Almost every single one of them saluted back. It was an incredibly moving experience, and you always have to wonder when youre talking about faces and people that you remember how it impacted the lives of those young men. I guess, among many other things, ive always wondered were they able to rebuild their lives and to have good families and decent jobs and to really have a decent life. I want to interrupt then and tell an anecdote. Im going to take one second here. I was inside the pentagon working on the morning of 9 11, and as we came to understand the people who perished inside the pentagon, there was a man, older man, civilian, worked for the department of the army. His name was max bilky. You know who max was. Max bilky died in the pentagon on 9 11. Max as a young army draftee is listed in American History as the last combat american soldier out of vietnam, and he came home and he had a good life. Thats good. By all accounts. And he died that morning. So vietnam, its just its just fascinating because it is so woven in the fabric of this country and the journalists who covered it are so woven into the fabric of our profession. You know, let me be the one to ask the trite question. As you look back now laura, want to start with you and lets go down the line. Through the prism of history, where did it matter what you were a woman, a female journalist in terms of being denied the options that otherwise had . Lets talk about that. And as you look back seeing these americans come off helicopters, who on earth cares whether it is a man or woman covering that story as long as it is getting covered . It is partly looking through the prism of time. What am i going to do . Ask these women, did it matter being a woman in vietnam . Well, sometimes yes. Sometimes no. Talk to us about this. I was there so late in the war that i was standing on the shoulders of those who had made real sacrifices to give women the opportunity. As i mentioned, it was not only the women at the New York Times and the sex discriminate suit, but people like urate who fought to have women have access, so i didnt have obstacles in my path that way, but i think i knew as a woman i had to earn my place at the table. There were some things that were a given. I would never show fear. I would work as hard as any man, and i would never do anything that would embarrass my profession. I felt that very strongly. Did it matter being a woman . Was the coverage different . I think one thing for me being i was in vietnam from the time i was 22 to 24. I was young and i was always underestimated, so i was always smarted than i appeared. I was not threatening. I think sometimes politicians talked to me. G. I. S would talk to me. Vietnamese are not tall people. For a woman, youre the same size as the Government Official youre interviewing. I think sometimes that was an asset. I think as i dont know what my colleagues think. I think as a woman i was someone who was always more comfortable talking about feelings, so it wasnt it was a natural far me. So if im interviewing a g. I. , ill ask the second and third followup question. Denby . My thoughts on it were that i think being a woman was important because it showed that women could do that. Everyo even up to the end, edie and her boss and kate webb and other female reporters, we were kind of freelancer. Edie was among the first to become as a staffer, but her boss said no covering combat and also to tracy wood. He had sent them over. There was a push to have woman covering important things, but still you had this overhanging layer of my experience there, my worst we were almost on the edge of getting set back in my era. Mine happened when i was out at a forward fire base. The general in charge of the armed forces in vietnam, he happened to fly in because they were under fire and a lot of people had died. 36 people had died. It was very bad, so he came do give a pep talk. And he came around. I just waited until he was finished talking to the soldiers. And then he came up and he saw me and he said, oh, what are you doing here . And his family had rented a house near ours in hawaii and my mother played tennis with his wife. He said, oh, how long have you been here . I said, oh, two nights. He said, oh. Then he laughed. Then we heard later that urate and i and the few female reporters, he wanted to close it down for women reporters. He decided then that no women could spend the night in the field and that meant that we couldnt cover things because its not like you could call uber and say get me out of here. I have to be home for my bedtime. So, women all banded together, and we managed to get that changed. I think women matters because the women of our era were starting to get emboldened. It was the 1960s. What happened to women before us they would often buy into this myth that you cant do these things. I was a little bit that way myself, but the 60s are coming and the times, theyre a changing, so we were braver and we fought things. Start thinking about your questions. Were going to get to questions in about three minutes. If you dont have ones, ill call on you anyhow. What do you think . I think the military at that time was very paternalistic with us, like denbys story. Oh, you remind me of my daughter, and they would really say things like why arent you writing about widows and orphans. Occasionally, they would say, okay, youre here. You know, youre such a morale boost. Could you just go around the fire base and pose for photos . Pose for photos with with the kids there. You know, there was this weird disconnect. You had this legitimate press pass and were trying to write about combat. Yes, there were show girls in vietnam, and there were also nurses, but reporters very few. And it was very hard for them to see you as a professional. This is why i mean im sitting here and im just awestruck because anything we have been able to do in iraq and afghanistan, bosnia, the middle east, the horn of africa, really is owed to the women who have gone before. Edie, i suspect that maybe who any American General who told you you couldnt do something might have had an adjustment made to personality. I would like to start out by echoing laura and paying tribute to denby, urate and kate web. Kate web captured in cambodia and one of the very few people to come out alive, but i would also like to say that we were all products of the dawn of womens liberation. We were that generation that really started to believe that women could do anything that we put our minds to. And in a sense, thats what i think made a difference for all of the women who came of age and into this profession of being war correspondents and Foreign Correspondents starting in vietnam. We, as a whole group, were actually able to prove that women actually do have what it takes to cover wars and disasters. Unlike what aps then Foreign Editor ben bassett believed. Not that were naming names. I always felt that i was grateful that i could prove that he was wrong, and that i was able to do it not just in vietnam but in the many other wars i went on to cover. The other thing that i wanted to say about women was, you know, just because we were there and we were working hard doesnt mean that, at least for me, on many occasions i wouldnt use the fact that i was a woman to try to get information and to get stories because one of the things i learned instantly on arriving in vietnam was there was so few american women there that you could basically talk to any man about anything. And particularly in the military, where i actually did not know that much, you could ask them to explain things to you, or you could ask what might sound like a stupid question coming from a man and often would elicit great quotes for a story. I got no problem with that. I really dont. If they want to cough up the information, thats theyre problem. Lets go to some questions. I think you were probably first. You want to tell us who you are and who youd like to ask a question of. My names dee young. Could you tell us something that you hear from American People and from vietnamese or any other nation countries that people say about and how do they express their emotion about the wars . About how people today when you were in vietnam, when you hear the people say, when americans say or vietnamese or some other countries stay how do people feel emotionally about the war when they were reporting . What kind of emotions did you hear from the people of vietnam, i think thats your question, about the war when you were there and reporting on the war . What did you hear . What do they feel about you how did they feel about you as american journalists covering the war . I could answer just kind of briefly because i lived with the veietnamese family in the heart of saigon. It was so bizarre. They were just going about their business in the war. They were trying to make a living and trying to survive. And they didnt think of me as anything unusual at all because i was working too, so we didnt really discuss the war at all. We were just kind of going about our business. Yes, getting through life. Im so sorry. No, no, please. One of my great disappointments about having been in vietnam for almost two years, i did not write enough about the veietnamese people. I was so focused on the americans. For a freelancer, i would be very hard to get a story published and i regret it terribly. Thank god for Gloria Emerson who went there and wrote day of day about the vietnamese people. We went through the villages and the devastation and people crying. It was heartbreaking to see how much the vietnamese people suffered. Id just like to say that i think i echo what they said. There was a tremendous amount of suffering, and one of the stories that i did want to write was about the impact of the war on the South Vietnamese because we wrote about all the american casualties, but we didnt write about the massive South Vietnamese casualties. And in order to do this, i had to go and find a South Vietnamese family that had lost this woman had lost either three or four sons, and she had one who was still fighting. She didnt know whether he was still alive, and she was living under the most horrible circumstances in a shack where she didnt even have walls of her own. She had a roof over the walls of the two adjoining huts, and so i think that there was a tremendous amount of suffering, but i think a lot depended on the economic class of the people. I think there was a certain middle class in South Vietnam that sort of rolled with the punches and some who made money, but i think a lot of the very poor, the poorer people, really, really suffered. Maam . My name is peggy lewis and im with trinity washington university. We are so proud of you and so grateful to all of you for being here. I have a number of students and faculty here from the university who are aspiring to be journalists, but i wonder what your thoughts were when you heard Brian Williams embelli embellishing his experience and you were there. Im going to leave it to these ladies to decide if they want to answer. Its your floor. Anybody want to is that a no thank you. Im not trying to make you Say Something you dont want to say, but im certain women who had been there covering it, to see a man who embellished and was taken out of the anchor chair for the embellishment is it a gender issue . I dont know that it is. You have students here this evening . Are you guys up there in the rafters . Raise your hands. I think its an okay question, but it doesnt have to do with being a man. It would be anyone who would embellish and still have this position of stature and speaking out to the American People. You worry for them and feel sad and think, why did you do that. Journalism 101, accuracy, accuracy, accuracy. After that, theres really nothing. Its not about anybody else. Its about you and your accuracy. Im not commenting on mr. Williams. Im commenting on journalism, the journalism profession. Im a Political Communications student at gw. Thank you so much for being here. Raise your hands. Theres a great book by tim obrien, the things theyve carried. Its a fictitious account. I was hoping that you ladies could possibly share either some things that you brought along with you in your own bags as you traveled along or some of the momentos you picked up along the way. Thats a great question. Did you have a good luck charm . Did you have something you always had bottom of your bag . I know it was very important for me to still have some kind of femaleness out there. Im 6 feet tall. I mean, this is an amazon, walking through the jungles. As it should be. Dressed in fatigues, combat boots, carrying a pack, the whole thing. You know, i always kind of wore maybe like a yellow tshirt underneath my fatigues. I did put on lipstick every now and then. One of the nicest compliments i ever got after a couple of days on patrol in the rain, in the mud, sleeping in a fox hole with somebody, and the guy says to me, maam, i dont know how you do it, but you still smell better than we do. [ laughter ]. I took i was always thinking of eating. When im nervous, i like to eat. We had sea rations, which were canned. I would take an onion, saigon, and there was a little store there in the era, and they had a can of wine. Figuring this is going to be my last day on earth, so im going to have some wine with my feast. I didnt know that. I was also into the lipstick, nail polish, sort of wearing combat fatigues, but also trying to look like a woman. And i try and take that wherever i went. I also tried to sneak along some biscuits and cookies, stuff that was not part of any kind of rations. I dont remember taking anything with me, but something ive carried or kept is a small helicopter that was made from hospital junk. Iv tubing, some needle caps, and its a perfectly constructed miniature helicopter with a small rotor. It was made by a young boy who was, i think, about 10, who had been shot in the spine from an american chopper. He was paralyzed. What he did was create this helicopter from the junk in the hospital, and he was selling it for, you know, 25 cents or whatever, to raise money for himself and for his family. So ive always kept that very close by. Its usually on my desk. I keep it as a reminder of what war does. Thank you. Sir . Good evening. Gary thomas. Im a retiree. First off, i have to remind you the marines isnt the smallest service, it is the coast guard. Thank you. For all five of you for what you continue to do for role models, thanks. Denby, early in your career, you made career decisions about your professional life and personal life that sometimes had to be conflicted, and sometimes dealing with the fact that bob was also a journalist, brett was born overseas, things like that. Can you talk a little bit, for the younger people out here, how you made those decisions. How did you judge your personal life, professional life, and how did you make it work out in the end . Gary and i know each other, and he has a wife who is a pioneer, also. Shes an admiral in the u. S. Coast guard. We ran the 14th district on our island of oahu. I think, for me, i cant say there was a pattern. I just was alone for a long time in vietnam before i was married, reporting alone, and things kind of fell together. Then i always kept working when i was married. I dont know how i did it. It wasnt really a conflict. It just kind of fell along, fell together as i went along. I think one thing that struck me very dramatically was my decision to leave vietnam and to see how seductive war is. I knew i didnt want to be someone who went from one war to the next, and be kind of a war groupie. I couldnt make a life. I wrote once that i wanted roots that went down to the source of water. And at the time, when i was in vietnam, i wasnt sure what that would have meant, and i was too young to be thinking about that. But when i went back to vietnam in 1989, it was the first time, and i travelled with a small group, all the way through the country. I was in saigon, and i did the memory walk of the places i had lived. I realized, there was a moment when it just hit me, i thought of my daughter who was then 8, and i wanted to go home. I missed the life that i had created. I think that was when i really realized that i had done that, that i had somehow chosen or life had chosen me. I didnt want to just go from war to war, and i had to make another life, which i did. But its, you know, the tradeofs a trade offs are always there, and you do the best you can at the time. Barbara, can i Say Something . Please. I think of all of us here, im the only one who actually stayed being a Foreign Correspondent and a war correspondent for 25 years. And i think that it definitely was a tradeoff, particularly for my generation. Right. I think it would have been impossible for me to have covered all the wars and conflicts and gotten on planes and run off all over the world, and to have been married and raised a family. So it was a choice that i made, and i have had an incredible life. But it was a choice that i made. Hi. Im judith. My question is directed to most of you. Many of you had been both reporters before and after the vietnam war. My question is, how did it change the environment for women, both your life before and then coming back afterward . And my question is a little twofold. Also between you and other women journalists after the war, was there a different level of respect or ease because you had had the experience or no . No. No, no, no, no. Vietnam was, i remember first coming back from the war, and i was looking for a job in television, which was my experience. It was like, oh, yeah, you were in vietnam, but you dont know film and tape. It was like, oh, that was there, but this is now and you dont you know, there was a time when vietnam just was it wasnt almost heard. I remember when i went home, i was in the drugstore where i had been for years and years. They said, laura, i havent seen you for a while. I said, i was in vietnam for the last two years, and i was living in paris the past few years. Paris . Oh, tell us about paris. For a time, vietnam was erased in consciousness. For me, i agree. Vietnam was the war that everyone wanted to forget. When i came back, i went back to san francisco. I remember all my friends saying, oh, how was it . Did you have an interesting time . Yes, i did. Well, heres whats been going on while you were away. Professionally, for me, it was very positive because i left vietnam in like august of 1973. Then there was the war that broke out. I was one of by then, working for the ap, and wes gallagher, who sent me to vietnam, then sent me to israel and sent the other reporter to cairo. Professionally, it was a positive because we had proven that women could actually do the job. I think, one thing