Women of the Viet Cong

We are so used to the narrative of the Vietnam War being told through a masculine lens; male politicians, sending male soldiers to Vietnam, movies about male soldiers and male historians writing all the textbooks. But there is a group whose perspective we don’t hear from very often, and that is the Vietnamese women who fought for the Viet Cong. Hanoi Hannah and the Perfume River Squad, it is time to hear to hear your stories.

About 3 years ago, I was at a history conference in a session about the Vietnam War and one of the slides shown was a propaganda picture of a young Vietnamese woman nursing a baby with a gun slung over her shoulder. This was a perspective that I had never considered before, and three years later, I still have this image seared in my memory. I urge you to do a Google image search of Propaganda of Vietcong women, it has fascinating results.

For those who need a quick refresher on the origins of the Vietnam War, I will try to do a somewhat simple and brief recap now.

The Cold War between the US and USSR was in full swing and the fear of the spread of communism was palpable. Vietnam had a long and oppressed history of being occupied and controlled by other countries including China, France, Japan and then France again. Ho Chi Minh formed the Communist Party and began to lead an Independence movement against the colonial oppression that Vietnam had been under for years. After WWII, Ho Chi Minh managed to fight off the French and the country was divided into North and South Vietnam.  The North were communist, and the South were not, but the South were allied with the USA. Both the North and South wanted a unified Vietnam but had different political ideologies.

Now because the North were communist the USA were freaking out. They had this concept called the “Domino Theory”, where they believed that if one country fell to communism, then all of the surrounding countries would then be taken over- falling like dominos- so they decided to “help” South Vietnam by sending advisors and troops… and bombs.

This is where Australia gets on board, Prime Minister Menzies, obviously feeling Australia was a bit vulnerable after WWII, not to mention being staunchly anti-communist- he had in fact held a referendum to try and change the constitution and have the communist party banned,- well Menzies thought that we needed all the friends we could get and promised the US military advisors to help train the South Vietnamese soldiers. After Menzies retired, Prime Minister Harold Holt, yes, the same one who disappeared into the ocean never to be seen again, continued trying to be besties with the US-ties, so much so that he bellowed the catch cry to show his support for President Lyndon B Johnson :“All the way with LBJ!” and by the end of 1966 he had sent 6000 Australian troops to Vietnam including the National Servicemen who were conscripted.

Thanks to pop culture, you are probably pretty familiar with the combat style of a US or Australian army, but the Vietcong, which is the common name of the North Vietnamese Communist army, were fighting guerrilla style. No uniforms, secret tunnels, booby traps and only picking battles that they knew they would win. And part of these tactics, was having women fight in the war.

While researching for this episode, I popped into the library and borrowed 7 books about the Vietnam War, thinking I could get some great information to share about the women who fought in the conflict. Out of 7 textbooks dedicated to the Indochina war, do you know how much information on women I found. 6 sentences. One of those sentences said that it had been suggested that women’s participation made the difference between defeat and victory. This begs the question, if they are so significant, why have the other 6 textbook authors writing about Vietnam not included their perspective. Do a Google image search of Women in the Vietcong and tell me those fierce gun slinging gals don’t deserve at least one chapter in a high school textbook. It is time to tell her-story.

Ho Chi Minh, the Vietnamese communist leader said “Women make up half of the population. If women are not liberated, then society is not free.” And so, women were invited to play a role in fighting for their nation. Not just invited, encouraged. One of the methods to encourage women was propaganda.

The Vietnam Courier, which was an English language publication in Hanoi, the now capital of Vietnam, would publish statements such as; “A woman cannot be equal if she is shut out from social productive labor and restricted to private domestic labor.” This Hanoi newspaper would go on to publish propaganda pictures and stories of the courageous feats of women who were fighting for their country.

Speaking of Hanoi, one of the most famous Vietnamese women during the war was a radio personality who the American soldiers dubbed Hanoi Hannah. If you have seen the 2020 Spike Lee film on Netflix Da Five Bloods, she is depicted in that. A few of the more commercial articles about her describe her as silken voiced, and you can search for some footage on YouTube if you want to have a listen. Her broadcasts, would pose questions to the “Intelligent American GIs” such as, “why have you come to Vietnam?” and “Do you miss your families and homes? They are questioning why you are here. In America there is no unity, there is violence, there are protests against you.” These announcements would be interspersed with playing American music like “We gotta get out of this place” and the announcement of the US soldiers’ deaths and their hometowns. She also gave news from both within Vietnam and the US, namely the My Lai massacres, and she would comment on the racial inequities that the African American soldiers experienced.

Hannoi Hannah grew up with a penchant for Hollywood Movies and she had a particular love for “Gone with the Wind.” And that is what spurred her on to learn English. It would be easy to just say that the North Vietnamese Defense Ministry’s propaganda department wrote her scripts and just got her to translate and read them, but “Frankly my dear, she did give damn.”

In a 1992 television interview, 17 years after the war was over, she spoke about her feelings toward the American soldiers in Vietnam, “I just wanted the GIs to resist this fighting… Of course, it is difficult for them because they are sent by the government, but our work is to make them believe that the war they are fighting is not just. It is against the Vietnamese people.”

Hanoi Hannah was a nickname given to her by the American soldiers, but she actually had a pseudonym, of which I will not butcher with my Australian pronunciation, but it translates to Autumn Fragrance. Speaking of fragrance, now would be a perfect time to meet the Perfume River Squad. Yes, that’s right, BEST NAME EVER!

The Perfume River is actually the name of a river that runs through the city of Hué. It is named that, because in Autumn, when the flowers from the upriver orchards fall into the water, floral fragrance is carried down the river. However, due to industrialisation it apparently does not smell as aromatic as it once did. Coincidental how Hanoi Hannah had an Autumn themed name too.

Back to the Perfume River Squad, they were a top secret, all female combat unit whose job it was to gather covert information and deliver it to the communist leaders. The squad was mostly made up of young women in their late teens and early 20s. By day they were selling conical hats and by night they were funnelling intel that helped to launch the Tet Offensive. Working as street traders enabled the squad to secretly gather details about the movement of enemy troops. A former member explains why she joined the war effort, “I wanted to liberate myself, liberate my homeland, and liberate other women.”

When the Tet Offensive happened, their role shifted from underground information gathering, to combat. They were called in to fight and fight they did. Hurling grenades, shooting AK-47s and battling for their survival. A survivor explains, “We just kept shooting… if we didn’t shoot, they would have shot us, so we just kept fighting,” In this battle, four of the 11-member squad died.

The Tet Offensive, the event for which the Perfume River Squad were gathering info, is named after the Lunar New Year Holiday- Tet, which is when the North Vietnamese attacks occurred. It is said to be a major turning point in the war and the event that triggered the slow withdrawal of American troops from Vietnam. So why was it such a shock?

A couple of reasons, firstly Tet was a holiday, and for the North to plan an attack on their own holiday, was completely unexpected. Tet is traditionally a time of feasting, family and friends, and there was meant to be a cease fire, so a full-on offensive was a total sneak attack. Additionally, up until this point, most of the warfare had been guerrilla style- not the primate- but the underground resistance type of fighting. Think tunnels, jungles, booby traps and secret trails.

But Tet, was a departure from this, simultaneously more than 30 cities were attacked and one of those cities was Hue, where our Perfume River Squad was stationed and a 3week battle for control of the city ensued. “My comrades died… and our anger mounted, as did our determination to fight to get revenge for our sisters.” This quote from a surviving member of the Perfume River Squad, shows her loyalty to both the cause and her sister squad of spies. Many of the surviving Vietnamese women and their offspring, suffered from the ill effects of Agent Orange, which was the chemical defoliant that the US used to eliminate the forest to give them an advantage over the jungle tactics being used.

I just cannot get to all of the stories about the Vietnamese women who fought in the war during my 15-minute episode. But that makes me happy, because there are definitely many more stories of women in Vietnam that still need to be told, and hopefully one day I will scan the index of a textbook and be able to locate a section that is dedicated to Hanoi Hannah, the Perfume River Squad, or any of the other long haired warriors who fought for their country.

If you do want to read a translated diary of a young female Vietnamese doctor during the War, I cannot recommend highly enough, “Last Night I Dreamed of Peace”. It is a fascinating primary source about a female surgeon’s experience during the war. The author died at 28 years old and here is brief extract.

“A person’s most valuable possession is life. We only live once; we must live so as not to sorely regret the months and years lived wastefully, not to be ashamed of the months and years lived wastefully, so that when we die we can say, “All my life and all my strength have been dedicated to the most noble goal in life, the struggle to liberate the human race.”

This Kelly Chase, on the Case.