MOUNT VERNON — Nancy Black is a graduate of Fredericktown High School, Class of ’53, and the Mount Vernon Business School. She is a Cold War veteran, and, in a manner of speaking, of the Vietnam conflict.
She was in the Women’s Army Corps on active duty from February 1958 to February 1960, then joined the reserves and served for another nine years. If she had to do it over again, Black said she would.
“I think some kind of national service would be good for everyone,” she said. “It was a very, very positive experience for me. I won’t say it was always pleasant or fun, but it was positive. The Army challenged me. Formerly an indifferent student, I was an honor graduate from two army schools. I learned a lot about myself, about what I could do.”
Unlike many of her female contemporaries, Black enlisted, at age 22, because she “had thought about going into the service for a long time. ... The draft [for men] was in effect, pulling in people such as Elvis Presley and Steve Lawrence, who also served during my time in the Army. The WACS saw a surge of enlistments when Elvis was drafted and some girls did claim they joined the Army because Elvis was drafted. They probably hoped to be stationed near him.”
Black said the Women’s Army Corps had its own separate basic training and was not combined with the men’s training as it is today. All training in her day was at the WAC Center at Fort McClellan, in Anniston, Ala.
“I actually had more field training than did my brother, who served in the Air Force at the same time,” she said. “Our training was considered at the time to be a little more strenuous than the other women’s services. The WAC training became something of a model for all the women’s services, I understand, until they integrated the women fully into the services.
“The training I received from the Women’s Army Corps was exceptional. It was sometimes dull and boring, sometimes new and exciting, often physically demanding and focused. Most of the training was in the classroom. We learned customs and courtesies, organization of the army and map reading, marching, formations, flag etiquette, first aid and things like that.”
In those days, Black said, trainees also had K.P. duty — kitchen police — which was Black’s least favorite part of basic training.
After basic, Black was sent to clerical school, and was next stationed at Fort Myer. She worked in the Pentagon, where she was assigned to Headquarters, Department of the Army.
“I was, after an interim period working in the administration office of the Deputy Chief of Staff for Personnel, assigned to the Classification and Standards Division, which is where they developed the performance and evaluation standards for personnel, among other tasks,” she said.
“The uniforms we wore back then were different from those worn by the women serving in the WACS during World War II,” Black said. “Ours were designed by Hattie Carnegie. The ‘pot’ hat, our dress hat, had an off-center bill. It was rather odd looking, really. The official color of our uniforms was taupe, wool for winter, and a lighter cotton dress for summer. The cotton taupe dresses were a nightmare to iron and keep looking fresh. When I joined the Reserves I wore my old uniform until the Reserves changed over to the new Army Green winter uniforms, at which time I was issued a new green uniform which was simply designed to match the male uniform, but with a skirt rather than trousers. It’s a much nicer uniform than the old taupe one and looks more military.”
After her two year enlistment was up, Black signed up for the Army reserves. She was working at that time as an editorial assistant at Battelle Memorial Institute, and in January 1966 went to Vietnam, not as a servicewoman, but as a civilian contract employee for the Department of Defense through Battelle.
“I saw my war as a civilian,” she said. “I survived the Tet offensive of ’68 and returned to the United States in March 1968, having spent 26 months in Vietnam.”
Black liked Vietnam and grew to love the Vietnamese people. She said she believed in the official mission, that is, in “what we said we were doing.”
“The problem was,” Black continued, “is that we knew nothing about the Vietnamese and too many of our people didn’t want to learn. ... Trouble was, what we said we were doing and what we were actually doing was not always the same. ... I was very disillusioned with the Army at that time. There was a lack of discipline and the officers did not control their troops. I couldn’t walk down the street without some obscene catcalling from a drunken GI. ... We were supposed to be winning [Vietnamese] hearts and minds, and you don’t do it that way. We destroyed the good will that had been built up previously. ... Unfortunately, the same thing is happening in Iraq.”
Black, a former editor of the Knox County Citizen and freelance writer and photographer, said she is now semi-retired and spends a lot of time helping other veterans through the Women’s Army Corps Veterans Association and with the local AMVETS organization.