WOMEN VETERANS HISTORICAL PROJECT
ORAL HISTORY COLLECTION
INTERVIEWEE:Mary Galster Layton Starkey
INTERVIEWER:Therese StrohmerDATE: 11 June 2016
[Begin Interview]
TS:Today is June 11, 2016. My name is Therese Strohmer. I'm at the home of Mary
Starkey in Fayetteville, North Carolina, to conduct an oral history interview
for the Women Veterans Historical Collection at the University of North Carolina
of Greensboro. Mary, how would you like your name to be on your collection?
MS:Mary Galster Layton Starkey.
TS:Okay. Mary, thank you so much for letting me come here today. It's nice to
meet you. Why don't we start off by having you tell me where and when you were
born, where you're from?
MS:I was born in October of 1949 in Buffalo, New York.
TS:Okay.
MS:And I had a very good family. Mother, father, two brothers.
TS:What did your father and mother do for a living?
MS:My mother at one point worked in a government factory making parts for--We
don't know for what. She had a TS [Top Secret] clearance.
TS:Oh, she did? Okay.
MS:And my dad worked for the phone company, and he had a TS clearance.
TS:Oh, so they were secret stuff.
MS:Well, that's because he ran into something on Niagara Falls Air Force Base
that he shouldn't have run into, but he was there on his job with the phone company.
TS:I see, okay.
MS:And so, he was the only one--because he saw something they had to interview
him and everything and they gave him his clearance--because my mom had a
clearance--and so he was the only one that was allowed to go on the air base to do--
TS:The certain work for that.
MS:Yeah, the phone company work.
TS:Gotcha. Did your mom continue working when your brothers and sisters were born?
MS:Well, I have an older brother and I have a younger brother. My younger
brother went--was in the military too. And we grew up knowing my dad had been in
the army during World War II, and of course all his stories.
TS:Right.
MS:And I felt, when I got to be old enough to know, we were losing guys in
school--in high school--to Vietnam, and I knew at that point no women except
army nurses were going over there, but I felt that I could support our troops by
going in the military.
TS:Well, before we get to that, I want to ask you a couple things about growing up.
MS:Okay.
TS:So you're in Buffalo, New York, and you've got two brothers. Did you live in
the city or out in the suburbs?
MS:We lived right in the city.
TS:Right in the city. What kind of things did you do for fun?
MS:Well, my dad had a business and we worked at the business.
TS:What was the business?
MS:He--We rented travel trailers. We had twenty-two units.
TS:Oh, nice. Okay.
MS:And we each had our specific jobs.
TS:What was yours?
MS:I was--when--Friday morning or Saturday morning, depending on when the unit
came in, I was to check it and make sure it was clean and everything worked, and
then okayed the cleaning deposit back to the people.
TS:Gotcha. This was like a rental--
MS:Yeah, we rented--
TS:--where people came and stayed for a little while.
MS:Yeah, for like, two, three weeks somebody could rent the RV [recreational
vehicle] and--well, we called them trailers in those days.
TS:Right.
MS:But they could rent the RVs and take them wherever they wanted.
TS:I see. Okay.
MS:And most of them were fully self-contained.
TS:And then they would come back and you would take--I see. Okay. That's kind of neat.
MS:And my brother--older brother--would help my dad put the hitches and do the
wiring. My younger brother was a little young to do that. He was--He's six years
younger than I am, so he just kind of played around.
TS:So you had some responsibility, then, as a young girl.
MS:Yes. And we had to help with the housework. My mom worked--after she stopped
working at Wurlitzer [Rudolph Wurlitzer Company; instrument manufacturer?] she
was a waitress and kitchen manager, and it was us kids' responsibility--mine,
especially--I learned how to cook when I was very young.
TS:Right. Sure.
MS:I think I baked my first cake when I was six.
TS:Right.
MS:Of course, with supervision. And I helped with meals; we dusted and cleaned
the house on Saturday morning.
TS:Right. Well, what did you do for fun, Mary?
MS:I roller-skated.
TS:Okay.
MS:I was involved in extracurricular activities at high school.
TS:What kind of things?
MS:I was on the drill team. I was a drum major. Never made it to the
cheerleading squad.
TS:That's okay.
MS:I was in Drama and--
TS:Did you like school?
MS:Not really.
TS:No. The social part of it?
MS:That too. I never thought of myself as an intellectual. I was kind of
sub-nerdy. [chuckles]
TS:Okay.
MS:We didn't have that word when we were--
TS:What does sub-nerdy mean?
MS:I have scars on my face, and so I was--there was a lot of bullying.
TS:Oh, okay.
MS:So I kind--And I worked for my dad and I didn't have time for a lot of stuff.
TS:Right. So you kept to yourself a little bit?
MS:Yeah. And I had friends. I had a--we had an exchange student from Italy.
TS:Oh, nice. Male or female?
MS:Male.
TS:Oh, nice.
MS:And the year before that we had somebody from Peru [South America]. And they
were both my friends. And went to dance with [unclear].
TS:Which one was he from?
MS:He was from Italy.
TS:Italy. Okay.
MS:In fact, I have a picture in my yearbook of him--dancing with him. Anyway, it
was very naïve in those days.
TS:[chuckles] Oh, yeah. Okay.
MS:So I went to the high school dances and that kind of stuff.
TS:You said you did roller-skating, so your formative years were in the fifties
and early sixties.
MS:Yeah. Most of the fifties I was young. Yeah, I turned ten in '59, and then I
went up--I graduated from high school in '67.
TS:As a young girl in high school up in New York, the period of the sixties,
you've got a lot going on, right? We've got race issues, we've got political
issues, we've got Vietnam. Did you have any sense of what was going on at that
time, when you were a young girl? You talked about Vietnam.
MS:Yes, I did. My high school was predominately black, and up north--I mean, to
put it bluntly, my parents taught me not to look at a person's outside but to
look at their inside, and that's what I did. And I still do today. I have
friends that are black, white, pink with purple polka dots. Race doesn't mean
anything unless you prove to me that you're not [unclear] for that respect.
TS:Right. So it's just the person?
MS:It's the person, not the race. My daughter is quarter Cherokee [Indian]. My
best friend is--her father was from South America. And I've been all over the
world, so.
TS:Yeah, we'll have to talk about that. Well, when you were in high school, as a
young girl, or even a little girl before that, did you have a sense of, maybe,
what you wanted to do when you grew up?
MS:I wanted to be in the medical field. I wanted to be a nurse.
TS:Okay.
MS:But as I grew older and I saw our guys going off to war, I felt that I--I
felt that I needed to support them by going in the military.
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS:At what point; when you were a senior, when you were a junior?
MS:Actually, I was in the Civil Air Patrol.
[The Civil Air Patrol is a congressionally chartered, federally supported
non-profit that serves as the official civilian auxiliary of the United States
Air Force]
TS:Oh, okay. You did that sooner, then?
MS:Yeah. And I really--I tried to go to the air force but their quota was filled
and I didn't come up to their standards of appearance.
TS:Okay. What do you mean by that? Is that when you had to give a photograph and
all that?
MS:Yeah, the full-length photograph and all this and--
TS:Gotcha.
MS:Yeah. I was a curvy person.
TS:Curvy?
MS:Curvy.
TS:[chuckles]. I like that word, Mary. Okay.
MS:I was full-figured.
TS:Right.
MS:My ancestry is German peasants. [chuckles]
TS:You were a big-boned girl, right?
MS:Yeah, yeah.
TS:There you go. At what point did you decide on going into the army?
MS:Well, the army called me.
TS:Okay.
MS:My--We didn't call them ASVAB [Armed Services Vocational Aptitude Battery
test] at that time, but my military tests were so high--[Speaking to dog.
Extraneous conversation redacted]--my scores were so high that the army came
after me. That didn't come out right.
TS:They recruited you.
MS:They recruited me. And because I worked in a--kind of in an auto shop, I knew
a lot about engines.
TS:Oh, yeah. I bet you did have some good [unclear].
MS:So when I took the automotive part of the test I did very, very well. In
fact, I did so well that as far as Buffalo and surrounding areas, nobody had--no
female had come up to that standard. Ever. And in the state, in five years.
TS:So they came calling. And then what did they say about what your
opportunities might be?
MS:They gave me--because my GT score [General Technical, a section of the ASVAB,
which includes Word Knowledge, Paragraph Comprehension, and Arithmetic Reasoning
(AR)], which was like a hundred and twenty-five, which is high--
TS:Right.
MS:--they offered me the world and the fullness thereof.
TS:What did you pick?
MS:Medic.
TS:Medic.
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay. How old were you when you decided to do all this?
MS:Eighteen.
TS:You were still in high school, or you were just out of high school?
MS:Just out. Well, I went in in '68, which is about a year after I got out of
high school. I worked a little bit and--so.
TS:What did your parents think about your decision?
MS:Both my parents--Well, they didn't both have to sign for me, because in those
days eighteen for girls was not legal age.
TS:Right. Twenty-one.
MS:So my father or mother had to sign for me to okay the fact that I was going
in the military. But both of my parents signed.
TS:What did they think about it?
MS:My dad was--My parents were very happy.
TS:Oh, good.
MS:Kind of was fulfilling my mother's dreams when she was younger.
TS:Did she want to go in the service?
MS:No--Well, it--During World War II, women were ferrying aircraft from here to
England, okay?
TS:The WASPs [Women Airforce Service Pilots]?
MS:And my mother was a pilot before the age of sixteen.
TS:Really?
MS:Yes. And she wanted to do that, and my grandfather wouldn't let her.
TS:Okay.
MS:So when I decided to go in the military, they were both very proud, and
she--my parents lived--my mother kind of lived vicarious through me.
TS:Nice.
MS:And I loved the military. If I didn't like it I would never have gone back in.
TS:Well, let's talk about going you going in the first time.
MS:Okay.
TS:Because the transcriber and everybody listening doesn't know we had a chat
before this. So you went in in 1968 and you were a WAC [Women's Army Corps], right?
MS:Yes.
TS:You went to Fort McClellan [Alabama]. Why don't you tell me about that
experience? How was that?
MS:We got in process--got our uniforms and all of our tactical equipment--and
the basic training in '68 was not like basic training in '75.
TS:How was it different?
MS:They looked at the feminine part of us. There wasn't a lot of PT [physical
training]. There was classes, and classes of course in the military's drilling
and all that kind of thing, but mostly on how to prepare our uniforms. And those
days the uniforms--oh my God, we had a cord uniform--what they called cords--and
you couldn't have a crease in the sleeve.
TS:Right.
MS:So you had to iron them with towels stuffed in them.
TS:Right.
MS:But they had to be dipped in 100% liquid starch.
TS:They had to be pretty well starched.
MS:Oh, yeah. In fact, the skirts could stand up by themselves.
TS:[chuckles]
MS:And it--we had a PT uniform that was a poplin shirt and a form of denim with
shorts underneath.
TS:Like a skort?
MS:No. No, this was a skirt that buttoned down the front and then there was as a
separate pair of shorts underneath.
TS:Oh, I see. You put the shorts on separately.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Gotcha. Okay.
MS:So if we went to class, came back at 8:00 [a.m.], before we made the
afternoon formation we had to iron our clothes.
TS:What did you think about the part of it that was feminine? Were you putting
on makeup?
MS:Yes, that too. I was not a girly-girl. Never a girly-girl.
TS:Had you been active outdoors?
MS:We camped from the time I was three years old.
TS:Yeah.
MS:Went fishing; trailering; went to Nebraska and saw all the sights thereof.
TS:Right.
MS:We did a lot of things up at the Thousand Islands [Alexandria Bay, New York].
TS:Oh, nice. Okay.
MS:So I was never a girly-girl. Never. And I also had two brothers.
TS:Well then, you had to wear a skirt in the army, right?
MS:Yes.
TS:How was that?
MS:I hated it.
TS:[chuckles]
MS:But in those days women wore dresses and skirts. We had to wear skirts to
high school. And up in Buffalo winters are not warm.
TS:Right.
MS:And I had to walk to school. And it wasn't uphill or downhill, it was kind
of--but the point is, one of the stretches I had to walk was a plaza on this
side, and a ballfield on this side, and a railroad track behind that. So the
wind came down the railroad track, across to the back of [chuckles] the plaza.
TS:Tried to keep your skirt down on that.
MS:Well, that too, and my knees--
TS:Froze.
MS:Yeah. We weren't allowed to wear pants and pull up the legs when we got to
school. No, couldn't do that.
TS:So you were used to wearing a skirt.
MS:Yes. I hated it, but yes.
TS:What did you think about your basic that you went through originally?
MS:I learned a lot. I already knew how to drill.
TS:Right, because you had the drilling that you did.
MS:But the aspect of the military, like rank--
TS:Who to salute and all that stuff?
MS:Yes. Military justice, we had classes in that.
TS:Military bearing, all that kind of thing.
MS:Yes, and those days we also had--for the life of me I can't think of the name
of it now, but it was the rules that you had to follow if you were captured.
[The Code of the U.S. Fighting Force is a code of conduct that is an ethics
guide and a United States Department of Defense directive consisting of six
articles to members of the United States Armed Forces, addressing how they
should act in combat when they must evade capture, resist while a prisoner, or
escape from the enemy]
TS:Okay. Code of conduct.
MS:Yeah, but the code of conduct was--
[Speaking simultaneously]
TS:UCMJ.
[The Uniform Code of Military Justice (UCMJ), is the foundation of military law
in the United States. It was established by the United States Congress in
accordance with the authority given by the United States Constitution in Article
I, Section 8, which provides that "The Congress shall have Power....To make
Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval forces."]
MS:That was--but these were rules that were on posters, like--
TS:Like from the Geneva Convention or something?
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay. So you had to learn those kinds of things?
MS:Yeah, we had to learn those kind of things. And basic training is a
transitional period, okay?
TS:Tell me about your experience though in that transition. Tell me how it was
for you. How did it make you transition in the army?
MS:It taught me discipline. I already had discipline, but it taught me more discipline.
TS:Okay.
MS:To listen to the people that were above me and do what I needed to do. The
"W-H-Y" word was never in our vocabulary.
TS:Right.
MS:If they said, "Jump," you asked them, "How high?" Okay? That's the way it was.
TS:Did you ever get in trouble?
MS:No.
TS:No. You followed the rules?
MS:Yeah, I followed the rules. My drill sergeant was a World War--was a Korean
[War] veteran. She was tall and skinny. Her name was Sergeant Deshazo[?], and
she instilled that in all of us.
TS:Gotcha. To follow, and discipline.
MS:Yeah. And I don't know about the other gals but I was not a neat freak. I was
messy. And we had to keep our area in a specific way. We had to keep our bed a
specific way.
TS:Right.
MS:We had to roll everything we owned. Like, our towels had to be rolled to the
point where you could throw them at a wall and they wouldn't come unraveled. The
same way with our socks and our bras and everything else.
TS:And you learned that okay?
MS:Yes. Yes, I learned--I learned that, and we had to learn how to clean our
brass [insignia]. Now, when I was in basic we had the Pallas Athena [insignia of
the Women's Army Corps] on one side and the U.S. on the other but they were
one-piece brass; it was like a stamped brass.
TS:Right.
MS:But the brass had a varnish[?] on it, and to clean that brass properly you
used Brasso [metal polish] and nail polish remover.
TS:I see.
MS:And you soaked them and then you rubbed them and you rubbed them. [chuckles]
TS: Good and shiny.
MS:You had to keep yours shiny. And of course, we had the pot hats.
TS:What kind of hats?
MS:We called them pot hats. They were round.
TS:Pot, as in P-O-T?
MS:Yeah. They were round, they had kind of a ridge in the back--
TS:Oh, I know what you mean.
MS:--and they came down and they had a belt, and right in the middle of it--Get
down! [speaking to dog]
TS:You had the insignia.
MS:We had our hat brass and those had to be--
TS:Polished as well.
MS:Yeah, yeah. And as I said, you had to know how to iron your uniforms, and
these were all--these were all things we had to learn.
TS:Right.
MS:And we lived in an open bay.
TS:Right. You probably hadn't done that before.
MS:Huh?
TS:You probably hadn't done that before.
MS:No, no. And you're in a room--a big room--with thirty to thirty-five other
women, and there were--here and here were the beds. And you've got a bunk, a
wall locker, and a foot locker. That was it. And you had to keep everything in
order, as I said, and the center aisle was called the God's Aisle, and nobody
but the DIs [drill instructor] walked down God's Aisle. And it had to be
spit-polished and shined, on our hands and knees, with Johnson's [Paste] Wax.
TS:Right. Polishing.
MS:Yeah. And then we'd get the buffer out and we'd [imitates buffing machine
noise] the buffer. Yes.
TS:Was there anything that was particularly difficult physically for you during
basic training?
MS:No, no.
TS:Emotionally was it difficult?
MS:Well, I'm very close to my family.
TS:Had you been away from home before by yourself?
MS:Camp. Yeah. But it didn't bother me.
TS:Okay.
MS:I was homesick, I missed my parents and my brothers, but one of the things my
father said before he signed the papers were, "You know you can't just come home
anymore. You cannot just drop everything and come home."
I said, "Yeah, I know that, and I will follow the rules." And that's when my
parents signed her name.
TS:So then when--Oh, I'm sorry.
MS:Go ahead.
TS:When you finished with your basic training, then you went on to your medic training.
MS:Yeah.
TS:And where did you go for that?
MS:Fort Sam Houston, Texas. San Antonio.
TS:How as that?
MS:Well, great. I learned a lot. We did--In those days because it was the same
medic training that the guys went through--of course we didn't have any guys in
our class, it was strictly female. Females here, males here.
TS:Okay. Segregated.
MS:Oh, very. And the standing joke is we had the [United States Army] Special
Forces medics got their basic medic training at Fort Sam. And I disliked them
immensely because--
TS:You liked them or disliked them?
MS:Disliked them.
TS:Disliked, okay.
MS:Because they were pushy and they were egotistical, and they believed anything
in a skirt would fall all over them. And I didn't. But we marched to work from
our barracks--again, open bay--from our barracks to the training area and back
home, and we'd march to things like, "Sittin' On The Dock of the Bay." [hit
single recorded by Otis Redding in 1967] That was one of our cadence calls. And
of course, the other ones that everybody uses.
TS:How was the training for you?
MS:It was informative, and I really liked it because we learned to do things as
a nurse's aide--I mean as a medic--that we did not learn as nurse's aides. I was
a nurse's aide--
TS:Before you went in.
MS:--before I went in.
TS:What kind of things were different?
MS:Well, we used syringes and needles to do venipunctures. You know what a
venipuncture is?
TS:We can describe it.
MS:A venipuncture is what--when you go to have lab work done they stick a needle
in your arm and take vials of blood. We didn't have the vials and the special
covers and all that kind of stuff. We had a syringe which had a needle and we
had to find the vein. That's a venipuncture.
TS:I got it.
MS:And we did it to each other.
TS:Okay. To learn.
MS:To learn. We didn't have the dummies. If we--The first day that we learned
was standard first aid but it was not with a mannequin. We didn't have the mannequins.
TS:You were guinea pigs [test subjects] on each other.
MS:Yes.
TS:How did that go?
MS:It was fine. I didn't have a problem with it.
TS:Anybody have a problem on your arm?
MS:No. My veins were really good in those days.
TS:[chuckles] Good.
MS:Not anymore but, yeah, they were really good.
TS:Did you enjoy the training then?
MS:Very much so. And we had a lot more freedom at Fort Sam.
TS:Okay.
MS:And again, my activities were different than at Fort McClellan.
TS:What did you do there?
MS:I went horseback riding; I went on tours of the historical sites like the Alamo.
TS:Right.
MS:And they had a river that runs through San Antonio when you could take cruise boats.
TS:The Riverwalk? [The San Antonio River Walk is a network of walkways along the
banks of the San Antonio River, one story beneath the streets of the city of San
Antonio, Texas]
MS:Yeah. And have dinner al fresco. And these things were great as far as I was
concerned because I liked the outdoors. And then I got orders for--I asked for California.
TS:Okay.
MS:I got Walter Reed [National Military Medical Center, Bethesda, Maryland]. I
wanted to be on the West Coast.
TS:Go someplace different.
MS:Because I'd been up and down the East Coast already.
TS:Right.
MS:And they sent me to Walter Reed, which in the long run was good.
TS:Where is Walter Reed? That's in Washington [D.C.]?
MS:Yeah. On Georgia Avenue and--
TS:That's okay, Mary. We don't need to know the address.
MS:Yeah. Anyway, it was the old Walter Reed.
TS:Okay. How was it there? How was Walter Reed?
MS:Well, we worked at Walter Reed at the hospital, but the WAC
detachment--that's what we were--the WAC detachment was out at a place called
Forest Glen, and it was a fifteen minute or so bus ride from post.
TS:Did they pick you up?
MS:Oh, yeah. They had regular--
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS:Like a shuttle?
MS:--shuttles. And they also had--in those buildings out there we had the WAC
shack, which was the WAC building. And in those days, we had a bed check.
TS:Like a curfew?
MS:Well, yeah, you had the curfew, but they would come through and check like a
prison to make sure you were in your room. You could be up, but you had to be in
your room.
TS:At a certain time.
MS:At a certain time. And no males could come in. They had a big sitting room.
TS:Okay.
MS:And if you had a date, the date could go to the sitting room. A housemother
let them in and they had to sit there until we came down the stairs and--which I
guess was a good thing. But, yeah, the rules at primary--what is it--permanent
duty station were almost as strict as basic. But that's okay because there are
wild childs and there are those that aren't wild. I was not wild.
TS:No. What was the highlight of your experience at Walter Reed?
MS:New Year's Eve.
TS:Why was that?
MS:New Year's Eve of '68. My dad and my mother were both animal lovers, but my
dad was the animal whisperer. If there was a dog, a cat, in the area he would
find them.
TS:Okay.
MS:And we had the vet clinic, like, kind of right near our barracks and I'd go
in and I'd volunteer. And on New Year's Eve--I could drink on post near there
and I got some eggnog with alcohol in it--very low alcohol--but I celebrated New
Year's Eve with the vets [veterinarians] and the vet[erinarian] techs.
TS:Yeah. Nice.
MS:[chuckles] And the animals. We had a couple of dogs that were guard dogs.
TS:They were guard dogs?
MS:Yeah, they were--they had been in service.
TS:Oh, okay.
MS:One of them had cancer and they were treating him. And the other one I guess
had been wounded, if my memory serves me right. But I'd go in and I'd volunteer
and be with the animals because I love animals, as you can well see.
TS:Right. You've got a few here.
MS:Yeah.
TS:At what point did you meet your first husband?
MS:He was the bus driver.
TS:Okay.
MS:One of the shuttle bus drivers, and we met.
TS:He was in the service?
MS:Yes, he was an E-3 [Private First Class], and I was an E-3, and so that was okay.
TS:Right. Same rank.
MS:Yeah, they didn't have--I mean, it wasn't fraternization. By the time we got
to our permanent duty station, the male/female ratio was--interaction--was not
like it is--or was in basic and AIT [Advanced Individual Training]. Basic was
bad. I mean, you couldn't even be caught by the dumpster with a guy.
[Within militaries, officers and members of enlisted ranks are typically
prohibited from personally associating outside their professional duties and
orders. Excessively-familiar relationships between officers of different ranks
may also be considered fraternization, especially between officers in the same
chain of command]
TS:Right.
MS:They weren't guys. They weren't men and they weren't boys. They were threes
[E-3s], okay? And you don't hang around with three's.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:But by the time I was at Walter Reed--and he was interesting, and we just
went to movies and down to Silver Springs [Maryland], which was very close to
where we were. And we did some of the sights but not a lot of them.
TS:We had been talking earlier about how things are different now when you do
get pregnant in the service.
MS:You can stay.
TS:You can stay. But back then you got pregnant, right? So you find out you're
pregnant, and then how long after you found out you were pregnant did you have
to get out?
MS:Well, the doctors I worked with were the OB [Obstetrician] doctors.
TS:Right, because you're in the medical field.
MS:Yeah, but I was also working labor and delivery.
TS:Okay.
MS:So I knew all the doctors. And I told one of my friends who was a doctor that
I thought I was pregnant, and he said, "Well, bring me a sample in the morning."
TS:Right.
MS:The rabbit died. [euphemism for a positive pregnancy test]. [laughs]
TS:Right.
MS:And he came to me and he said, "Yeah, you are."
And I said, "Well, I really don't want to get out right now."
He said, "Well, I'll give you three months."
TS:Okay.
MS:By the time I was three months pregnant I was showing already.
TS:Right.
MS:We didn't know there was a problem. When I was six months I looked like I was
nine months. But by then I was already married and I was happy. My parents came
down to visit quite often because it was, like--a five or six hour drive is all
it was. So I had a lot of support.
TS:Good.
MS:And when Chris was born, she was little. We found out that--The human body
makes amniotic fluid to keep the baby floating around. Well, instead of doing
the lower number, mine was double or triple that, so I was all water and very
little baby.
TS:Okay.
MS:She weighed five [pounds], nine [ounces]. But in those days, yes, it was a
light baby but it wasn't critical, and obstetrics had changed by the time--No,
pediatrics had changed somewhat. [unclear] came in during that period. I'm
not--I'm not Rh sensitive but my grandmother was, and that came out during my
time in the military the first time around. And the support systems for real
preemies [babies born prematurely] had gotten to the point where they were
rescuing some of the little ones.
[If you are Rh-negative, your red blood cells do not have a marker called Rh
factor on them. Rh-positive blood does have this marker. If your blood mixes
with Rh-positive blood, your immune system will react to the Rh factor by making
antibodies to destroy it. This immune system response is called Rh sensitization]
TS:When you had to get out, your husband was still in the army?
MS:Yeah, I became a dependent.
TS:You became a dependent, so you got the support. Did it seem kind of seamless,
the way that went when you got out?
MS:Yeah, yeah. It was through the same clinic. I mean, everybody knew me anyway
because I have a big mouth.
TS:What did you feel at that time having to get out because you were pregnant?
It's just what you did, right?
MS:Yeah, it was--Women in the military at that time was not an appropriate--
TS:Career?
MS:--career, yeah--for a woman. There were certain--There was a certain class of
women that went into the military, and good girls didn't.
TS:You mean that's the perception.
MS:That was the perception.
TS:Okay.
MS:And since my father has passed away I'm going to tell this little story. My
dad worked for the phone company, as I said.
TS:Right.
MS:And he was working in the office and they were getting radio from Niagara
Falls Air Force Base, and they were talking about women in the military. And
this fellow that my dad worked with basically said, "Yeah, those women in the
military--" yada, yada, yada, yada.
And my dad, who was one of the most gentle people you've ever met in your life,
picked the guy up by the shirtfront and said, "My daughter is in the military."
"Oh, I don't mean anything by that, Harv[?]."
TS:[chuckles] So he stood up for you and all the other women.
MS:Yeah, yes. Yes, he did. And when I went home I was an E-3, and I thought my
dad was going to bust my buttons when I got out of that car. And the only thing
that was greater than that was the first time he saw me in uniform as a brand
new E-5 and a brand new jumper.
TS:Yeah.
MS:And I thought he was going to pop every button on his shirt. Because this way
he had two kids that went in the military and both of them are Airborne.
TS:Nice. We haven't gotten to that part yet, Mary. Let me ask you a couple
questions about the Vietnam War and what was going on at that time, like in the
sixties with the counterculture, the drug culture.
MS:Yes.
TS:The anti-war and what's going on in Vietnam, and you're in the service. And
also the Women's Movement is going on, too, right?
[The Women's Movement, or second-wave feminist movement, refers to a series of
political campaigns during the 1960s and 1970s for reforms on issues such as
reproductive rights, domestic violence, equal pay, women's suffrage, and sexual harassment]
MS:Well, I kind of would have fallen into the Women's Movement. I didn't believe
in burning my bra, but I did believe that women could do or be whoever they
wanted to be. Even in those days. So that wasn't a problem for me. The anti-war
and the counterculture--I never did drugs. Never, never, never. And that was
because of my upbringing; you didn't do these things. And the riots I always
thought were stupid anyway. Why do you want to hurt someone because of their
color; or restrict them from doing things because of their cult--color; or stop
them from voicing their rights as an American citizen. This did bother me but I
never ran into that.
TS:You got married in '68?
MS:Yes.
TS:So you had RFK [U.S. Senator Robert Francis "Bobby" Kennedy] assassinated;
Martin Luther King [Jr.] assassinated before him. What were your thoughts about that?
[On 5 June 1968, presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy was fatally shot
shortly after winning the California presidential primaries during the 1968 elections]
[On 4 April 1968, American clergyman and civil rights leader Dr. Martin Luther
King, Jr. was assassinated by James Earl Ray, a fugitive from Missouri State Penitentiary.]
MS:I have a picture in my yearbook of Bobby Kennedy in my high school.
TS:Oh, he came to your high school?
MS:I wasn't the politico that I am--well, relatively am now.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:In those days voting age was twenty-one. You could drink at eighteen, but you
couldn't vote until you were twenty-one. And again, my feeling was, if they can
go off to war and get shot at, they should be able--If they could off to war and
get shot at, they should be able to have a beer. But they should also have the
chance to vote for and put in office the person sending them over to wherever it was.
TS:What do you mean by that?
MS:Okay. They could drink at eighteen. Well, in New York they could, but they
couldn't--they couldn't vote.
TS:Right.
MS:The year I turned twenty-one--
TS:Oh, I see. You're saying that if they're sending them to war they should be
able to vote.
MS:Yeah.
TS:But they did change--
MS:The year I turned twenty-one.
TS:They changed the law.
MS:They changed the law to eighteen. But within five years or six years they
changed the drinking age to twenty-one.
TS:Right.
MS:And this was a--Well, we won't go into that.
TS:[chuckles] Okay. Do you remember the nights and days that JFK [U.S. President
John Fitzgerald Kennedy] was shot?
[President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated in Dallas, Texas, on Friday,
22 November 1963, while riding in a motorcade in Dallas' Dealey Plaza]
MS:I was in junior high school, and they dismissed us early and everybody was in
tears, because whatever his politics, or whatever his lifestyle, he was a damn
good president.
TS:Which one are you talking about?
MS:JFK.
TS:JFK. Okay. So you were a young girl then.
MS:Yeah, I was in junior high school, which is seventh, eighth, and ninth.
TS:Right. When his brother was shot back in '68, do you remember that?
MS:Oh, yeah, but I wasn't--Again, I wasn't as political as I am now. And it
was--I hated the fact that Martin Luther King was shot. I think the
investigation of both JFK, RFK, and Martin Luther--I think there's something
more than what came out. That's--
TS:Just your feeling?
MS:Yeah. The grassy knoll. I've seen some of the highlights. The one shot came
from the book depository, but there was one that came over a fence. You could
see the muzzle blast. Of course, in those days they didn't know what a muzzle
flash was.
[According to some JFK assassination researchers, the grassy knoll was
identified by the majority of witnesses as the area from which shots were fired,
although the Warren Commission concluded that all of the shots fired at Kennedy
came from a sixth-floor window of the Texas School Book Depository]
TS:Right, sure.
MS:But when I saw this particular documentary, I knew what it was.
TS:Right. So there's lots of controversy about those things.
MS:Questions.
TS:So you had your children, and then unfortunately they had a medical issue,
and you had told me earlier that they both passed away.
MS:Yes, they died nine months apart. And needless to say, I was in a blue funk
for a while. But my father was a very wise man too. Gentle and wise. You don't
get men like this. I was very close to my dad.
TS:Yeah.
MS:Anyway, he--I would--under the influence of alcohol [laughs]--for a while.
TS:Sure.
MS:And I was well on my way to being an alcoholic. And my dad took me aside one
day and he said, "Do you like living this way?"
"No."
"Then quit it. Make something of--Yes, you've had big heartaches--" da-da-da-da-da-da-da.
But I did. And then I started doing home health care. And then I decided to go
back in the army.
TS:Were you still married at that time?
MS:Yeah, to my second husband.
TS:You wanted to go back in the army.
MS:Yeah, I wanted him to go into the Reserves with me.
TS:Okay.
MS:And his paperwork was kicked back because of--and I didn't know why he had
gotten kicked out of the navy, but I found out then.
TS:Okay.
MS:And then two and two made four, and I approached him about some of the things
that didn't make sense to me, and I just said, "To heck with it." I went back in
the military.
TS:Did you have any doubt about going back in the army?
MS:No.
TS:Okay.
MS:Not any at all, except when they told me--Well, I had to fight with the army
because when I got out I be--I had an RE--which is re-enlistment code--of four,
which means you can't re-enlist.
[Generally, those who receive an Army RE Code of RE-1 may reenlist in the army
or another service with no problem. Individuals with an Army RE Code of RE-3 are
ineligible for reenlistment unless a waiver is granted]
TS:That's because you got out when you were pregnant.
MS:But by that time they had changed the rules, and if you got pregnant you
could stay in if that's what you wanted to do.
TS:Right.
MS:And I had the kids' death certificates, and I was estranged from my then
husband, and I proved--"This RE code is because I was pregnant and you don't do
that anymore."
TS:Right.
MS:And so, I went back in and went back to basic. [laughs] The sequel.
TS:And how was it that time; the second time; the basic training?
MS:We had a male drill sergeant I wasn't too fond of. But my contract said I was
going to jump school so I had to meet certain requirements that the normal--
TS:Okay, wait. So at the time you signed up the second time you knew you were
going to go to jump school?
["Jump School" is basic paratrooper training at the United States Army Airborne
School at Fort Benning, Georgia]
MS:Oh, yes.
TS:Okay. Did you know what career field you were going to be in?
MS:Well, yes.
TS:Okay.
MS:Because, first of all, I wanted to be here.
TS:Here being Fayetteville?
MS:Fort Bragg.
TS:Fort Bragg.
MS:Okay, because this is where Airborne was. And this was where Larry was.
TS:Okay. Larry?
MS:My--Larry Layton.
TS:Your husband at the time.
MS:Yeah--No. We got married after I got here.
TS:Oh, okay.
MS:I had to get my divorce and everything.
TS:Gotcha. Someone who you wanted to marry.
MS:Yes. Which was never in the picture when I first came down here, but anyway.
TS:Okay.
MS:I wanted to be here, I wanted to be on Fort Bragg, and I wanted to be with
him. And I knew through my brother that women were going through jump school.
TS:Because he was in--
MS:He was Airborne.
TS:Okay.
MS:And so, I got it in my contract. And I'm going to jump school so I had to
wear a pot hat all the time. I guess you get used to wearing one. Everybody else
wore baseball caps or garrison caps. And my drill sergeant didn't like me
because I was going to do something out of the ordinary for a female.
TS:Okay.
MS:And he didn't like me.
TS:This is 1975?
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay.
MS:He got relieved for actions unbecoming but we won't go there.
My captain--to digress a little--When you're awarded a medal of any kind--If
you're awarded a medal you have to have it on your uniform even if it was in a
prior service, which I was. Most women--Most people go in as privates.
TS:Right.
MS:Slick sleeve; they have nothing on their sleeves. Private has one chevron;
PFC, Private First Class, has the chevron ["V" shaped insignia used as the mark
of rank for enlisted soldiers above the grade of private] and a rocker
[arc-shaped insignia used as a mark of rank] Well, because I was a PFC when I
got out, I came in as an E-2.
TS:Okay.
MS:And I knew everything that they had taught us the first time.
TS:Right.
MS:There were new things. We did a lot more PE [physical fitness training]; we
did weapons training.
TS:Now, was it mandatory when you went back in or was it voluntary?
MS:Just. It was--
TS:Just started being mandatory?
MS:--quasi-mandatory; "You'll do good in the military if you do this." I fired marksman--expert.
TS:Okay. But you weren't throwing grenades or anything like that.
MS:No. We were--
TS:Just the M16 [rifle].
MS:Yeah. Down in the foxhole.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And--Which I found amusing and I liked it. I don't like guns but I liked it.
And because--Look, if I'm going to be in the army, and I may go to where
somebody's shooting, I want to be able to shoot back. End of statement.
TS:Right.
MS:So yeah. And our field training was different than it was the first time.
TS:Okay.
MS:We slept in platform tents the first time; we slept in pup tents the second
time. We had to have a partner, because each person got issued half a shelter
half [?].
TS:Like a buddy?
MS:Yeah. It made a two-man tent.
TS:Okay.
MS:And my partner and I were kind of slick, because the drill sergeants would
come and check our--
TS:Pup tents?
MS:--pup tents.
TS:How were you slick, Mary? What did you do?
MS:Wrapped it in poison ivy.
TS:[chuckles] And why did you do that?
MS:Because they wouldn't inspect it so close. [laughs]
TS:What were you afraid they'd find?
MS:Nothing. We were fine. It was a joke. My partner and I decided neither of us
were allergic to it; "Let's do this and see what the reaction is."
TS:What happened? What was the reaction?
MS:"Did you know you camouflaged your tent?"
"Yeah."
"Why?"
"Thought it was funny."
"Okay." [laughs]
TS:So you didn't get in trouble?
MS:No.
TS:That's pretty funny. That is a good story. I know a lot of people that could
not have done that because they were allergic.
MS:No. Yeah. My ex was very allergic.
TS:What other things did you do that were different, besides the exercise and
the weapons training?
MS:Well, our--When I went back in I took my original hat brass, which I think
there's five or six stars on it, and the bottom stars were almost wore off. You
could still see them but it had been polished so much.
TS:Right. Worn down.
MS:And--they had worn down--and--Oh, getting back to medals. I was awarded the
National Defense Service Award. It was in my records. And I went to the training
NCO [non-commissioned officer] before our first inspection and I said, "Do I
have to wear this?"
And he goes, "Yeah, you were awarded it. You have to wear it."
So I went up and I bought[?] it and put it on my uniform. My captain didn't like
that. "You get that off your uniform."
And the training NCO was coming up behind her and said, "No, she's been awarded
it so she has to wear it." She was a young, young captain; really didn't know a
lot about the military, I guess.
TS:It was the young captain that told you to take it off?
MS:Yeah.
TS:You were able to keep it on, then?
MS:Oh yeah, after that. But my drill sergeant had told--we were into two-piece
brass at that time, which is a circular disc with the insignia on the top that
went through a hole and you screwed it together and then pinned it on your
uniform. Well, his idea of polishing the brass was to use a green pad[?] on
it--spin it--which did not make a shine; did not a shine make.
TS:Right.
MS:It was like a CD [compact disc] when you look at it and it's got the lights
that cascade off it. Well, that's what happened to the back. You'd see that type
of thing. But they were also scored.
TS:So they didn't look as nice.
MS:No.
TS:Okay.
MS:So we went through the colonel's inspection and, of course, I did my brass
the way I had been taught how to do my brass. So my brass was nice and shiny,
the lacquer was off of it. My hat brass looked good. And the colonel checked me
out and she made a remark about, "You need to teach the rest of these people how
to shine their brass." And told my drill sergeant that. Again, for the big
inspections I made a lot of money.
TS:[chuckles]
MS:Because I was ironing the cords because nobody else could do it.
TS:They all paid you to do it?
MS:Yeah. The jackets.
TS:Yeah.
MS:And they didn't have to be starched.
TS:As tight.
MS:As tight. You could use spray starch. And little things like that. You didn't
have to be so strict on the uniforms, in the sense that it didn't have to be
starched as bad, it didn't have to be--It had to be ironed after lunch,
depending on the--huh?
TS:I was just seeing if I had a chip[?].
MS:Yeah, he'd get into it.
TS:So you had to have everything looking nice, but not necessarily to the high
level of when you were originally [in the WAC?].
MS:Yeah, the first--It was more feminine in '68. They were--
TS:They had a certain image, maybe, that they had to project?
MS:Yeah, that's the image that they wanted, was the feminine image. It was--You
don't put your eye makeup on like you're out streetwalking [being a prostitute].
TS:Right.
MS:You apply your makeup this way so it's soft and feminine. And everything--it
wasn't feminine to [get that?] on your belly [unclear].
TS:Right. I've had some people tell me that it's like they wanted you to be a lady.
MS:Yes.
TS:And ladies came before--you didn't even really call them soldier at that time.
MS:No.
TS:You were called a WAC.
MS:WAC.
TS:Right. Okay.
MS:My CB [citizen's band radio] handle was the Airborne Wacky WAC.
TS:[chuckles]
MS:That's stupid but--
TS:It's not stupid. So in '75 you went through the basic. Was there anything
difficult for you? You were older. Physically, was it more hard?
MS:Well, the runs were not fun because I wasn't used to running.
TS:Were you running in the boots then?
MS:No, we ran in tennis shoes; army issue white tennis shoes.
TS:Yeah, like Keds or something.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay.
MS:Yeah. And we had our PTs [physical training uniform], which were the blue
things. That was our everyday uniform in training.
TS:What did you do after your basic, then?
MS:I went Fort Jackson [South Carolina] to cooks school.
TS:Okay.
MS:And I can honestly that the only thing the army taught me about cooking was
small quantity.
TS:What do you mean?
MS:My mother had an electric roaster, okay? Like this, with an insert.
TS:Regular size.
MS:I learned how to cook spaghetti sauce in that.
TS:[chuckles] Just the sauce.
MS:Well, yeah, but I learned how to make stew in that, and I [chuckles] didn't
cook for five people, I cooked for a hundred people.
TS:Right.
MS:So cooking for a hundred people was not a big thing for me.
TS:You mean before you went in the army.
MS:Before I went in the army. Before I went to cook school.
TS:Right.
MS:To cook a five-pound roast was out of my league.
TS:Okay.
MS:So when I went and took small quantity I learned a lot.
TS:Okay, I see.
MS:Okay? I could make an eight-inch pan of spaghetti sauce or a steam kettle
full of whatever, but I couldn't make a five pound roast.
TS:Gotcha. So you learned those kind of skills.
MS:That's the kind of skills I learned.
TS:Did you like it?
MS:Yes. I like to cook.
TS:Yeah.
MS:I really, really like to cook. And so, that's one--another reason I wanted to
go to cook school.
TS:Explain why you wanted to go to Airborne school. I actually don't remember if
we talked about that before.
MS:No. I wanted to go to jump school as a family tradition, but I wanted to
prove I was good enough.
TS:To yourself?
MS:To myself, to my family, to my peers.
TS:Okay.
MS:Jump school is no picnic, and although there were only thirty-five people in
our class--
TS:Now, did you go right after your cooks school?
MS:No. In about my sixth week of cook school--it was an eight-week course--I was
called into the career counselor and told me I had a breach of contract because
they didn't have the airborne option for female cooks. Because I got orders for
an MP [military police] company and I said, "Well, what about jump school?
"Well, we can't let you go to jump school because we don't have that option, so
you can do one of three things."
I said, "Okay."
"You can get out on breach of promise."
"I don't think so. I fought too hard to get back in."
TS:Right.
MS:"You can go to Fort Bragg and hope to get into an airborne unit who had a
jump school that way, or just go to Fort Bragg."
"Okay."
Well, I had an [unclear]--my, at that time, boyfriend was in 5th Group, Special
Forces, and I got assigned to the repo depo, which is the place that they send
new troops to get processed in.
TS:Processed.
MS:Replacement depot.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And I went in and saw the group sergeant major and I said, "I'm coming to
Fort Bragg. I would like to be in 5th Group."
He says, "Do you want to go to jump school?"
I said, "That's why I want to be in 5th Group." [chuckles]
TS:Right.
MS:"And I don't want to be in division." And he laughed and he gave me a slot in
the unit. So I became the only female cook.
TS:Gotcha. Within the--
MS:Within the unit.
TS:Oh, yeah, because they didn't let women cook for men for a long time.
MS:Well, we cooked for men anyway.
TS:No, I mean in earlier years.
MS:Yeah, there were female cooks.
TS:Right. Okay.
MS:There were female cooks everywhere, but in combat units they didn't have
female cooks.
TS:Right.
MS:And everybody thought it was a hoot because when Larry and I got married he
went to his commander and got the okay to marry me, and I went to my commander
to get the okay to marry him. So when somebody said, "Well, what do your
commanders think?"
"Oh, we got their permission." We did a lot of things that probably to other
people sounded stupid, but they were just time passers. Hilarity, funny.
"You did what?" Anyway.
TS:So you didn't need their permission to get married.
MS:Not anymore, no.
TS:But you did at that time?
MS:No. That was primarily like Kore--American soldiers trying to marry Korean [unclear].
TS:[unclear].
MS:Yes, that you had to do, and they had to go through a vetting and all this
other stuff.
TS:What was the reason that you asked your commanders at that time?
MS:Just to be funny.
TS:[chuckles] Okay. Alright.
MS:Just to be funny.
TS:It must be army humor, Mary.
MS:Ah, yeah. If you saw one of the books I have in my room.
TS:Yeah.
MS:I have the triple X-rated Special Forces joke book.
TS:[chuckles] Okay. Let's go to jump school then.
MS:Yeah.
TS:How many--
MS:There were thirty-five people. Two of us were wo--two of us were women.
TS:What year was this that you were doing it?
MS:Nineteen seventy-seven.
TS:Seventy-seven, okay.
MS:And the other gal that went was a cook too.
TS:Oh, okay. Was she also at the same unit?
MS:Yeah. We were in the same mess hall. And we--when we got our slots to go we
decided that--I wasn't going to quit unless she did, and she wasn't going to
quit unless I did, no matter what they did to us.
TS:Okay. Good to have some support.
MS:The only thing that they gave us there in jump school was they let us set our
own pace in running. That's the only thing. We did--They did not have the
two-forty[?] [height in feet?] tower. We had swinging--Oh, what is it
called?--suspended agony, which is you wearing a parachute harness--not the
parachute, just the harness--and you get hooked up to an H [style] harness. It's
hanging from a--
[Suspended agony is a portion of airborne training that consists of parachute
harnesses suspended from scaffolding, surrounded by a thin boardwalk. The object
is to place yourself in the harness, step off the boardwalk, and hang there for
up to an hour while TAC officers drill you on emergency procedures]
TS:Like a pole or something?
MS:No, a roof.
TS:Okay.
MS:And then you come off the ramp--off the--where they put you on it and you
have to perform certain maneuvers. If you were going to make a right--this is
with the old parachute, what they called the T-10.
TS:This is how to practice how to turn and things like that?
MS:Yeah.
TS:You're in the air but with a practice suit.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay.
MS:The T-10 parachute had no--you couldn't steer it unless you knew how to do
these maneuvers. If you wanted to go that way you pulled down on the riser like
this; this way, this. And if you wanted to pull them down into your chest. I
said, "I can't do it."
And he says, "In other words, you won't do it."
"Go to hell." [chuckles] And I did it.
TS:Yeah. What was hard about it?
MS:It--
TS:Physically hard [unclear]--
[Speaking Simultaneously]
MS:Upper arm strength in women isn't the same. We don't have the pectorals. We
don't have the biceps and the triceps that men do. But by the time I got out of
jump school they were converting to the [Dash One?], which is the same type of
canopy but it has, I want to say, four bores[?] out, four panels, and you had
toggles. And if you wanted to go that way you pulled down the toggle this way,
and this way.
TS:So it didn't take such force to make the turn.
MS:Right.
TS:I see, okay.
MS:And they taught us how to crab, which was if you want to move [demonstrates].
TS:Yeah, I need a video on you right now. [both chuckle]
MS:And they taught us PLFs, parachute landing falls [safety technique that
allows a parachutist to land safely and without injury], and we'd jump off a
four-foot platform and hit the ground and do a PLF.
And then we had the thirty-four foot tower, and you were literally--you had the
same kind of harness on, but you were hooked up to a H harness that was hooked
up to a wire.
TS:Okay. So you like swing down, sort of?
MS:You slide down.
TS:Slide down.
MS:And you had to--you had your helmet on, strap tied. You had to--you had your
reserve chute, and of course, "One thousand, two thousand, three thousand, four
thousand; check canopy!"
TS:That's when you pull your cord?
MS:No, that's when you'd make sure your chute is open.
TS:Oh, okay.
MS:You had to check your canopy.
TS:At four seconds.
MS:At four seconds. And then you slide down and then you'd hit the brakes, but
you had to hit the brakes like this.
TS:With your arms out?
MS:Yeah. And then there were people down there that helped you get up.
TS:Now, you didn't actually have a parachute on.
MS:No.
TS:But you're doing the motion so you'd get that training.
MS:Yeah. Yeah.
TS:Is what you're doing, okay.
MS:Yeah. And we did aircraft exiting, and there were several kinds of aircraft
that we flew. C-130, [C-]141, Caribous, [chuckles] and helicopters.
TS:So depending on what kind of aircraft you were in, you jumped differently.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay.
MS:If you were in a C-130 or a 141 you went--there were side doors. And with the
jet, which is the 41--C-141--there was the jet blast, so you had to exit the
aircraft feet and knees together, and you'd start out with your hands on your
reserve chute because you had a handle over here to deploy it. You had to keep
that safe. And once you exited the aircraft you read through the one thousand,
two thousand, three--check canopy. Yeah, make sure your chute was up, and if it
wasn't you'd pop your Capewell [parachute release], which is what held the
parachute on you.
TS:I see. Try to manually get it to go.
MS:Yeah--No, you literally deflate because you've got a harness that comes down
on each side and hooks in here at the Capewell, and if you flip this Capewell,
that side of the parachute would be loose.
TS:Okay.
MS:And then you pull your reserve with your hand here and then you throw your
parachute down.
TS:Okay.
MS:Your reserve. And you come down on your reserve.
TS:I see. So you're trying to get the other one, kind of, out of the way?
MS:Yeah, because if you allowed it to go straight up it could entangle.
TS:I see. Okay. I gotcha. I'm learning a lot today, Mary.
MS:[chuckles]
TS:Well, now, how were you treated, as far as being a woman going through this course?
MS:Well, the committee who put us through all knew my husband.
TS:They all knew your husband?
MS:Yes.
TS:So they had that hanging over them?
MS:No, they harassed me.
TS:Oh, they harassed you bad.
MS:Yeah. "I know why you're going through jump school. Because your husband
doesn't want to sleep with a dirty leg."
[A "Leg" is a derogatory term used in Airborne units, meaning a person or a
military unit that is not qualified for parachute operations]
TS:Things like that?
MS:Yeah.
TS:Right. How did you handle it?
MS:One of them said, "Oh, you work in the mess hall. I want donuts tomorrow."
So when I didn't bring the donuts they said, "Well, why didn't you bring the donuts?"
"Because my husband's the man in the house and he said I couldn't." What they
gave to me I gave back.
TS:Right.
MS:Either in sarcasm, or I wasn't going to show that they bothered me.
TS:Okay. Even if they did.
MS:Even if they did, I would have some snappy comeback. Because as long as you
said something and said, "Da-da-da-da-da, Sir, Airborne, Sir," they couldn't do
anything. [both chuckle]
TS:You had to play the game.
MS:You played the game. And one of them one day said--I was standing on the
ground. He was on the tower bench watching everybody come out of the tower and
marking them whether they were in the right position, did they have their feet
and knees together, and there were some dirty tricks that they played.
TS:On you?
MS:On--
TS:Everybody?
MS:Everybody, but the two girls got it.
TS:What kind of things?
MS:Well, they'd follow us out--I still don't--to this day don't know how they
did it, but once you go out the door they--the harness would come up right
alongside of it and you'd get--
TS:A little shave[?] down the side of your neck?
MS:No. You'd get razor burns which were like great big hickeys.
TS:Right.
MS:"Don't you tell your husband those are razor burns." As I said, one of them
one day said, "Did your husband ever drive a blue Volkswagen bus?"
"No, Sergeant Airborne."
"Does he drive--" [chuckles]
"Yes, Sergeant."
"Give me ten." You know, that kind of stuff.
TS:Right.
MS:And you could--We had a couple of people that dropped out just before jump week.
TS:Yeah.
MS:You've gone through the hard stuff. And for me, I was ready.
TS:To jump?
MS:Put me in that aircraft and let me go.
TS:How did it go?
MS:My first jump I ran with the wind and landed face down.
TS:Okay.
MS:Had a face full of sand. The second jump--and I always jumped first, second,
or third in training becau--except for the second jump, because I looked forward
to it too much; I was ready to go.
TS:You were anxious, yeah. You didn't want to wait.
MS:No, I'm not anxious, I'm ready.
TS:Right.
MS:Excited. "You're too excited. Go to the back of the stick [a line of
parachute jumpers exiting a plane]." And they dropped me out last. Well, that
would have been fine, but I was considerably lighter at the time, and it was one
of these August or September hot, humid days.
TS:Right.
MS:And I had a--I just stayed up there.
TS:You mean up in the air?
MS:Yes. Everybody else was on the ground. They couldn't land the aircraft until
all the jumpers were out of the air, and I didn't land. From then on they always
put me first or second.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:Because I stopped.
TS:Yeah. You stopped the whole process.
MS:I stopped the whole process.
TS:Did you enjoy jumping?
MS:Yes, I did. I jumped one time into Pensacola Bay [Florida].
TS:Yeah. On purpose?
MS:Yes, it was a water jump. I jumped into Mott Lake [Fort Bragg] three or four times.
TS:Where's that?
MS:It's out on post.
TS:Okay.
MS:Out near [unclear].
TS:What's it like when you jump into the water? That's got to be a lot
different, I would think.
MS:Well, yeah, there's no--there's no impact on your legs. You're not hitting soil.
TS:Right.
MS:You literal--and you have what they call water rings on.
TS:Okay.
MS:And it's a--like a vest and you pull the CO2 harnesses and it keeps your head up.
TS:Okay. Once you're in the water you do that?
MS:No, well, just before you hit the water.
TS:Okay.
MS:And then they have Zodiacs, which are an inflatable boat with a motor, and
they have three people in the boat, and they come up to you--because you could
only--they could only drop--it's a helicopter and they only could drop four at a
time. So the first stick goes and the boats circle--
TS:Now, are you in a parachute when you drop out of that?
MS:Yes. Yes. And then somewhere here I have a picture of my ex-husband and I
with our jump record--our manifest--from a water jump, and I don't know what
happened to it. It's here somewhere. Anyway, it's--they grab ahold of the
harness--one grabs ahold of the parachute and then he grabs ahold of your
harness and they pull you into the boat.
TS:Okay.
MS:And then when everybody is picked up they take us into shore, and we get the
chute off, and we jump in shorts and a tee shirt.
TS:Alright.
MS:And sneakers and socks. So you bring yourself out, and since you had to jump
you don't have to go to work. [laughs]
TS:Sounds like a good plan. It sounds like you really did enjoy it.
MS:I did, and I jumped up until I couldn't jump anymore, when my leg got broken.
TS:After that.
MS:Yeah.
TS:How many jumps do you think you did altogether? Do you know?
MS:I was saying thirty, but it looked like it was more than thirty on that jump record.
TS:Oh, that's right. You gave me that record. We'll look at that, then, okay.
Well, good.
MS:I loved it. It was something that I had wanted to do since I--in fact, my
bucket list, jumping was on it.
TS:Yeah. So you wore your jump wings from then on.
MS:Yes.
TS:Did you ever get any harassment from anybody about that?
MS:I only had problems with one individual and that's when I was in Korea.
TS:Okay. What happened there?
MS:Well, two actually. And I don't know the second one's name. My mess
sergeant--Once you go to jump school you get an identifier which is a "P," and
unless you say, "I don't want to jump anymore, terminate me," you keep that "P."
And there are some identifiers that you lose when you're no longer doing that
job, like teacher, instructor; they have an "H." When they're no longer
instructors they lose that "H," but a parachutist always has their "P."
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And there's a manning board every shop whatever it is--cook, clerk--they put
in your name and then your primary MOS, which in this case was 94B2P.
TS:What's the "2" for?
MS:That was the rank.
TS:Okay. Oh, I see.
MS:94B was the job, 2 was your rank, P--
TS:Was that like E-2?
MS:Huh?
TS:Was that E-2?
MS:No, no. I--
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS:You mean [unclear] rank as a cook?
MS:It showed that I was--Yeah, MOS.
TS:Right, I gotcha. So there's different levels as you go through that higher job.
MS:Yeah, yeah.
TS:Got it, okay.
MS:Then you've got your duty MOS, which in this case was 94B20.
TS:Okay.
MS:Which meant that I was not in a jump slot; I was in a non-jump slot.
TS:Okay. This is in Korea?
MS:And he--This is in Korea. And he kept taking my "P" and erasing it. And I'd
go into his office and I'd put my "P" back up there." [laughs]
Then we had the argument about, "Well, you lose it."
"No, you don't. My primary MOS is still 94B2[Bubba?]."
TS:Right.
MS:And he'd take my "P," I'd put it back. And I also had my medic training,
going to a secondary MOS, and I had a supply MOS. What were they? Well, 91B was
my medic. I don't know what the other one was.
TS:That's okay.
MS:And we had an IG inspection, which is Inspector General.
TS:Where is this at?
MS:In Korea.
TS:In Korea, okay.
MS:And one of the lieutenants that was on the committee was what--anybody that
hasn't made their sixth jump. You make five jumps in jump school. Your sixth
jump is called your cherry blast, which means you no longer--You--
TS:You're in.
MS:Yeah. You haven't just made your five jumps, you've made one more.
TS:Right.
MS:And she had made her five jumps but she hadn't--she'd been transferred into
this unit. And she went into my barracks room and looked up on my wall locker
and she saw a parachute. I had my husband's parachute[?]. Skydiving.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And of course, my wings, because I had all my awards up on my wall. And she
came searching for me and she says, "You're airborne."
I said, "Yes, I am." Because I had it on my whites, I had it on my hat.
TS:You were very proud of it, right?
MS:Yes. And she said, "Why isn't your primary--Did you terminate?"
"No." I said, "But the mess sergeant believes that I lost my "P"--" which
doesn't sound right, but--"lost my "P" when I came into this unit."
She said, "No, you didn't. You'll always have that."
"I know. You know."
TS:Right.
MS:She went in and says, "Why is Specialist Leighton's MOS stat[?]. Her primary
MOS is--" da-da-da-da-da-da-da."
TS:Right.
MS:And he had to put it up after that and leave it alone.
TS:Good.
MS:My unit in Korea, my mess hall, took the [Philip A.] Connelly Award [for
Excellence in Army Food], which is the highest--
TS:Like, commendation you can get?
MS:Yeah, for mess halls.
TS:Right.
MS:It's actually a competition, and they go in and they inspect the mess hall
and make sure everything is [makes sound as if ticking off a list]. And we took
"small facility" [award?] that year.
TS:That's pretty neat. You went to Korea in '79.
MS:Seventy-eight, '79.
TS:So a few years after you were in. You were at Fort Bragg for a while.
MS:Three years.
TS:And then you went your year to Korea?
MS:And then I came back here.
TS:Were you still married at that time?
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay.
MS:In fact--
TS:Did you want to go to Korea? I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt you, Mary.
MS:My husband came down on orders for Germany, and the only way I could go with
him is when I re-enlisted I re-enlisted on an open contract. So I could put in
to go to Germany with him. And I had put the paperwork in to go to Germany. I
came down on orders for Korea, and his orders were repealed. They took him off
orders, and so I went to Korea.
TS:Okay. Unaccompanied?
MS:Unaccompanied.
TS:How was that? Besides this one sergeant that seemed to not want to put your
"P" on the board.
MS:I enjoyed it. Yeah, I enjoyed doing what I did. Again, this same mess
sergeant, when we had the inspections he'd get me out of--out of the way. He
would send me to [TAC site?], which we had two ADA [Air Defense Artillery]
batteries on one unit--one base. And there was Bravo Battery and Charlie Battery
and I was assigned to Charlie Battery. And so, they'd send me up on top of the
mountain and I'd cook for the troops up there. And I did it very well. And he
didn't particularly like it because I was outshining him. And the reason he
was--He was in Vietnam. Okay. He got his rank because he couldn't even be an
infantryman. Does that make sense? In those days if you couldn't cut infantry
they put--made you cooks, okay? I wanted to be a cook; I liked being a cook; I
did my job well as a cook. And he didn't like it.
TS:So you felt like you were competition? And you were a woman, too, right?
MS:The only female.
TS:In the whole unit?
MS:In that--In the mess hall.
TS:In the mess hall. Was that the way it was normally for you your whole time?
MS:Yeah, yeah.
TS:That's because you were in the combat units?
MS:Well, ours wasn't--the ADA site, they had just allowed women on--in those
batteries, like, five months before I got there. I mean, they were issued rape
whistles, and this was the beginning.
TS:Who was issued rape whistles?
MS:The women.
TS:You had a rape whistle?
MS:No, I didn't because I was not one of the first.
TS:Oh, you weren't in the barracks either.
MS:I lived in the barracks.
TS:Oh, you did?
MS:Oh, yeah. I had my hoochie in the village, too, but--
TS:You had your hoochie in the ville?
MS:Yes.
TS:What is that?
MS:I had a room in the village.
TS:What does that mean?
MS:Hooch is where you live.
TS:Right.
MS:Village is what--it's outside of the camp gate.
TS:Right. So you had one in the barracks and outside the gate?
MS:Yeah. I slept in the barracks most of the time, but if I didn't have to go to
work the next day I'd sleep down there.
TS:Why?
MS:Because it gave me privacy.
TS:Okay.
MS:Now, when we were in one building it wasn't a problem, but when we went to
the other building it was a problem. I had three roommates and--
TS:Okay. So it didn't cost that much to just get something?
MS:No. It was like two hundred won [the Korean equivalency of the U.S. dollar] a
week or something like that. And in those days, it was fifty won to a dollar.
TS:So not that expensive.
MS:No.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And I had a rapport with the people in the village that I came in contact
with because I respected them.
TS:Right.
MS:And I respected the KATUSA, which is Korean Augmentation to the United States
Army; KATUSA. And I treated these people with respect and honor and they saw it.
One incident--important--getting back into war stories--We had a couple people
that were just rude, crude, and socially unacceptable.
[Korean Augmentation to the United States Army, or KATUSA, is a branch of the
Republic of Korea Army which consists of Korean enlisted personnel who are
augmented to the U.S. Army, and was developed during the Korean War to cope with
a shortage of U.S. Army personnel.]
TS:Okay.
MS:Okay. They liked to make fun of people that weren't the same as they were, so
they gave very derogatory names to the KATUSA. And one day one of the KATUSA
came to me because he worked with me, and this same individual had said
[unclear], "They'll never work for you, you're a woman." It worked fine for me.
Anyway, he came to me and he said, "Sergeant Mary, Sergeant Mary, what does
'blank-blanks' [profanity] mean?"
And I thought, "If I tell him--me, as a female--No."
TS:Right.
MS:He would be very, very, very embarrassed. So I said, "You go talk to S[?]
Sergeant Frost. He'll tell you what it is."
He came back about ten minutes later and his face was bright red. And he goes,
"Sorry, Sergeant Mary. Sorry, Sergeant Mary." [both chuckle]
TS:So you enjoyed your job.
MS: I enjoyed my job, I enjoyed Korea, I got to see a lot.
TS:Any of your favorite places to go?
MS:Sin City.
TS:Yeah, Sin City.
MS:[chuckles] A place called Yong Ju Gol, and it had all the bars, and in the
bars were all the businesswomen [prostitutes], and they did not like round eyes
[slang term used by Asians to refer to a white person of European origin].
TS:Females.
MS:Right. Round-eyed females.
TS:Right.
MS:Because they felt that we were taking their business.
TS:Competition.
MS:Yeah. And I went to three clubs depending on who I was with.
TS:On your rotation of going.
MS:I had a male harem.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:That sounds strange, but I had hooked up with a lot--well, I can't say a
lot--but with the guys that wanted to go down and have a drink or two but didn't
want to get hassled by the women.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And it got to the point that if they came in with me the businesswomen left
them alone. And [unclear], which was the madam, would leave them alone. So I had
a male harem. And when we'd go down there, we'd have three or four drinks, three
or four bottles. They had a drink called Oscar.
TS:Oh, Oscar?
MS:Which they had grape and peach. I didn't like the peach; I liked the grape.
And it was like a dollar for a good-sized bottle. And so, we'd drink and carry
on, and it got close to curfew and we'd go get a cab and come back to post. [laughs]
TS:So you had a good time in Korea.
MS:Yeah. And I was very lucky, I got to go on several BZ flights, buffer zone
flights. My best friend happened to have been the mail clerk, and when she went
to get the mail down in Seoul she would bring--what?
TS:Keep talking.
MS:She would bring the mail for this other unit which was a watch site that
would fly--
TS:Okay. Close to the DMZ [Demilitarized Zone)?
MS:Yeah. They were like a klick [kilometer], two klicks from the DMZ so they
made buffer zone runs.
TS:Okay. I see.
MS:And we had a helipad so they'd come down and we had to be in uniform, and
we'd get in uniform and we'd go up and we'd fly through the BZ. And they used to
laugh at me. "We heard you wore those." My wings. And, "How can you jump out of
perfectly good airplanes?" Okay, it's the oldest one in the book.
But, yeah, I enjoyed Korea, and I came back here and I enjoyed here. I got to go
to Italy, and I can't remember the name of that compound.
TS:You got to go to Italy from--
MS:From here. TDY, temporary duty.
TS:When you were stationed at Fort Bragg.
MS:Yeah. My unit went to--
TS:So like a special deployment.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Or exercise or something.
MS:Yeah, a special deployment. And I'm really not at liberty to say much, but
there were like five of us cooks that went.
TS:Okay.
MS:And--Because we were supporting our guys by working in their mess hall.
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And everybody got to go on tours but me because I was in charge of all our troops.
TS:Everybody kept having to be fed, right?
MS:Everybody still needs to be fed and they still need the support, so one of
the--the assistant mess sergeant took me down to Florence.
TS:Oh, nice. Okay.
MS:And I went through the Leonardo Da Vinci museum.
TS:Oh, nice.
MS:And I saw David and the Pietà [famous sculptures by Michelangelo in the
Uffizi Museum in Florence]. I had seen that before at the [1964-1965 New York]
World's Fair.
TS:Had you?
MS:Yeah. But I saw the Pietà and I saw [the] David and I saw his other
sculptures and stuff and it was like--We went through a couple of cathedrals.
TS:Nice.
MS:And one of them in Florence you could go up and around the dome, inside the
dome, and go out to a widow's walk [railed platform build on a roof] and you
could see the [unclear].
TS:Pretty neat.
MS:Yeah. What the best one was? We were in Pisa and one night he took
me--because he had a car, of course I did not--and he said, "I want to go show
you something, a full moon. And most of the cathedrals are white marble, and
they have the viaducts--the arches.
TS:Right.
MS:And we pulled in and we parked and he said, "Close your eyes." So I closed my
eyes and he led me, and we got into the arch and he says, "Open your eyes." Full
moon, on the cathedral, with the tower next to it. And it was the most divine
sight I had ever seen in my life. In fact, I still have a Leaning Tower of Pisa [souvenir?].
TS:Good memory.
MS:But again, my military career was wonderful. And I did go TDY with my husband
one time. Well, he was in a line unit and I was in the service unit. The only
time I saw him was when he came through the chow line. [laughs]
TS:So you didn't see him too much then.
MS:Our troops got fresh-baked goods every day. They got--There was none of this
MREs [Meals, Ready to Eat] during breakfast or dinner. And we cooked in a GP
small and we had our--
TS:What's a GP?
MS:General Purpose small tent.
TS:I see.
MS:And we were backed--the cook tent was backed up to the GP small women's tent.
TS:Okay.
MS:Because there were three women there, myself and two others, in different
jobs. But I did all the paperwork for the mess hall, so I had to be close to the
mess hall to do the paperwork. And they supplied me with a desk and everything.
TS:Can I ask you some general questions?
MS:Sure.
TS:Did you feel like you were treated fairly throughout your time in the service?
MS:Yes, other than a few bad apples that--
TS:Individual people.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Do you feel like you got the promotions that you deserved?
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay. What did you say you got out as?
MS:Staff sergeant, E-6.
TS:E-6, okay.
MS:And I was fixing to go--start with E-7 [Sergeant First Class]; [let's start?]
on the E-7 road.
TS:You were in a really interesting period where you were in the WAC, really
when it was WAC, and then you went back in, it was still WAC but it wasn't
really the WAC anymore.
MS:Yes.
TS:What were some of the biggest changes, you think, you saw over that time? Or
even from the first time you went in to when you got out.
MS:Coed.
TS:Coed what?
MS:Barracks.
TS:Training?
MS:Training. Not in basic but in cook school we had a mixed class. It was one of
the first mixed classes.
TS:Okay. How did you think that the men were treating you personally at that
time, as far as being a woman? I mean, you're a cook, you're kind of in a
traditional job, but you're in a non-traditional unit, right?
MS:No, it was the same unit. It was the same type of unit. We were all in Cooks
School at Fort Jackson, South Carolina.
TS:No, I mean when you went to--
MS:Bragg?
TS:When you went to Bragg, yeah.
MS: I just have to--
TS:There's somebody at the door.
MS:Is there somebody at the door?
TS:Yeah, I'll pause.
[Recording paused]
TS:[extraneous comments redacted] So you think that there was no discrimination
directed at you. I'm just talking you, personally.
MS:There were a few individuals, and I'm not going to mention names or where it happened.
TS:That's fine.
MS:There were individuals that thought because I was a female I was there for
their comfort.
TS:Okay.
MS:And they soon found out I wasn't. [chuckles]
TS:So you were able to, like, make those boundaries for yourself?
MS:Oh, yeah. My mother made those same boundaries. I mean, my mother taught me
well. She was a waitress.
TS:Okay.
MS:And waitresses are service people, and in those days men were pigs. Well,
some of them are still pigs. [laughs]
TS:You said it, Mary, not me.
MS:Anyway, touch inappropriate--
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS:Like fanny--
MS:--or do inappropriate--Yeah.
TS:Right.
MS:I was taught that at an early age. I was the only girl in an entire
generation in my family.
TS:Oh, really? Okay.
MS:I have two brothers; my father's sister had two sons, my mother's brother had
one son.
TS:So you were a solitary girl growing up in a male world even before you got in
the army.
MS:Yeah.
TS:I gotcha.
MS:But again, I was brought up to--I even won a beauty contest before I went in
the military.
TS:Very nice.
MS:No, it was after.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:But the point I'm--the military is what you make it. I still don't believe
that an unmarried woman should be allowed to be in the military and pregnant.
TS:What about an unmarried man?
MS:Well, I don't see men walking around with bellies like this.
TS:But I mean as a parent. A single man.
MS:There are men whose wives for whatever reason are no longer here. There's
been women lost in Afghanistan and Iraq and they have kids.
TS:Right. That's what I'm saying. But you're saying if you're a single woman
with a child--
MS:No. Not with a child.
TS:Just as pregnant?
MS:As pregnant. They either should be put on leave or--
TS:Can they come back in, do you think?
MS:I don't see why not, because one of the things that they have now in place
is, you have to have a form set up for child care.
[All military members who have dependents and are either single or part of a
dual-military couple must have a Family Care Plan. It is the means by which a
military member plans in advance for the care of his/her family when they are
deployed, TDY, or otherwise not available because of military duty]
TS:The argument, though, to say they can stay in is, you can get injured, you
can be out for six months off of your job. It's a temporary disability and
that's how they view the pregnancy. How is that any different, then?
MS:I guess I have a problem with maternity uniforms.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:Okay? I do get to go to the commissary and PX [Post Exchange] on occasion,
and last time I was there I saw this gal in uniform with the belly out to here
and I'm going, "What can she do with that?" Okay? If she is in a job like auto
mechanic, cook--Clerk is not so bad, but this is going back to women's roles, okay?
TS:Right.
MS:I can't see a pregnant woman going to war. And they won't let them. But with
the new laws that they've just made--that they've just passed--women can do
whatever they want to do.
TS:What do you think about that?
MS:I think it's the best thing since sliced white bread [idiom for very good].
TS:Okay. So it's good.
MS:Okay. Yeah.
TS:Do you think there's any job that women should not have in the military at
all? Not just the army but any service.
MS:No.
TS:Okay.
MS:If the person that goes through the training does the training the same as
their male counterparts, they don't rely on their gender to get by, and they
pass the course, they should be able to do whatever they do. I had men working
for me, I had women working for me, okay? An E-4 and an E-4, male and female.
Okay? If this female is four foot eleven [inches] and has to pull a case of eggs
down from the second shelf--top shelf--that's stacked too high, I'm not going to
let her do that, but that's the same way with the male. If it's a four
foot--five foot one [inch] male, the same upholds[?]; you get one of the bigger
guys or gals to do it. You do the job that you have the rank for. If you're an
E-4, you do the job of an E-4. That's male and female. I have this thing about,
"Do the job you're getting paid for."
TS:No matter what your gender.
MS:No matter what your gender. And I had a couple women that at one time or
another said, "Well, I really don't think I should lift that. That's too heavy."
"[Do you?] Spec [Specialist] 4?"
"Yes."
"What rank is he?"
"A Spec 4."
"You're saying that you're better than him because you're a female? Wrong. Do
the job."
TS:And would they do it?
MS:Yeah.
TS:Yeah. So it took a little push sometimes.
MS:Yeah. And I did not tolerate people coming into my shift under the influence.
TS:Yeah.
MS:We had a couple of young troops that decided they were going to go out and
get drunk, and we had to be to work at four o'clock in the morning. So he came
in and he was snockered [drunk], still. And one of the hardest jobs in the
morning is the eggs because you have two sides; you have eggs to order and then
you have the omelet side. The eggs to order you have to crack two eggs in both
bowls, and you have to stack them up, and then if they want over easy you have
to cook over--hard, scrambled, whatever.
TS:Right.
MS:Well, this guy came in and he was--You could tell he was still under the
influence of whatever, and I put him on eggs and he's standing there, he's got
the spatula, and he's leaning on the spatula like this.
TS:Right.
MS:And I came up behind him with one of our [unclear] pans. You know the silver
pans they put on--
TS:Absolutely, I know.
MS:I dropped it on the tile floor. "Ahhh!"
"Next time don't come into my dining facility on my shift drunk. Do your job."
TS:[chuckles] Right.
MS:I only had one young troop that didn't want to do what I told him. "You're
just a female."
"Yeah, and I outrank you."
TS:And so, how did that end up?
MS:He got discharged from the military. He slapped me.
TS:He slapped you?
MS:Yeah.
TS:Really?
MS:Yeah. He was already in dutch [trouble] because of failure to repair, and I
took it to the commander, I said, "I'm not putting up with this."
And he said, "Well, he's already getting boarded out. Undesireable."
TS:So like, "Get him out of my--"
MS:No. "You can't do anything more, it's an extra duty."
"But I'm not going to stay here with him. I'm not the one that pulled this. I am
the injured party."
And he goes, "Yeah, who's on the shift today?" Told him. He said, "Tell him he
has extra hands tonight."
TS:There you go. So that's how you handled it?
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay. When you were going through becoming a cook--and you said you learned a
lot--did you have anybody that was a particular mentor to you, that helped you
learn the ropes at any place you were at? You're shaking your head; I can't hear that.
MS:No, I just was--I loved the classes, and if I did a good job they gave you an
"Attaboy" [expression of encouragement]. I would have been the second honor grad.
TS:In your class?
MS:Yeah. But again, being a mixed class, the first person was a gal. She beat me
out by half a point. But the last test we took, it was you take the test and you
pass it over to the next person, ask for them to grade it.
TS:Right.
MS:And I graded the person that came second honor grad. And I know he got less
points than I did because I did his paper.
TS:Right.
MS:But they made him second honor grad.
TS:So maybe a man and a woman.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Right. I've heard that story before too.
MS:It's okay.
TS:Yeah.
MS:I know what I did.
TS:Right.
MS:Okay? And it's just like everything else. I know what I did, why I did it,
how I did it, and I always did it to the very best I could. Except after I broke
my leg.
TS:Why don't you talk about that and explained what happened. You got in an
accident. You were riding a motorcycle. You broke your foot pretty badly looks like.
MS:Broke my leg in three places.
TS:And so, you couldn't--
MS:I couldn't--
TS:Of course, in a cook, you had to keep standing.
MS:Yeah, and the floors were tile, and I was on crutches for three months, so
they gave me a desk job, which I was not good at.
TS:Okay.
MS:And my typing skills were horrendous.
TS:[chuckles] So you were not well-suited for another job at that point.
MS:No. And you can't walk out on a damp floor in a kitchen with tiles on crutches.
TS:Right.
MS:And as I said, they gave me another job but I was not good at it, and that
was the beginning of the end. Actually, the beginning of the end was when I
broke my leg.
TS:What year was that that you broke it?
MS:Eighty-three.
TS:Okay. So it was a couple years before you got out.
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay. So you tried.
MS:Oh, yeah. The problem came before I broke my leg. When they invaded Grenada,
our troops went into Grenada; we sent some of our people to support them.
[The Invasion of Grenada was a 1983 U.S.-led invasion of the Caribbean island of Grenada.]
TS:Right.
MS:But I had a second lieutenant--what we called a "butter bar" [slang term for
a second lieutenant, based on the insignia - a single gold bar]--a second
lieutenant who told me to my face, "None of my women are going over there."
TS:Okay.
MS:And I was going to go in and do a tap dance on her desk [complain?] the next
day, and on the way home I broke my leg.
TS:Who's desk were you going to tap dance on?
MS:On the commander's.
TS:Which commander?
MS:Headquarter's commander.
TS:Of Fort Bragg?
MS:No.
TS:Of your airborne unit?
MS:Yeah. Of my unit. The headquarters [unclear]--
[Speaking Simultaneously]
TS:Was that a man or a woman that was telling you that you couldn't go?
MS:A female.
TS:Okay, that's what I wasn't--
MS:Yeah. She was a graduate of the academy.
TS:Of West Point?
MS:Yes.
TS:Okay.
MS:And her husband was a graduate.
TS:Why didn't she want women to go?
MS:I don't know.
TS:I mean, I've heard that about men not wanting to send the women, but I've
never heard that a woman didn't want to send--not that I don't totally believe
you, that's surprising news to me.
MS:Well, this is my opinion, okay? My opinion.
TS:Got it, Mary.
MS:This individual was a "butter bar", her husband was a major. She went to
Grenada, spent the weekend in a posh hotel with her husband, and got a Silver
Star out of it.
TS:Well, she couldn't have got a Silver Star because no woman got a Silver Star
until the Iraq War.
MS:Then it was a Bronze Star.
TS:The Bronze Star.
MS:Yeah. I knew she got a star.
TS:[chuckles] Right.
MS:The point is--
TS:She didn't do anything and she got it.
MS:Yeah.
TS:What kind of work did she do?
MS:She was a commander of a unit.
TS:And doing what?
MS:Paperwork.
TS:I see. Okay.
MS:The chain of command--and this is roughly--there was the commander, then
there's the XO--executive officer--then there's the first sergeant, and then on down.
TS:Right.
MS:But the hierarchy is the commander, the XO, the first sergeant. And I had
said that I wanted to go, and as I said, I was going to do a tap dance on her
desk the next day and I didn't get a chance.
TS:That's when you broke your foot.
MS:Broke my leg.
TS:Broke your leg. Sorry.
MS:Yeah. And I am still, to this day, walking around on a broken leg.
TS:Do you use VA [Veterans Administration] services at all?
MS:I'm 100% VA.
TS:Okay.
MS:Yeah, they supply me with my--
TS:How do you feel about the way that you've been taken care of?
MS:[laughs] You don't want to know my opinion.
TS:Well, so you feel like they could do a much better job.
MS:I believe that the people that need help--and I'm not decrying any of the
women or men that are serving today, don't get me wrong; they are still serving
their country. But there is another group of people out there that, one, didn't
get the care that they needed when they came home. The number of homeless
[veterans] is extraordinary, and this is the Vietnam era.
TS:Right.
MS:These guys got absolutely nada [nothing] when they came back.
TS:Right.
MS:They get spat on. And that's why I said I feel left out. I'm proud to have
been a veteran of my country. I am proud to have served in the army as long as I
did. As you can see.
TS:Yes, Mary, it's very obvious you have a lot of pride.
MS:And have you seen--
TS:Yes, I did. Your front porch.
MS:Yeah, my girlfriend gave me the license plate. In fact, that's another story.
I met her in Korea, and she saw my wings and she said, "You're airborne?"
"Yup."
"When did you get your wings?"
"September. August, September. Last year."
"Oh. You mean they're letting women in?"
TS:[chuckles]
MS:Yup.
TS:So did she go?
MS:Yup.
TS:Oh, that's great.
MS:She got into a airborne unit and went to jump school, and I--she's right now
working on her degree in nursing.
TS:Excellent. Good for her. I just want to go back to the VA. For you
personally, for your care, how do you feel that you've been treated personally?
Okay, we'll do it like this: a scale of one to ten, ten being the best, one
being the worst.
MS:Four.
TS:A four. Maybe I should ask the questions that way.
MS:I haven't seen my doctor in five months again. I'm a diabetic.
TS:Is it really difficult to get in to see them, then?
MS:Oh, yeah. You call to make an appointment and they say, "Oh, we can't get you
for ninety days and we can't book ninety days out so call us--"
da-da-da-da-da--" and we'll get you an appointment." I call. "Oh, we can't do
that because you're--"
TS:Right. It just goes on and on.
MS:Yeah. And I finally--we have a thing called My Healthy Vet and secure
messaging, and I sent a note when--I ordered--or told them I needed my pain
medications renewed. The FDA [Food and Drug Administration] has decided that
anything that is a hydrocodone mix--or I mean codeine/acetaminophen mix, is not
been proven to help in pain man--acute chronic pain management. It has no [unclear].
TS:Okay.
MS:"No--It doesn't happen. It isn't good for that. It isn't--shouldn't be used
for that." And that you can only get thirty pills a month. Okay? So I walk
around in pain a lot.
TS:Because you can't get the care you need.
MS:I can't get the pain--I was taking--I was allowed a hundred and eighty
tablets a month. When I got this new doctor--and you know who Doogie Howser is?
[Doogie Howser, M.D. was a 1989-1993 comedy-drama television series about a
teenage physician]
TS:Yeah.
MS:Okay, I've got a female Doogie Howser.
TS:Okay. A young doctor.
MS:Yeah. And they cut it to thirty.
TS:Okay.
MS:And I tried to contact them on secure messaging two weeks before I run out.
Okay, I need my pain med put in.
TS:Right.
MS:Three weeks after I get them; three weeks after the first due date.
TS:Right, I understand. That's very sad to hear that that's going on.
MS:And I am made--all the veterans are made to sign a narcotic contract which
says we can't go anywhere else to get pain medication.
TS:So you can't go outside that.
MS:Right.
TS:I gotcha.
MS:I also have depression PTSD [Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder], panic disorder,
and I take some high speed--I can't say antipsychotics, they're not antipsychotics.
TS:That's okay, you don't need to tell me what you're taking.
MS:Okay. And now they're worried about I'm taking two that could cause
addiction. Okay? If I was going to be addicted to something it would have been--
TS:A long time ago.
MS:Yeah. I take it when I need it. Now I'm--I have to go to the--we don't have
an emergency room anymore. We have an urgent care place, okay? I had fallen a
year ago--six months, eight months, whatever--and I had landed on this shoulder.
And I went in and--you notice when I put my arms out like this I--Yeah, this arm
doesn't work very well. It goes numb, I get pins and needles, etcetera. And I
had gotten to the point where I couldn't use it, and I'm right-handed.
TS:Right.
MS:And I went into the urgent care and there was a pain in my side and some
other stuff and I saw the doctor. I said, "Well, I've been taking four thousand
milligrams of acetaminophen a day."
"That's too much."
I says, "Well, I haven't had my Vicodin in two weeks so this is what I'm having
to take."
He gave me enough acetaminophen to have four thousand milligrams a day if I
needed to take it.
TS:Okay.
MS:Acetaminophen helps my headaches. Doesn't touch the backache.
TS:Gotcha. Right, right.
MS:As I said, I walk around on a broken leg.
TS:Yeah. Well, let me ask you a couple other questions.
MS:Okay.
TS:I'm sorry that you're not getting the kind of care that you should. When you
left the service, did you have a transition? Were you still married?
MS:Yeah, I was still married.
TS:Okay. Were you still connected to the service then?
MS:I was a dependent, but I was also a vet, okay? Another war story. I got an
appointment at the orthopedic center at Womack [Army Medical Center, Fort Bragg,
North Carolina] and I went in and they perused my records and says, "Well,
you're a veteran. Why are you here?"
And I said, "I am a dependent and you should take care of me."
TS:Right. And did they?
MS:Well, they looked at my leg and said, "Yeah, it's still broken."
TS:How do you think your life is different because you decided to join the army
way back in '68, and then go back in in '75?
MS:I've learned a lot, I've seen a lot, I had the wherewithal--I was not afraid
of anything, okay?
TS:I can tell.
MS:I'd get in a truck and I'd drive cross-country and back, by myself.
TS:Did you?
MS:Yes. Seven times. One or two times with a five-year-old.
TS:Alright.
MS:When she was young.
TS:Well, you probably had an adventurous spirit before.
MS:Yes.
TS:It just kind of maybe brought that out a little bit more.
MS:Yes, it did.
TS:It gave you opportunities that you wouldn't have had otherwise.
MS:Yes. I have been to all but nine states.
TS:Nice. Okay.
MS:And that includes Hawaii and Alaska.
TS:Nice.
MS:I've been to ten countries, and that doesn't count Canada.
TS:[chuckles] Okay.
MS:I grew up next to Canada.
TS:You got around quite a lot.
MS:Oh, yeah.
TS:We talked about the combat issue. The other issue we didn't talk about--which
you started to bring up a little but we didn't really get into it too much--the
issue of homosexuals in the military. When you were in in '68 you couldn't be
in. Nobody talked about it but you got kicked out.
MS:Yeah, if it came to--Yeah.
TS:And then after you got out they instituted the "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" and
that's since been repealed. So this whole issue of gays in the military, or not
in the military, what's your take on that?
["Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was the official U.S. policy on military service by
gays, bisexuals, and lesbians. The policy prohibited military personnel from
discriminating against or harassing closeted homosexual or bisexual service
members, while barring openly gay, lesbian, and bisexual person from military
service. "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" was repealed 20 September 2011]
MS:That is the same as women in the military.
TS:In what way? What do you mean?
MS:Okay. When I was in Korea, I was told if the women went--in other words, if
we were attacked, I would go down--because I'm the only female on the
compound--I would go down to the same area as the Korean nationals and I'd be
under guard. Okay? That's basically what happened prior to the repeal of "Don't
Ask, Don't Tell." People were being pushed out of the military whether they were
good soldiers, bad soldiers, or whatever. They were being pushed out because
they didn't do what somebody thought they should be doing.
TS:Or they weren't who somebody thought they should be.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay.
MS:And that's the same way with women. And I told my commander when he said this
to me, I said, "Look, I'm an NCO in the United States Army. All I ask is my
weapon and the rounds I need to protect me and my troops." I said, "I'm not
going into the [holding pen?]. No way. Because that's not my job [unclear]."
TS:Right.
MS:And that's the same way--I--as I said, I just watched NCIS [Naval Criminal
Investigative Service; television action drama] episode.
TS:So you think if they can do their job then--
MS:As long as they don't put the make on other males or other females in their
job. What are they doing? It's like a captain and a major having an affair. As
long as they're not married it's nobody's business.
TS:[chuckles] There you go.
MS:And I've got a big mouth. I'm sorry.
TS:No, no.
MS:I'm loud.
TS:That's okay. Well, would you recommend the service to young women today?
MS:Yes. In fact, if you want to know the truth, I honestly believe the United
States should form the same kind of thing that the Israelis do. You turn a
certain age, you go in the military for two years. No matter who you are.
[Conscription exists in Israel for all Israeli citizens over the age of eighteen
who are Jewish, Druze, or Circassian. The normal length of compulsory service is
currently two years and eight months for men, and two years for women]
TS:Some kind of national service?
MS:Yes.
TS:National military service.
MS:Yes. Because, first of all, we wouldn't have this--the young people who have
no forward thrust. They have nowhere to go and nowhere to be, no one to know
except getting into trouble. That would stop it.
TS:You, personally, talking like you're talking to a civilian right now, is
there anything you would want a civilian to know or understand about what it's
like to serve in the military that they may not understand or maybe misconstrued?
MS:Women in the military.
TS:What do you think they misconstrue?
MS:A lot of the good ol' boys, rednecks, whatever you want to call them, women
in the military are there for their enjoyment.
TS:That's what they think.
MS:Yes. And they--
TS:What's the reality?
MS:The reality is, not anymore.
TS:Was it like that before?
MS:Yeah.
TS:What do you mean? When were they like that before?
MS:One of the things that my shrink [psychiatrist] asks me every time I go in
there is, "Did you have sexual trauma?"
TS:Right.
MS:Okay, it's all in the eye of the beholder. Okay? I can let that form who I
am, or I can look at it, put it in a ball, and throw it over my shoulder. The
abuse excuse is not an excuse as far as I'm concerned.
TS:Right.
MS:You choose to be who and what you are. As long as you're not hurting
someone--I was--I was sexually abused as a youngster, okay? I could have become
like any number of these people that kill somebody and go, "Well, my father
abused me. My mother abused me." No, you chose to kill that person. You chose to
take that knife, that gun, whatever, put it to somebody's head and shoot them.
Or however they did it. That's your choice. Make people--and you can't make
people, not in this country.
TS:You mean accountable?
MS:Make them accountable; that was the word I was looking for and couldn't find.
TS:That's okay. I just want to make sure on this one issue of women in the
military, are you saying that men expected women to service them?
MS:Yes.
TS:But do you think that women went into the service for that purpose or did the
women go into the service to do their job? I just wasn't quite clear what you
were saying.
MS:I think--I think early on--
TS:When is this early on?
MS:I think in the--of course during the sixties when you had the free love.
TS:But is that why you went in the service?
MS:No.
TS:So why would you say that other women went in the service?
MS:Because I bunked in the same barracks with them.
TS:But do you think that's the reason they went in?
MS:I had a couple friends that did.
TS:Some of them.
MS:Yeah.
TS:You think they were just there to find some men.
MS:Yeah.
TS:Okay.
MS:And see, back in those days? My option--I had a scholarship to go to the
University of New York at Buffalo and I didn't take it. Women, in those days,
were supposed to graduate from high school, go to college, meet a man, get
married, and have a passel of kids and become the happy housewife. That wasn't
for me. [laughs]
TS:I have one last question for you; there might be a follow up. What does
patriotism mean to you?
MS:Honor for my country, serving my country, and protecting my country. That's
what it means. When the first plane went into the tower--
TS:Twin Towers?
MS:--I was out in my shop working and I thought, "Oh, another aircraft like
after World War II." I had a radio, and I shut off my radio, I closed the doors,
turned off the lights, closed the doors, and came in the house and turned on the
television. And I watched the second aircraft go in. And then they hit the
Pentagon. Those guys and gals in that aircraft that went into Pennsylvania are
the bravest people I know, other than the service members, because they knew
they were going into the White House. They took out the business, they took out
the military, and then they were going to take out the government. And that was
one of the saddest days of my life. Not much upsets me.
[The September 11, 2001 attacks, or 9/11, was a series of four coordinated
terrorist attacks by the Islamic terrorist group al-Qaeda on the United States
on the morning of 11 September 2001. The attacks killed 2,996 people and injured
over 6,000 others]
TS:But thinking about that, yeah.
MS:But that bothers me. And then to have somebody say, "You started the war with
us. We're going to kill everybody. If you don't come to Islam we're going to
kill you."
"Well, go ahead. I know where I'm going and it ain't to Allah [Islamic name for "God"].
TS:Well, would you do it all over again, Mary?
MS:In a heartbeat. I've got a new bucket list.
TS:[chuckles] Good.
MS:I want to skydive and I want to bungee jump.
TS:Good luck, Mary.
MS:It ain't going to happen. Because I'd get up on that bridge and go, "Nope,"
because I'm afraid of my own shadow now.
TS:Yeah. But you got to do it.
MS:I got to do the things that I wanted to do. All before I was forty years old.
TS:That's excellent. Well, is there anything we haven't covered that you would
like to mention or bring up?
MS:The women that served during Vietnam should have the same honors and glory as
the guys did. And the guys aren't getting any, but neither are the women.
TS:Right. You think women are more invisible during that era?
MS:Yes. And I believe the best thing that happened to the military today was
when they decided that women aren't the little women anymore.
TS:When did you think that happened?
MS:The military's been coming around that way, but when they opened up the jet--
TS:The fighter jets?
MS:The fighter jet. I knew one of the air force people that--female that flew
the fighter jets. Wow. And now you can do whatever you want, but again, I say,
"Do the job, do it right, and do it within the parameters of the training."
TS:Right.
MS:When I was in there was--and I want to say [unclear]. She was the daughter of
a general or something and had gone to the academy and forced her way into the Q
Course; SF [Special Forces] Qualification Course. And she got caught cheating.
And it left a bad taste in even the females' mouths.
[The Special Forces Qualification Course (SFQC) or, informally, the Q Course, is
the initial formal training program for entry into the United States Army
Special Forces]
TS:When did this happen?
MS:Mid-seventies? Mid-seventies, late seventies. The guys--Well, first of all, I
was thrilled to death when they allowed me to wear the Green Beret.
TS:The Green Berets [U.S. Army Special Forces]?
MS:Yeah. I was in a SF unit.
TS:Oh, okay.
MS:Okay? But--and I was trying to put this into words--the guys have a shield
that they wear on their hats.
TS:The tab.
MS:No, I wear the tab, they wear the whole shield.
TS:Okay.
MS:They wear the whole shield and the crest. I wore a "candy bar" and the crest.
TS:Okay.
MS:But I still wore the same hat, and there was pride in wearing that beret. And
there was pride wearing that maroon beret because it set us apart.
TS:Apart.
MS:I wore a maroon beret for a while, even when I was in SF. Then they decided
they didn't want their uniformity messed up with those maroon berets.
TS:Right.
MS:So they gave us green ones with the "candy bar."
TS:Gotcha.
MS:And that's fine. But then the government--then there's your whiners who go,
"Well, they have those pretty little hats, and why don't we have our pretty
little hats?" So they went to the black beret.
TS:[chuckles] Yeah, it's a controversy. Well, is there anything final that you'd
like to say about your service, because I don't have any more formal questions?
MS:[chuckles] No, as I said, if everybody at the age of twenty-one went in the
military for two years we might have a better society than we have now. But
that's my opinion.
TS:Okay.
MS:But to those men and to those women who are serving now and who served then,
I'm proud of each and every one of them.
TS:That's nice, Mary. It's been really great talking with you.
MS:I'm sorry. I've got a lot of war stories.
TS:No, it's been fun. I'm going to go ahead and turn it off.
MS:Please. [both chuckle]
[End of Interview]
00:01:00