Bittersweet Day for Some Veterans

For Bilinda Hemphill-Osburne, Memorial Day evokes bittersweet memories of her tour as an Air Force administration specialist stationed in Germany in 1970, the height of the Vietnam War.

While the Santa Clarita Valley resident may have been spared a front-line view of the atrocities of war, Hemphill-Osburne still fought the battles of sexism and racism like so many of her African American sisters-in-arms.

“I had this old sergeant who refused to give me a professional review report unless I [was intimate] with him,” recalled Hemphill-Osburne, who is among 1,000 patients receiving low-cost care at the Women Veterans Health Center at the Sepulveda Veterans Administration Medical Center in North Hills.

Although there are no official records documenting the number of African American women who served in Vietnam, there are 27,250 black women Vietnam-era veterans in America, representing 20% of all who served in the war, according to 1990 U.S. Census data.

They will be among the nation’s 1.8 million military women to be recognized in October, when the $21.5-million Women In Military Service for America Memorial is dedicated at Arlington National Cemetery, honoring women warriors from the American Revolution to the present.

Generations of African American women have played a largely unacknowledged role in every American conflict from the Civil War--when Harriet Tubman served as a scout for the Union Army--to Desert Storm.

In earning that place in history, many African American women Vietnam veterans suffered from depression, fear, confusion and fatigue, like their male counterparts. Beyond those conditions, however, they endured isolation, racial slights, sexual harassment and sexual assault.

In Hemphill-Osburne’s case, “I reported him right away and he was forced to retire.”

Hemphill-Osburne said she was privy to racial slurs by some white military personnel who mistook her for a white woman because of her light complexion.

Although racist and sexist attitudes persisted around her, Hemphill-Osburne said she didn’t allow them to diminish her spirit.

“Looking back, I had a positive experience,” she said. “I feel like I did a good thing as a black woman for my country.”

Hemphill-Osburne said her military service--and subsequent veterans’ benefits--helped her to obtain a degree from Cal State Northridge, secure a low-interest mortgage for her north San Fernando Valley home, and get low-cost health care at the VA women’s health center , where she goes for routine physical checkups.

While Hemphill-Osburne came through her wartime service relatively unscathed, other African American military women have struggled for years to salve their psychological and emotional war wounds.

To break the cycle of pain, several women veterans of all races and all wars seek relief at the VA women’s center where counselor Callie Wight helps them come to terms with the lingering effects of a war that ended nearly a quarter of a century ago.

Many servicewomen continue to wrestle with the shame, guilt, pain and anger of having been sexually assaulted, not by the enemy, but by men on the same side of the firing line, Wight said.

Others, especially nurses and medical technicians, she said, are still haunted by the bloody results of warfare: maimed bodies, and a constant stream of dead and dying men, many of them only a few years younger than the women trying to save them.

About 7,000 American women of all races were stationed in Vietnam during the war, mainly as nurses, current Veterans Affairs and Defense Department figures show. Eight military women who died in the war are memorialized on the Wall of Names in Washington.

But black women serving in Vietnam, in particular, suffered from feelings of isolation because they had few peers who could relate to their experiences, said Dr. Lisa Altman, the center’s clinical director.

“There was isolation upon isolation for black women,” Altman said. “All trauma is harder to go through the farther you are away from home, family and a support system. Black women were very vulnerable to this.”

As a result of their traumatic wartime experiences, many women Vietnam veterans have suffered from post-traumatic stress disorder, whose symptoms include depression, nightmares, insomnia, anger, hyperactivity and, in some instances, flashbacks, Wight said.

Renee Hopwood, an outreach coordinator for New Directions, a veterans’ support center in West Los Angeles, had no idea what the disorder was or that she would eventually suffer its effects when she enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school in 1970.

Hopwood trained for three years in the States before shipping out in 1973 for an agonizing, three-year tour as a medical technician aboard the USS Sanctuary hospital ship anchored in the South China Sea.

She vividly remembers climbing aboard a medical helicopter on the ship’s flight deck and flying into Vietnam to aid the wounded or “bag and tag” the dead.

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“The hardest part of my job was not to fall apart while I was trying to put someone back together,” she said. “We tried to give them hope and not go crazy ourselves. I just kept saying, ‘I ain’t gonna die here.’ ”

After returning to Los Angeles in 1976, Hopwood worked steadily in the medical field for four years, before the disorder’s symptoms emerged. She got hooked on crack cocaine and turned to prostitution to support her habit, she said.

“I was sitting in this alleyway with other crackheads,” Hopwood said. “The scene just faded. Everything turned to black and white. I knew I didn’t want to be there anymore.”

Hopwood turned herself into authorities, served nearly eight months at the county’s Sybil Brand Institute for Women on various drug and theft charges, entered a drug treatment program in 1995 and is now earning credit toward a counseling degree at UCLA.

Although she has seemingly made some sense of her wartime experiences, Hopwood said Memorial Day conjures conflicting emotions rooted in her belief that black women have not received proper recognition for their service in America’s most unpopular foreign war.

“Memorial Day brings up many issues that have never been addressed: The day is a memorial to who and for what? Is everyone who participated being honored?” said Hopwood. “When Americans hear ‘veterans,’ they think about white men, not about black women, but we were there too.”

Hopwood said, however, she is grateful to be clean and sober and moving forward in her life.

“I’m doing great. I love my life. I’m glad that I am helping other [veterans],” she said, “because a lot of people came back from Vietnam with bodies, but no souls.”