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DYR MOM: WY R YOU SO LAVEABL?
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[11/08/99]

What is a Jewish lesbian punk folk singer to do?
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By Erin J. Aubry
[11/05/99]

The other woman
I can't wish she were dead; she may be dying.
By Jane Underwood
[11/04/99]

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I got there right after Tet. I had several incidents when I was afraid for my life. In Saigon, it was more of a psychological warfare -- you never knew when you were going to get mortared.

One time, I was coming downstairs into the hotel lobby to get my ride to work. We took machine gun fire and everybody hit the floor. We just got into the elevator and went up to the eighth floor, because we didn't have any weapons.

Another time, I left my office to go to lunch and we had two gray station wagons. I took one and left. I was about three blocks away when I heard an explosion. That's not uncommon and you just look around and you kind of hit the gas and keep going. But shortly after I had left, the other station wagon had blown up. Somebody had planted plastics on it. The people in my office thought I was dead. When I came back, everybody was white-faced and they grabbed me and hugged me and they told me what happened.

+ OPERATION BABY LIFT

Name: Agnes Feak
In country: Tan Son Nhut Airport, 4 flights of Operation Baby Lift, April 1975
Age in Vietnam: 17
Rank: E4
Job: Nurse
Current age: 46
Current home: Jupiter, Fla.

Operation Baby Lift was a humanitarian project to get the Amerasian children out. This was the children of the American men. They had blue eyes and blond hair, plus you had African-American kids. If they stayed around in Vietnam, they would be murdered by the North Viet Cong.

They were in different orphanages in South Vietnam, run by Catholic South Vietnamese nurses. Usually the mothers put them there, or left them at the front door.

We flew into Saigon. You just did your job, which was to pull kids into the plane. They were just loading them as fast as we could so we could get the hell out of there. We were just grabbing kids. You felt shock. Civilians were grabbing the planes just to get out. We were called "lap holders." The children were extremely young. We had to hold them during the flight.

We brought out 10,000 to 15,000 children. We estimate as many as 40,000 kids were left behind.

One flight went down. That one had Capt. Mary Klinker on it -- she was the last nurse to die in Vietnam. The back door blew open and it crashed into the rice paddy. She was in the back and she blew out. Some people say it was sabotage. Some people say it was an accident. That was in April 1975. It was right when I started.

One baby, I don't know if she survived, I'll never forget her. She was so sick -- so sick, we couldn't get her fever down. And she just smiled. She had the most beautiful blue eyes. And she just smiled. She never cried. Sometimes she was so sick that I rocked her just to see if she was OK. She was 6 months old but she looked more like 3 months. She was undernourished.

Her little hands would cling to my uniform. When I had to hand her over to the doctors [in the United States], I left crying because I had gotten so attached to her. These kids were heroes. They went through hell. People have to understand, war is not John Wayne. It is about death, destruction and it means civilian death. These children were casualties.

+ COMING HOME

Claire Starnes: It was the trip from hell. There were some parts that I don't remember because of the stress. I was in the northern part of Vietnam. I walked into the hotel and I was in the fatigues from the day before. Mama-san came up to me and said, "The chaplain's downstairs." And I knew just what it was. I went downstairs and I said to the chaplain, "My mother died, right?" And he said, "You need to leave right away, we've started the paperwork."

I went up to headquarters and my roommate was packing my stuff. They told me that I had to get down to the International Airport in Saigon, which was in Tan Son Nhut. They said, "You'll have time to change in Fort Travis when you get back to the States." I'm two days now without showering.

So I get on the plane and now we've got a 22-hour flight. I get to Travis and they say your flight is leaving out of San Francisco. I say, "I've got to change," and they say, "No, your bus is leaving." I get to Frisco and they are holding the plane up. I haven't slept, I was really tired. I looked like hell and probably smelled like hell too.

And now I'm in Frisco and now I'm running to the plane. And all of the sudden I hear, "Hey Sarge, how's the war going, kill any babies lately?" And I looked back at these guys and I said, "Screw 'em." I kept on going, but they kept following me. I saw the gate and they kept on and at that point, my blood was boiling. I said, "That's it, I've had enough." I turned around. I said, "You want a piece of me? Come on, let's go." The attendant at the gate, he's yelling at me, he's closing the doors and he's yelling at me. So I headed straight for the door. I sat down and thought, "Jesus I don't want to be here."

And I sat down next to this girl, and I thought, "Oh, no." We had the idea of what a peacenik looks like, and this girl had long, matty-type hair and she had large, horn-rimmed glasses and I thought, "She's one of those hippies from Frisco." But it turned out she was very interested in what was happening in Vietnam. But I thought, "I want to be back in Vietnam. There, you were on pins and needles all the time but at least you knew you had to be." Here, we thought, "I'm home, I'm supposed to be safe."

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