Correspondents: Femininity at the Front

The new white and blue outhouse 50 yards from the airstrip at An Khe is notably different from all the others in the combat area of South Viet Nam. The men of the 1st Air Cavalry who carved the half-moon on the door have painted the inside blushing pink, and they have even equipped the little building with porcelain and plaster conveniences. “For lady correspondents,” the troopers proudly explain. Their handiwork is eloquent testimony to the growing presence of Viet Nam’s female press corps. From a total of two women last year, the roster of regulars has grown to nearly a dozen. As many more have passed through on two-or three-month tours.

Newcomers or old hands, the women are frequent visitors to the front lines, where reaction to their presence is varied. When one of the women turned up at the headquarters of a Marine fighter squadron in the Mekong Delta, the C.O. gave her a curt order: “You’ll wear fatigues all the time. We don’t want women with legs down here.” Out in the boondocks, another one of the girls was greeted by a battle-weary Army sergeant who asked quietly: “Will you please just say something? I haven’t heard an American woman speak in five months.”

As far as the men of the Saigon press corps are concerned, on any military operation, the girls inevitably become a hindrance. “Still,” admits A.P.’s Peter Arnett, “it’s a delightful change to have them around.” A few of the more delightful of the species:

Betsy Halstead at 24 is one of the youngest and most experienced female correspondents in Viet Nam. A Temple University graduate, she arrived with her husband Dirck two years ago—he to run U.P.I.’s photography desk, she to report for the bureau. Since then, the fast-moving Philadelphian has scored an impressive number of beats. She was the first reporter to witness and photograph a B-52 raid, and she was first to interview the mayor of Danang after Premier Ky called him a Communist and erroneously announced that he had fled the city. In her tailored sage-green flight suit, the pert, 5-ft. 2-in. redheaded veteran of the Air Force’s Okinawa survival course is well known throughout the country. “I’ve learned to keep quiet and not to argue,” she says. She knows that “you can always sweet-talk someone into doing something for you.” Perhaps more important, “when telephone operators hear a female voice, they always try harder to get a connection through”—an incomparable asset when fighting the fouled-up communications of Viet Nam.

Denby Fowcett, 25, a Columbia University alumna, was a surfing, skindiving Hawaii wahine only a few months ago. Then her boy friend was sent to Saigon by the Honolulu Advertiser, and Denby, who had once written women’s features, got the Advertiser to send her after him. The boy friend soon left Saigon, but Denby stayed on to run the paper’s bureau alone. In off-hours, the tanned and shapely blue-eyed blonde is one of Saigon’s most eligible females, but she has little time for socializing. When she is not covering political upheavals in the city, she is usually chasing down front-line action. When Viet Cong bullets began spattering around her near Danang, she took pictures first, cover second. Once the sound of a not-too-near mortar shell prompted four Marines to fling themselves over her “protectively.” Says she: “They’re always doing cute things like that in the field.”

Esther Clark, 46, has been covering military affairs for the Phoenix Gazette longer than most of the Saigon newswomen have been out of grade school. Since 1948, she has jetted through the sound barrier, been the first woman reporter to spend a day at sea aboard a submarine, and received an Air Force award for outstanding service by a civilian. Like most of the others, the soft-spoken brunette has studiously resisted being toughened into “one of the guys.” Now in Viet Nam because “I felt I had to try explaining to the people at home what is going on,” she has based herself in Danang. “I detest Saigon,” she explains. “The war seems so remote from there.” In fatigues and big-brimmed slouch hat, she spends most of her time talking to the troops. “After five minutes,” she says, “they get the idea I’m not a greenhorn.”

Michele Ray, 28, boasts an odd assortment of journalistic qualifications. A former fashion model and Elle magazine cover girl, the slim 5-ft. 10-in. Frenchwoman is a professional race-car driver and is making her own 16-mm. movie in Viet Nam. She is single-mindedly persistent in search of what she wants. “I first go to the Americans,” she purrs, “and if they don’t tell me, then I go to the Vietnamese—they always tell me everything.” As a freelancer, she recently spent eight days with the Green Berets. Grateful for her presence, they named a search-and-clear mission “Operation Michele” in her honor. The Green Berets got 15 Viet Cong, and Michele got leeches on her long, lovely legs. But she enjoyed the mission because “on small operations you are more like the Viet Cong. It is more sporting and more dangerous.”

Beverly Deepe, 30, who worked for the New York Herald Tribune until its demise, is now freelancing. She has logged more continuous time in Viet Nam than any other correspondent. On her way round the world in 1962, she stopped off in Saigon, then stayed on to build a reputation as an energetic reporter who preferred to operate on her own. She developed valuable contacts among the Vietnamese; her friendship with deposed Premier Nguyen Khanh, for example, won her a revealing exclusive interview in which Khanh tried to establish his own political standing by taking a militant, anti-American stand (TIME, Jan. 8, 1965). Beverly finds the “biggest challenge as a woman correspondent is that most of the American troops expect me to be a living symbol of the wives and sweethearts they left at home. They expect me to be typically American, despite cold water instead of cold cream, fatigues instead of frocks. Always it’s more important to wear lipstick than a pistol.”