatch and [laughs] back to work.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was the driver Vietnamese or American?

CHRISTIE: No, he was an American.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. A civilian?

CHRISTIE: He was an American soldier.

BOWERS HEALEY: Oh, a soldier. Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah, he was a soldier.

BOWERS HEALEY: And you mentioned Dogpatch. What is Dogpatch?

CHRISTIE: Dogpatch is an area. It was like a crossroads before you went up towards Freedom Hill. So it was a location and it was just shanties, mud roads and shanties. So you kind of knew where Dogpatch was and then you knew where the center was. And beyond that, it was just boonies. You know, it was interesting. As I said, the gunnies didn't want us to know or not know how to fire a gun. You better learn, ladies. Because the day may come that you need it. The day may come that you don't need it, but that's fine too. But if you need it, you better. So, they were very different. I love my Marines. Nothing personal. I 01:24:00love you, too. But those guys, I mean, they were sweethearts. We saw some of the unpleasantries when we were out in the field. That happened. We remember seeing fights in town, not with the Marines, but people being built up, beat up. Things happened there that were very different. And there's nothing like them. I mean, I'm sorry to say it. I'm biased, but they were sweethearts. They were my sweethearts. And crazy as could be. Loved to do things with them. We could get them to do almost anything. Even if they were stressed, if things happened, they 01:25:00would still come around and talk to you and be sweet and eventually get a smile on a face or laughter or whatever. Very different group of guys. Very different.

BOWERS HEALEY: Describe Da Nang itself. What was its mission? Big city?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was the base in a-- was it fenced in? Were there wires, or no?

CHRISTIE: I don't remember any fencing. Obviously, the Air Force was on one side of the landing strips and the Marines were on the other side. So, you had your military complexes all around it. There were some rocket attacks that hit Da Nang while we were there. As I said, this one [shows shrapnel souvenir] blew things up so it would periodically get rocketed. And it was not unusual. We took 01:26:00sniper fire in the house where we had to roll out of bed and get under the bed as fast as you could.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was your house guarded? Did you have a guard on the house?

CHRISTIE: Well, we were supposed to. [laughs] And it was a Vietnamese guard. So, when he disappeared, you knew you were in trouble. They weren't always reliable, one might say. And I mean, one of the sad things is that because I had had such a good relationship with Bien and the Vietnamese in Nha Trang, they put me in charge of the Vietnamese we had working for us up in Da Nang at the Freedom Center. And as you know, the Marines had to check the weapons when they came in. I mean, they couldn't come in with their guns. So, we had a young man who would check the weapons in, and they started disappearing. So JAG [Judge Advocate 01:27:00General] came down, talked to us. I could not say honestly, to this day, I couldn't say what happened to the weapons. I have suspicions, but I couldn't say. So anyway, the young man, we had to take him in and turn him in. It's probably one of my big PTS [post-traumatic stress] moments, when he realized when I was signing the paper that his life was about to end, and he screamed and clawed at me. When I hear little kids screaming and, you know, it's like [noise], hang in there. It was a difficult moment. And I asked the guys later and they said, "You don't know what happened to him. Just don't ask." So that was kind of a sad, difficult moment up there. I understood why. I understand the 01:28:00logic. But still, it was a tough moment. And part of the problem is one of the other Vietnamese we had on staff was from North Vietnam. And I had asked him to talk to this young kid. And I asked him and said, "Please, tell him not to come to work tomorrow. I don't want to have to do what I have to do. I'm going to have to turn him in." And in Vietnamese, that message did not get through. The kid came to work. I think it was because of the North Vietnamese. He wanted to get rid of [inaudible]. Had something to do with the whole connection. So that's neither here nor there. I mean, that's ancient history at this point. But that was a very sad, serious moment. And I think I became more protected after that. 01:29:00You know, tougher. Things can't get to you. So that facade comes in and-- but when my little kids would come up to me, I knew what it was. I knew what it is. That was tough. Let's see. Other things. We went all over the place.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, you left the base. You left Da Nang?

CHRISTIE: Oh, yeah. Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Yeah. Where did you typically go?

CHRISTIE: We went up to Monkey Mountain, all the fire bases out, wherever they needed anybody. [inaudible]

BOWERS HEALEY: What's Monkey Mountain?

CHRISTIE: It's just another area.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And were the choppers Marine or Air Force? Marine?

CHRISTIE: Yup, they were.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And it was just-- I think we went down to Ninh Hoa one day. And again, 01:30:00I'd have to look at a map. There were several nurses that were killed there later on. So I mean, we went areas that were tentatively hot. Could be volatile.

BOWERS HEALEY: When you went to those locations, where did you-- were there rec centers or what did you make [inaudible]?

CHRISTIE: No, it was just out in the fields.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: If they were-- if it was lunchtime, I would help serve lunch.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Just to talk to the guys. Again, just sit and talk to them. What could you do? And I did not know what dried ears looked like until I got to 1st MARDIV.

BOWERS HEALEY: What's dried ears?

CHRISTIE: They would cut the ears off of the VC and they dried them, and they were on a string. And they held them up one day for me. And I thought, oh, 01:31:00apricots, how wonderful! Just for me? I mean, I had no idea. [laughs] I had no idea they were dried ears. And to this day, I still look at apricots and see dried ears. But it was things like that. I mean, they were happy to share things that were so personal with us. And we just-- they were special. They were special.

BOWERS HEALEY: What sort of things did they share with you?

CHRISTIE: Well, I mean, holding up a string of dried ears is not what you would normally show everybody. They were so comfortable with us. Pardon?

BOWERS HEALEY: Were they infantry Marines that you were seeing?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Yeah. Okay.

CHRISTIE: The grunts. Out in the boonies. And they'd tell you things about their families that were so personal and we just listen to them. I mean, that was the best thing we could do for them at that point. But again, you know, take your [inaudible]. If they couldn't talk, ask them about their weapons. I mean, I'm 01:32:00shown so many weapons that are-- what is the bullet this size as opposed to this size? And what does this weapon do as opposed to that weapon do? They could talk about those where they couldn't talk to us, they could talk about their weapons, but at least they were talking and it was with a female, which was a soft voice, as opposed to a commanding officer, somebody yelling at them. We had buddies that would, again, come in. We played back-alley bridge in the center. And I don't remember who the guys were. And it was a game of bridge, but we had partners and I mean, we were serious partners. So, we'd play this back alley bridge and we were tight. We were all hanging in there together and doing things. Center issues. When we played a lot of music in the center and there 01:33:00were times when-- now I'm going to draw a total blank. Going home? Is it [inaudible] or do you know who I mean? The music "Going Home"? The classic music?

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: It would come on and everybody's talking in the center. There's a lot of guys and they're all, yadda yadda. The music would come on and they would stop. And they would just sit there, and you could all see them saying, I'm going home. And it was just a wonderful, sweet moment. They were so sensitive to that. These big, tough guys. They just had this wonderful soft spot in them. So, that was sweet. You need anything--

BOWERS HEALEY: God Bless America. Tell me about God Bless America.

CHRISTIE: Oh, God Bless America. Another good moment. Marine Officers Club and 01:34:00again, very noisy. The whole night's going on and everybody's having a couple drinks, gets to be the end of the night. They play God Bless America. Everybody stops. And the guy starts singing. And to just see all these men singing together with all the heart and emotion and feeling and love is just a wonderful moment that will always stay with me. I mean, I still have a hard time singing God Bless America, because that's what I see and that's what I hear is all those voices singing together. And it was very special. I get all misty eyed now. A very special moment. That'll stay with me forever.

BOWERS HEALEY: You mentioned the Officers club. Was it a Marine Corps officers club or a joint--?

CHRISTIE: Yes.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. How did the facilities differ between the Marines and the base that you'd previously been in? Similar or different?

CHRISTIE: Well, it was it was pretty sophisticated. I don't know about living quarters. I can't vouch for those. I mean, it was Quonset huts for the most part. Both Air Force and Marines had Quonset huts. But Freedom Hill, we had a recreation center. There was a USO, there was a bakery. There were several PXs up there. So, it was like a little shopping center, which is very sophisticated for the time. And they had a radio station. That's how I became Sam. I mean, to do the radio spot. So, it had a sophistication to it that we didn't have at Nha 01:36:00Trang. But on the other hand, Nha Trang had other things, the French influx that I didn't see as heavy in Da Nang. So, it varied.

BOWERS HEALEY: Tell me about the radio spot and Sam.

CHRISTIE: [Laughs] The Sam shot. Sam shot. I was working on the flight line before it was blown up down at the flight line. And I went in, and it was hot. There was no air conditioning in that one. So we had a lot of Kool-Lite that we were serving. And I had gone in and I was in my little blue uniform. But I forgot to put my name tag on. And if you know, you're out of uniform. [laughs] So one of the gunnies came in and he had been giving me a hard time about, where's your name type, you're out of uniform type thing. So, he went out and he 01:37:00came in a Sam name tag and I put it on so that I was in uniform. I forgot to take it off. And the next morning at 0700, I had to be up at Freedom Hill to the TV station to do the spot for the day and they would say, This is so-and-so from Freedom Hill, Red Cross Center, blah, blah, blah. Today's programs are going to be, you know, whatever. And I started and I said, Hi, I'm-- And as soon as I got that far, I realized I couldn't say Jeanne because I had Sam on. [laughs] So I said, "Hi, I'm Sam." And that's how I stayed Sam. And it was fun. You can't say it without a smile and the guys would go, "Oh, your name is Samantha." And they'd try and guess my name. It had nothing to do with-- [laughs] So I stayed Sam. And as I said, most of the veterans know me as Sam at this point. So I go, [shrugs]. That was the Sam story. Just I goofed. I was out of uniform.

BOWERS HEALEY: Any other recollections that you have from your days at Da Nang? Excuse me.

CHRISTIE: At Da Nang? Well, we tried to [inaudible] very and do Marines on one side and Air force. So, you tried to stagger your time. Air Force had a big recording studio for records, music. Everybody had tape decks. And we were making music on the tapes. And so, we spent a lot of time over there. Would get the driver to drop us off and then we'd get somebody to drive us into town later on. So, we would go over there and tape music. A lot of music. An awful lot of music. And it was nice. So, we got to know some of the guys on the Air Force 01:39:00side and when they would fly 100 missions, one of the things they got to do is they would-- the fire truck would come out and they were allowed to hose down anything and anybody that was in with range because they had flown 100 missions and we would frequently get to ride the truck with them. [laughs] We were bad behind the fire hose, but it was kind of fun just to ride around the fire, the flight line and things. And there is some place amongst the collection. One of the poor stewardesses from Pan Am got hosed and I had a photo of her holding her wet behind. She was totally soaked by some guy. She was furious with him. But that was his ceremony, that his 100 missions over North Vietnam. And then he would go home. So that was kind of fun, to do that. They played some of the 01:40:00landing games, a drink and then you have to slide across the table and stop before the landing. So different women were with different units, and they would have different friends. We had a bunch of friends. One of the Air Force guys that I knew, he was a geographic bachelor, as one might say. Did divorce his wife. But many, many years later, I am in New York picking up somebody and there are two girls, one that I'm picking up, and somebody with her. Happened to be the daughter of this guy. It was like, oh, my gosh, you know?

BOWERS HEALEY: Hmm.

CHRISTIE: He's long since dead now. But it was small world. You know, here she is. This little child that he had had grew up and was going away to school and we were picking her up. Small world. So that was kind of fun. Stories. Da Nang.

BOWERS HEALEY: May I ask you this, while you're thinking, you mentioned music, a lot of music. Were there films and what type of news did you get while you were in Vietnam?

CHRISTIE: Very limited news that I was aware of. And--

BOWERS HEALEY: Stars and Stripes?

CHRISTIE: Pardon?

BOWERS HEALEY: Stars and Stripes, was that available?

CHRISTIE: Yes, Stars and Stripes was there. Stars and Stripes would be the news source. Films, I don't remember a lot of films. I'm sure there were, but we didn't do them. Personally. We would go have dinner. After work we'd go have dinner and then go back and crash and get up the next morning and start all over again. Because we were usually up fairly early.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. I interrupted you while you were pondering whether there 01:42:00was any other story that you wanted to share about Da Nang.

CHRISTIE: Oh, gosh. No, I can't think of anything per say. I guess I'm protective. No, we can move on.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. Your third duty assignment. How much notice did you have before you moved out?

CHRISTIE: About 24 hours. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. How much gear did you have at that time? Possessions. You went shopping? What did you do? Did you have much?

CHRISTIE: I actually had a metal and aluminum tin cubicle built. One of the guys built it for me and we packed it full of stuff and shipped it home.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you do that at Da Nang? You shipped it home or at the end?

CHRISTIE: I believe so. Because that was the APO address [inaudible].

BOWERS HEALEY: All right.

CHRISTIE: And in it were some bronze candlesticks and memorabilia that the North Vietnamese guy, when we would drive past, I'd say, see those things? I want those. Buy them for me. And he would-- we didn't ask. He would negotiate and buy them and then bring them back to us. Better not to ask sometimes what the situation is. So, I was shipping stuff like that home. I had a shell casing that somebody had given me, and we took it in, and somebody hammered it out and made a bowl out of it for me. So, I've got the shell casing bowl that I still have. Poncho liners would go home. Dirty clothing, you know, stuff that are totally 01:44:00worn out. I had gone to Hong Kong a couple of times. Well, actually, I went to Bangkok once and Hong Kong another time. So, stuff that I bought in Hong Kong would be shipped home. Yeah, so things were going back and forth and when I rotated down to Phan Rang, I really didn't have that much that I had to take.

BOWERS HEALEY: When did you arrive at Phan Rang, if you know?

CHRISTIE: When I got there? [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: What unit was there? What military unit?

CHRISTIE: There was a 35th Fighter Wing. And Technical Fighter Wing.

BOWERS HEALEY: Is that Air Force or what branch?

CHRISTIE: Yup. No, it was Air Force. Different culture. Different attitudes, different people.

BOWERS HEALEY: Can you describe that different culture and attitudes?

CHRISTIE: It's just that I love my Marines. Air Force was very different.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. [laughs]

CHRISTIE: You know, it's they're just different characters. Different ways of life, different things that they're working on. They weren't combat. They were combat, but they were airplanes for the most part. They weren't ground pounders.

BOWERS HEALEY: Mm-hm.

CHRISTIE: And so, they were very different.

BOWERS HEALEY: Before we talk more about Phan Rang, would you spell that, please?

CHRISTIE: P-H-A-N then second word R-A-N-G.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Thank you. And how was your overall experience at Phan Rang for your last couple of months?

CHRISTIE: So, I was a unit program director at that point.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, I had different obligations. And that's where I started to learn 01:46:00about some of the dangers that we could have gotten into elsewhere where we were protected. As I mentioned, the three women were killed at different times, but they weren't all together. But, I mean, it did happen. In Phan Rang, I was alerted to the fact that the VC that are picked up have the pictures of the women in the unit, that they're carrying. We were targets. And so, I never had a clue when we were in Da Nang or Nha Trang that we could have been targets. That's something very different. We had peeping Toms. A lot of peeping Toms. They would come up and we had a hooch that was down the hill from the colonels 01:47:00and to the side of the officers' quarters. We're kind of isolated. We had no phone per se. Well, I take that back. We had a phone. We had no security. So, we had the dog, we had Winnie the dog, Winnie the Pooh, and she would bark whenever something wasn't right. And there were a couple nights, I mean, I looked out one window and saw some guy hanging over the window looking in. I didn't know that was going on at the other places. Another night the dog barked, and somebody was trying to-- they were out in the bushes by the jeep. Trying to get in. He went after probably a Vietnamese one night, or the dog, she went after somebody because they were very slight in a white shirt and the dog chased him up the hill. So, there were things like that that were going on that I didn't know 01:48:00about before. And it's probably just as wise because we probably wouldn't have had the confidence to go out and do what we did if we had known that was all going on. So, in Nha Trang, I was totally oblivious. Da Nang, I was beginning to catch on. And now all of sudden, the reality is coming home. You're in a war zone now and things aren't always nice. But we knew, as I said, we knew about the violations that were going on. That's all I'll say about that, because it did happen. And as a unit and program director, I was keenly aware of the fact that you had to watch out. You had to really watch out. One of the women in my unit, one of the gals, went to the beach with a fellow and they were just going 01:49:00to go picnic. There was a grenade in the package that they were taking. Of charcoal. So, you know--

BOWERS HEALEY: So, she went to the beach with a fellow who was an Airman? Air Force?

CHRISTIE: Air Force.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: They were going to have a picnic. Make a fire on the beach. So fortunately, they spotted the grenade before they did that. But I mean, that's what you always had to be aware of down there. And I'm sure it was happening elsewhere.

BOWERS HEALEY: Was the beach part of the base?

CHRISTIE: No.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: No, it was close. It was close, but it was not part of the base. So, it was a different job that I had to do completely. And I dealt more with senior officers and staff than I did the men in the center.

BOWERS HEALEY: Now, this was the era before cell phones. So how did you communicate with the senior officers and the staff?

CHRISTIE: Show up at the door.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: It's pretty obvious if you were there that something was going on or they would. We did have someone on base so you could bring somebody up on base. But off base, [shakes head] mm-mm. The dog was shot one time. We don't know if somebody was trying to get food or eliminate. And so, the dog got back to the house, it was bleeding, fell on the floor. And I was in my swimwear getting a suntan. And I had a very funny green mumu, you know what mumus were? That I had to throw on and combat boots. And I had to call one of the colonels. And he came up and drove the car up and we picked up the dog and took it down to the dog handlers and they patched up. But I mean, things like that happened down there. So, it was a total different awareness. We had the Aussies that lived next to us 01:51:00and then 101st was on the other side of the hill. Oh, and I didn't know that I-- one of the funny things that you say, we talk about. I learned very quickly when I'm at the Aussies, I can't say I'm stuffed. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: And that is?

CHRISTIE: After dinner you would say, "Oh, I'm absolutely stuffed." Well, it meant something totally different to the Aussies. [laughs] And they very discreetly said, "My dear, you don't say 'I'm stuffed.'" And I looked at them and kind of went, oh, okay.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did they tell you what it meant to say, "I'm stuffed?"

CHRISTIE: Uh-huh. Mm-hm.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: You can imagine. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. You're getting what we might say, or the Marines might say, you're getting short on time while you're at your last base. Did you count 01:52:00down days? Did you know when your departure was going to be?

CHRISTIE: I knew roughly when my departure was. It happened to fall right at Tet. Bad timing. So that made it tough. And that's why I didn't get out right away. So, I rolled into the next couple of weeks.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Before we talk about Tet, you did mention going to Bangkok and Hong Kong. How did you get to those places? Was that liberty or what was it?

CHRISTIE: Yeah, it was liberty. You got two liberties. The first one I flew-- oh, my gosh. It was during those first six months when I was at Nha Trang and get on a commercial flight out of Saigon. Go to Saigon, get on commercial flight. The lieutenant that I was talking about had a buddy who lived in 01:53:00Bangkok. And so he was going to take care of me and, you know. [laughs] Oh, it was crazy. What he really did, he took care of me, but he also used my room to entice all the stewardesses. [laughs] So I always had to be discreet and knock on the door to make sure that I wasn't breaking something up, one might say. But I got invited to some dinner and I had to dance with the Minister of Defense. So, he made sure that I was taken care of first, you know, but it worked both ways. So, yeah, I can't remember his name now, but thank heavens. But yeah, he was very happy to have an extra room to wine and dine the stewardess. And so that was Hong Kong. But I got to see a lot of Hong Kong. I got to do the little 01:54:00tours. I got to buy Thai silks. I still have a bunch of Thai silks. I don't know what I'm ever going to do with them. Make a wall hanging. But it was a fun break. It was a fun break. And the lieutenant knew him and so I felt comfortable doing that. You just trusted everybody. And then Hong Kong was out of Da Nang. Right before I went to Phan Rang. Again, I shopped, I bought a lot of things. I had purses made. Now, how often do you use a purse nowadays? But I still have one or two of them. Little handbags. And I had clothes made. I had a black silk dress made with a white inset that I wore until it became gray, basically. 01:55:00Heels, shoes, the shoes that we had worn in country were so shot at that point that you could get new shoes made in Hong Kong and feel like-- [inaudible] and then I had a pair of olive-green loafers made. I had several, but I wore those olive-green ones all the time. And they were not regulation, but they were very comfortable, so I wore them a lot. I don't think they ever made it home. But we shopped, we ate, and we shopped.

BOWERS HEALEY: How did you transport those? Your shopping?

CHRISTIE: I think they came back with us in suitcases. And that's why I had the tin containers made.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And then shipped home. So that would be how I fill those up. Yeah. I'm trying to think if I bought it. I bought prints. I bought paintings. Things that 01:56:00I still have to this day that were from Hong Kong. Very little in the art world from Thailand. I had a few rubbings. There might be one downstairs still. One of the temple rubbings. But I [inaudible] toured a lot in Bangkok. I ate a lot in Hong Kong [laughs] and shopped.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. January 1968, and you're about ready to go home. Tell me what happened there.

CHRISTIE: Well, we knew something was coming. We had been alerted that the probability was pretty good that all hell will break loose. But I wanted out. I had made arrangements to see people along the way going home. I had made arrangements in [Oki??], I had made arrangements in Japan. So, I had people I 01:57:00wanted to see there and they were kind of counting on me. We had a range of windows, but there were four of us that DROS'd at the same time at that point. Two of them were sisters and they went to Thailand, which wasn't a problem, but we all ended up in Saigon together. And that's where I have a picture of the one Donut Dollie with a donut and a coffee cup. It's the only donut I ever saw the whole time I was in Vietnam. And things were tense. Things were quiet. And when things get quiet, you knew something might happen. So, we ended up at the Rex Hotel that night and there was a big bar on top and you could see all around the city. And I was able to-- we couldn't get out. I mean, there was nobody in the Red Cross offices to check us out, their passport offices. So, we ended up at 01:58:00the Rex Hotel and I met a man who had a plane, as the expression goes. And he flew Bird Dogs. So, he said, if you're willing to go at dawn, I'll fly out. I'll get you back to Phan Rang.

BOWERS HEALEY: What's a Bird Dog?

CHRISTIE: A small spotter plane.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Two-seater.

BOWERS HEALEY: Military or not?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, I said fine. I mean, no place to go. And so, we met on the flight line and got into the plane. And I remember the fires burning and the potholes in the runway. And because he had the small plane, he could dodge them and get enough speed to get up. Took me back to Phan Rang. I showed up at the flight line and they're like, what are you doing here? We thought you left. You've been 01:59:00gone a couple of days already. So, I said, I was always-- let's put it this way, I was always in an airplane. I have a bad habit of liking to fly. It's another Phan Rang story, but I was able to figure out how to get to Cam Ranh from Phan Rang because I also had a flight suit and boots. So, I wasn't wearing my little blue uniform. I was wearing a flight suit.

BOWERS HEALEY: Where did you get the flight suit?

CHRISTIE: Oh, from one of the guys.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Mm-hm. Yep. And its full patches, and they can bury me in it. That's part of the story. So anyway, I got from Phan Rang and I got over to Cam Ranh and found out where the flight was going to Oki and what time it was leaving and 02:00:00so forth. And then we realized I have orders to get out of the country, but I also have a passport and I can't get back in a country unless I have the passport stamped. So I had to go back to Tan Son Nhut and find anybody in an office that could stamp that stupid passport so I could get back out. So that killed another day right there. And then I had to get back on that flight line and get back to Cam Ranh so I could catch the flight to Oki. It was, one might say, a bit of a hassle. But I remember being up on the roof of the recs and seeing all the firefights going on around us during Tet. So, it was happening. And I think I had been exposed enough to the war that going back and forth to 02:01:00from Cam Ranh to Tan Son Nhut and back to Cam Ranh, I was so focused on something that all the other stuff going on around me didn't matter. I was determined to get out. And I knew I had to be back at Cam Ranh at a certain time in order to catch the flight out. They weren't going to wait for me. And so that was my goal. And it was, I believe, it was a C-130 that I got out because it had the red sling bucket seats and the guy's telling me we have a P2, but nothing for you. [laughs] There's a bucket if you need it. [laughs] Ain't that funny what you remember about the whole thing? And so got to Oki and got to see my friends and then started on my journey home.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. How long did you spend on the top of the Rex Hotel or in the Rex Hotel?

CHRISTIE: I was probably there overnight.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And were there other Americans waiting to get out or not?

CHRISTIE: There were a lot of people around the bar.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: I mean, that was the only place you could go that was safe.

BOWERS HEALEY: You said it was safe. Why was it safe?

CHRISTIE: It had armed guards outside.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, you know. I mean, there are probably other locations that had safety areas, but because the VC were coming into Saigon, we didn't know where else to go or what to do. I mean, you go to the safest place you can find. That was that.

BOWERS HEALEY: Once you got to Okinawa, how long did you stay in Okinawa and where did you go there?

CHRISTIE: I was there probably four or five days. Did a lot of touring. Did a couple of other things that had to be done. Then from there, I was able to get 02:03:00to Japan. And from Japan, there was a schoolteacher that I knew who was up there. So, I went to see her and killed a couple days. But they were all teachers, basically, that I knew that were around. And I have a calligraphy on my wall that I always keep that's, "May you have the long life of the oceans and the happiness of the monkeys." That was written for me. Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: That teacher wrote it for you?

CHRISTIE: No, no. Somebody-- I said I need a piece of calligraphy. So, they went and they said, "This guy does it." I said, "Write me something." So that's what he wrote. So, I have that. But it was just, you know, they were waiting for me. They didn't know about Tet and they didn't know the problems I was having, that 02:04:00I didn't have a passport that was stamped so that things got kind of messed up in the process. And I couldn't have gotten into Japan if I didn't have a passport either. So, I was leaving military territory and going civilian at that point. And the Red Cross in the meantime thought I had gone on the plane and gone to California.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. [laughs]

CHRISTIE: Okay. With my orders, so there was no problem there. Why should she need a passport? She's got orders.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, had you not wanted to make all of these stops in Japan and Okinawa, you could have gotten out faster or not? [Christie nods] Yes.

CHRISTIE: I could have. One of the other-- the lady that had the donuts went on to California. And so, she probably said, oh, she went the other way. She went the other direction. [laughs] And when I got to California, I took off and went 02:05:00north to see a buddy and we flew planes. We flew T-33s.

BOWERS HEALEY: So where did you do that? The T-33s.

CHRISTIE: At McChord.

BOWERS HEALEY: And McChord is located where?

CHRISTIE: Up in-- what is it, Washington?

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. That's an Air Force base?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: But I have a long history and track record of being in airplanes when I shouldn't have been. [laughs] We'll keep that off the record.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, was there anybody back in Wisconsin waiting for you or expecting you to show up?

CHRISTIE: Well, they kind of knew I was coming, but they didn't know when.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And so, when I got to McChord, I think I probably called them and said I'd be home in X, Y, Z. And I don't remember if I took a flight from their home or if I went back down to California and came home. But it was kind of like, oh, 02:06:00yeah, okay, I knew I was going to go to graduate school. So, I had a target and date that I had to be back by. I had applied to NYU and to Miami of Ohio from Vietnam and got accepted to both but got a free ride at Miami. So that's why I ended up there. And I knew when I had to start, what I was going to do, and so I had flex time in between. And so, I just flexed. Went to work for a short while, couldn't get a job. Nobody wanted to hire me because I was leaving again. And the Red Cross finally gave me a job at Great Lakes Naval Hospital.

BOWERS HEALEY: Where did you go to work at Great Lakes?

CHRISTIE: Where?

BOWERS HEALEY: When?

CHRISTIE: When I get home. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Before you got home. [laughs]

CHRISTIE: When I got home. I probably had to be at school by August. So back that up, it was probably June, maybe? It was a couple of months that I was there.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. What did you do for the Red Cross at Great Lakes?

CHRISTIE: I got in trouble. I refused to wear my hat until I walked through the door. I got chewed out for that. I would go down on the wards-- because they had a lot of recruits, I wasn't supposed to talk to the recruits. And of course, I had to talk to them. Hi, where are you from? Oh, you're going to have a good time. And I was too cheerful when I went into the wards. So, I was not respectful of the status-- again, that's a difference between SRAO and SMH. They 02:08:00were very respectful of the men in the wards and the conditions they were in. And we were like, as I said, this crazy wacko group that just [noise]. And so, it was hard to not do that and not talk to the guys. So, they were happy to see me go away to school. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: So, you worked on your grad. What did you do? Just briefly tell me, what was your grad school all about?

CHRISTIE: Grad school was Miami of Ohio. I had a full assistantship in the ceramics department, and I got a degree in educational supervision.

BOWERS HEALEY: And what were your plans after that?

CHRISTIE: Go back overseas. [laughs] Left the country. Didn't like American women. And when I first got back to Wisconsin, I did a presentation with the Red 02:09:00Cross and afterwards I had some women come up to me shaking their finger and going, "We know what you did." And I'm like, "No, you don't. You have no clue what I did, lady." And I thought, that's it. I'm not talking about it anymore. They will never know, as a woman where I've been. A man, they expected Vietnam. But women, they had no clue. So, I just didn't talk about. And then I would listen to snide comments and comments in the news when I was in graduate school and just, that part of my life didn't exist. So, I just kept it silent.

BOWERS HEALEY: Snide comments about American women or about American service members as a whole?

CHRISTIE: Both. Well, about mainly the Vietnam War.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And so, I didn't want to discuss it. I didn't want to bring it up. I didn't want to talk about it. And if they don't have a clue, then I don't have to say anything. And I decided that I had great experience, so I'm going to go back overseas. And I applied to the USO because I knew they would take me. And they gave me a choice of going back to Vietnam. I said, I've been there. I said, I want to go to Thailand, but nothing opened. But we have a slot on Guam. And I thought, well, it's a nice, comfortable area again. It's tropical. I can go back to the tropics. And so, I went as the associate director of Guam and worked with another fellow who was another associate director, and the director and the director had a heart attack eventually. And so, both of us kind of ended up being the director. But we did crazy things. It was a beach club. It was on the 02:11:00beach, right on the water. We had sharks come into the swimming area that we had to get everybody out because the sharks were coming. We ran a daycare center basically for kids, for the dependents. I was very busy in the community. Met my husband. The rest, as they say, is history.

BOWERS HEALEY: What was your husband doing in Guam?

CHRISTIE: He was in the Navy. It was JAG. But he was a yeoman.

BOWERS HEALEY: He was a yeoman.

CHRISTIE: He was a yeoman. He was a Yale graduate, and he was drafted and so he became a yeoman. And his office was right across from the mailboxes. [laughs] How convenient. [laughs] So anyway, that was kind of life and then we eventually 02:12:00decided to get married and that ended my career.

BOWERS HEALEY: Did you have a particular commitment with USO when you went over there? Was a year contract or--?

CHRISTIE: It was. It was two years. So, I resigned before my two years was up and I came back around the long way. My dear, sweet mother came to meet me, and we went around the world.

BOWERS HEALEY: Oh, okay. How much time did you spend going around the world?

CHRISTIE: Oh, it was a couple of months.

BOWERS HEALEY: And your mother was still living in Madison?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. She had never really been on an airplane, hadn't gone anyplace. So, this was a real bold adventure for her. And she trusted me. [laughs] She believed that I knew what to do. Yeah, it was a very strange trip. And then we 02:13:00had some fun things happen. We had some really weird things happen. But she had never really traveled. So, it was all brand new for her. And I had mail delivered to USOs around the world and I would stop and pick up mail every once in a while. We ended up at a wedding in Nepal. Somebody from the group had been from Wisconsin and he was working there, and he invited us to a wedding. It was like, oh, okay. So, I mean, that was totally strange, and you know, just funny things. I mean, we got a turkey, and we were going to go to Egypt and they advised us not to. We could go to Israel, but we couldn't go from Israel to 02:14:00Egypt for various reasons, which I won't get into. But yeah, so it was a very, very interesting experience.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, this was a trip with your mom before you got married?

CHRISTIE: Pardon?

BOWERS HEALEY: This was-- the trip was before you got married?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And I kept writing letters home to my poor husband saying, I'm not sure if I want to get married. And he's like, oh. So, he would write to the next USO stop and everything else. But I did get married.

BOWERS HEALEY: And when did you get married?

CHRISTIE: 1970. I keep saying Pearl Harbor Day. He keeps saying no, it was actually December 5th. [laughs] I keep saying I wasn't sober until Pearl Harbor Day. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And getting married, where did you continue on with your life then?

CHRISTIE: Jacksonville, Florida.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: He was still in the Navy.

BOWERS HEALEY: Oh, okay. So, you were a Navy wife for a while? Depending?

CHRISTIE: Sort of, yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Sort of. Okay.

CHRISTIE: Sort of.

BOWERS HEALEY: And how long did you continue on as a Navy dependent or wife?

CHRISTIE: Well, I guess I still am, aren't I? [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Did he leave active duty?

CHRISTIE: He did. He finished his tour of duty and then went back to law school.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. All right. I think I read somewhere you did a dissertation, and your dissertation was on women in the military. Tell me about that.

CHRISTIE: Well, it's very interesting now because it was right when cellphones were becoming popular and available to everybody. And I look back at it now and I think you guys didn't have any way to communicate. You were stuck like 02:16:00everybody else in Vietnam. And so, it's kind of interesting to see how that evolution was taking place. And there were a few that could make calls, but people were still using traditional methods. But I still am in touch with some of the ladies, which is really fun. Indeed.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Yeah. But communication has changed drastically. I mean, with the evolution of the cell phone. And so not to have that really was a limiting factor for them and made life back home very difficult, I'm sure.

BOWERS HEALEY: I read that you once considered joining the military. Is that the case?

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: How long?

CHRISTIE: I would have. Couldn't have passed the physical, but I would have.

BOWERS HEALEY: [Laughs] When were you considering joining the military?

CHRISTIE: Oh, I probably always considered it, but no, to start with, I had-- this is probably when you can put it on the record or not put it on the record. I had polio as a child. So, I would never be able to pass physical.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Hasn't stopped me a great deal, but I mean, that would be enough to keep me out.

BOWERS HEALEY: I was going to ask you and I will ask you your opinion of the news coverage when you came back. Now, you've talked about coming back from Vietnam and some of the snide remarks that you heard or were directed to you. Maybe you're not a person that watches the news a great deal, but do you have an opinion as to whether or not the news coverage of Vietnam in 1968 and a little later was fair or unfair or any opinion at all?

CHRISTIE: You know, I remember it being there, but I was back in school, so most 02:18:00of my focus was spent in school doing what I had to do. Yes, the news would be odd if there was a protest. If there was something going on, I avoided it. I just stay away. And it wasn't really until the 1980s, '81, '82 that I was willing to deal with that again. And that's where this whole issue of the child running up to me and screaming and something's wrong in dealing with things like that. We had actually-- we had a couple of friends who are Vietnam vets. We all came over. We were doing slides one night and that was the start of it all. And 02:19:00Fred was in Boston doing some casework. I went with him, and I remember saying, I need to talk to somebody. And it was very interesting because I was a junior league member at that time in my little preppy junior league outfit. I'm doing my thing. And I got in a cab, and I gave the cabdriver the address of where I needed to go. And he looked at me and he said, "Lady, you don't want to go there." And I looked at him and I said, "Yes, I do." And he took me to-- it was a vet center. And one of the counselors who was a Vietnam vet, who is now a monk, met me at the door. And I opened the car door, and I went in and that was the start of being able to talk about it again. So, it was a very interesting experience at that point. And a lot has happened since then. I mean, you know, 02:20:00obviously I'm willing to talk about it, but just the events of the Red Cross accepting us. Just the history of it all coming out again now. The program no longer exists, and people don't know about it. I mean, it's a fragment of women's history and information. So, a lot has come from it. And if Fred would have talked, he was the one that started finding the Donut Dollies. The ladies that I had worked with. He started calling them. Where are you? How can we put people together again? Where can we find it? Do you know who this is? Do you know where she was? He did a lot of that work. And the Red Cross has come-- we're now all part of ARCOA, which is the American Red Cross Overseas 02:21:00Association. And they get together and we all compare notes and talk. We're going to do Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in September. One of the ladies on the committee with me was there virtually at the same time I was. We didn't know each other, but we know people, we shared people in common. So, it's going to be fun to sit and talk with her. So, it's just kind of-- it's all kind of evolved. And that would not have happened had some of this other stuff had not happened. Which is really interesting in retrospect to see how the ladies have come out of the closet, how the Red Cross is willing to accept and acknowledge what happened rather than just let it die and being nothing. So, you know, kind of fun.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. China Beach. Did you--? [laughs]

CHRISTIE: China Beach. [inaudible] bitch.

BOWERS HEALEY: Were you actually at China Beach?

CHRISTIE: China Beach was Da Nang.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And then you advised on the movie-- or the TV series, China Beach?

CHRISTIE: I met Bill Broyles when we were doing the New York ticker-tape parade. New York City ticker- tape parade. I was in charge of putting together a small display at Federal Hall, and that's kind of how I got to know some of these guys. I met Bill, and we started talking about Vietnam things. One of the silly things, they called and asked me to-- thank heaven, remember that metal case that I had built? They wanted to know what the APO on it was. It's like, oh! I just happened to have. Looked that up and was able to give them that. Different 02:23:00things. First of all, it is not a documentary, and a lot of the women take offense to the fact that it was not fair to their story. It wasn't meant to be. It was a made for TV movie, serial production. They feel slighted and somewhat demeaned that the Donut Dolly was seen as either a heavy weight, overweight character or a very stupid, simple-minded one who didn't know, completely oblivious to the world. That wasn't what it was meant to be. And they were trying to introduce different types of characters, different roles, obviously were secondary or tertiary to the main characters. But it was just like, okay. 02:24:00It's not our story. It's production. TV production. Get over it, ladies. But several people really had a hard time with it. And I did go out when they did the vets program. And I don't remember what we were talking about that day, but there was something I said that I looked around and everybody in the room is just dead silent. I said something that was just like, no, not to be published ever moment. And I don't know what it was. I don't remember what. I just remember the reaction. And so, it was very interesting to see what they did with it.

BOWERS HEALEY: When you say you went out, you went out where?

CHRISTIE: To California.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And I don't recall. When was China Beach a production? What years did it run?

CHRISTIE: Oh, my gosh. Probably mid-eighties.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Again, you'd have to Google that one to find the dates. And it was 02:25:00really about the character of the nurse and her friends who's a boonie. And they portrayed some good images. They got some reality and some of the things. But it was also a TV production. It's not a documentary. Therein lies a big difference. And so many women have a hard time. They want the documentary to be their story and their exact truth. And you have 627 women. There's 627 stories. You can't do one to just be generic for them all.

BOWERS HEALEY: In addition to your Red Cross, your USO, you're being married to a naval officer or a Navy man, any other contacts you've had with the military 02:26:00services since you left Vietnam?

CHRISTIE: Still.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And what is that?

CHRISTIE: Well, I'll go down do Memorial Day with SAF, which is a service to the Armed Forces. I'll probably serve coffee because I won't be able to hike around the [inaudible] cemetery, it's huge. If they need something, I'll help. I'm going to do Blood Drive answering this next month. I enjoy SAF the most when they have things to do with the military. I'm good with it. I'm comfortable with it. I can talk to the guys still to this day. And so, I keep in touch. They wanted to put me on, you know, can you do this for a week, this week and next week and every week for the next six months? I'm like, no, I can't. But if you 02:27:00need some help, I'll do something. As I said, I'm doing this ARCOA thing, which is Red Cross.

BOWERS HEALEY: Tell me again what SAF is?

CHRISTIE: SAF is service to Armed Forces.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. Thank you.

CHRISTIE: It would be the old SMI.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: Okay. But there are a couple of us [inaudible] and we're helping to organize it. We've got things for people to do. It's an annual meeting. There'll be two meetings and then it's goof off time. So, we have boat rides for them and trips for them to take or little excursions to take. We're running a hospitality suite. It's a chance for them all to get together and talk to people they haven't seen in years or since last month or whatever. There are a bunch of them 02:28:00coming up from D.C. They're doing the 50th anniversary in D.C. I am not doing that. So, it's just periodic whenever I can fit in things. I still like to help out.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. How did you hear about the Wisconsin Veterans Museum Oral History program and what made it-- motivated you to do this interview?

CHRISTIE: Well, 50 years ago [laughs], half a century ago, I donated a bunch of stuff to the museum. And, you know, actually, I think Luke, or somebody got in touch with me not too long ago about doing the oral history. And I've done oral histories before. I have no problem with that. I'm comfortable enough with most of the stuff. So, I said, fine. Whoops, your light changed.

BOWERS HEALEY: My lights went out. [laughs] I don't know what happened. Well, 02:29:00it's back on.

CHRISTIE: You're back on.

BOWERS HEALEY: We'll be interviewing you, so we've got you. [laughs]

CHRISTIE: Right. I think history for women is important. I've done an awful lot of research. I wrote a book. I think I sent you guys a copy of that. Women of City Point, Virginia. I spent ten years researching it. It's one of the-- a Vietnam vet-- in Connecticut, we were doing a peripatetic form for members of the phone company when this all started back in the eighties, and they didn't know how to talk to members of the family that served in Vietnam. So, there were six of us that got put together in a group and we would go out when they would have meetings or arrangements for the families and we would explain what we did in Vietnam. One of the guys happened to be a LRRP. Do you know what an LRRP is?

BOWERS HEALEY: No.

CHRISTIE: A long range reconnaissance patrol. And they became the forerunners, they merged in, I believe, with Special Forces, but I'm not one hundred percent sure. I think that's where they merged in. But long history. And anyway, he was working for a bank, and they were cleaning out a bank. He saw a book in the basement where they were cleaning out and it was about women and war for the Civil War. And he thought of me. And he gave me the book. And my police officer, my chief, when I opened the book and started reading it, the hair on the arms went up. I said, I know these ladies. I know the sights, I know the smells, I know the sounds. I know what they're going through. That was the start of it. And then Fred, my husband, said, "You can't find every woman that was in the Civil War, Jeanne." [laughs] So he got transferred to Virginia again and long 02:31:00story short, I went down to City Point one day, followed a tour bus in for the Garden Week and they all got out, went in and I thought, well, I'll go in with them and started talking to the park ranger. I said, how many women do you know who are here? And he said, we know about a dozen that were here. This is a huge base during the Civil War, the end of the war for the Army, the Potomac and General Grant, where he meets Lee, eventually at Appomattox. And so, I was still doing class work over at UConn at that point. So, I managed to get UConn to say I could do an internship down there and get credit for it. So, I worked for the National Park Services and sat in the office at City Point with people coming through with all these bits and pieces and crazy stuff that happened. And I got 02:32:00free reign at their files, free reign in the house with all the graffiti written on the upstairs walls. I mean, it was just so neat. But one day we had two things. One day we had a man come through with a picture of people landing at City Point, and they're civilians. And it's like, whoever thought-- it was a perfect picture for what happened with all the people who used to come down to see the war. They went to see what the war was about. Like, okay. And then another day we had a man come down or come in with letters and diary information about a woman who was violated. One of the first incidents is when the military occupies the area. So that's kind of how I started the book with the rape of Mary Stiles. And I just continued through the year, year plus occupation of people at City Point. And I mean, in researching the ladies, I knew so much. 02:33:00Based on my own experiences of what happened and what the sounds-- I was able to trace bugle calls. Most people reading it would have no clue what was happening when that bugle blew. What it signaled. I could put it in chronological order of the day. I was able to trace the weather, how it impacted them. And I knew from our roles in Vietnam that we weren't all nurses. And that's the general perception, is everybody in the Civil War was a nurse. They weren't. So, I was able to stratify everything. And I have the state agents, I have the Christian commission, I have the Sanitary Commission and I have different organizations. I was able to pull all that together. So, it was just like because of this one vet giving me a book. So, it was this crazy world that has happened. And I'm going 02:34:00to do a presentation next month in Arlington, the women of Arlington that are buried in Arlington for civil war women. And again, a lot of my past comes into play with what I do. So, I got off the subject. [laughs]

BOWERS HEALEY: Well, let me do a few follow ups. You mentioned a book that you were given. Does the book have a name?

CHRISTIE: Yes. The Women of War by Frank Moore.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And does it still being published or is it available?

CHRISTIE: Oh, no, no. [walks off camera] [shows book]

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: And you can see my markers [laughs] and my markers.

BOWERS HEALEY: So, you've got the only copy of that that you know of?

CHRISTIE: No, it was 1866.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: So, you know, but that was the start of another whole evolution, just because of some guy that I know, some veteran.

BOWERS HEALEY: Interesting.

CHRISTIE: Yeah.

BOWERS HEALEY: Well, I think that I have run out of questions that I want to ask you, but maybe there's something that we missed or something that you would like to cover at this time.

CHRISTIE: I have some long notes.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay.

CHRISTIE: No, I wanted to mention Cornelius. We did Major Jutz. No, I think 02:36:00we've hit most of them. You've got slides to go with it. So, you'll have to tie those in. Good luck. [Bowers Healey laughs] Well, the crazy thing with Major Jutz is-- oh, not Major Jutz, Cornelius, the chief of police, he is buried at Bourne Cemetery a few minutes away from here.

BOWERS HEALEY: And that's in Massachusetts?

CHRISTIE: Uh-huh.

BOWERS HEALEY: Okay. And your current-- okay.

CHRISTIE: And so, we're 18 miles north of Cape Cod. He's buried on Cape Cod. And how small our world is. But I go down there, and we put our border on his tombstone. Give him a salute and you know, it's-- I don't know where his family is now. But I still care. I still do my thing.

BOWERS HEALEY: All right. Well, Sam, I thank you very much for doing this 02:37:00interview. Appreciate it. Sharing your information. And if you don't have anything else, that'll be the end of the interview. But stay on, I just want to stop the recording.

CHRISTIE: Okay.

[Interview Ends]