The Women Who Waited
Hollen Barmer

            “Candy may be dandy, but sex won’t rot your teeth,” was the message Gwen Bryant received in a birthday letter from her brother in August of 1968.  Gary Horton was stationed in the Mekong River Delta in Vietnam until late 1969.  After about a year as a naval gunner, Gwen’s brother’s tone was still the same, but the information he related was very different:

That napham [sic.] does a job on Ole Charlie. . .
They had an ambush set up for the PBR’s and we
surprised Charlie.  They had a couple of guys in
the trees. . . and they looked like beef jerky
when it was over.

            This message reflects the loss of innocence many young men experienced in combat, perhaps the most dramatic aspect of the Vietnam War.

            Just three years earlier in Washington, D.C., Lyndon B. Johnson was given three approaches to the conflict in Vietnam.  The president could withdraw troops, risking the United States’ image as enforcer. The next option was for the US to remain in Vietnam, neither increasing nor decreasing the number of troops there.  Finally, the president could deploy more troops by the thousands, putting countless lives in jeopardy.  Not surprisingly, Johnson chose the third approach, most likely in an effort to preserve America’s reputation as a world power.  This negotiation was only one of the discussions that took place in Washington.  Many others made the political arena another major theater of the Vietnam War (Berman 49-50).

            The combat aspect of the war and the political and tactical decisions made in Washington readily come to mind at the mention of Vietnam.  However, life at home during the Vietnam War provides a prominent third dimension for the conflict.  Augie Horton, Gwen Horton Bryant, and Margie Bryant Barmer did not fight in Vietnam.  They did not formulate or discuss political wartime strategies in Washington.  These three women experienced the war at home, and it was in terms of home that they viewed Vietnam.

            Augie Horton is my great grandmother.  Now 87, she was 56 when her 20- year- old son was called upon by the Naval Reserves he had joined in hopes of being skipped for service in Vietnam.  Of course, her greatest fear was that Gary would not come back.  She knew that he faced great danger on nightly river patrols in the Mekong Delta.  She vaguely understood that the enemy everyone so lightly referred to as Charlie could sink her son’s boat with one rocket.  However, Augie Horton knew nothing about napalm and mortars.  Though she had lived through WWII, the Korean War, and the Cold War, she could not envision communism toppling nations like dominoes.  All she knew was the possibly permanent void brought to her by the Vietnam War.

            So how did she deal with the reality of combat danger?  Augie Horton became a sort of home warrior.  Her most vivid memories include sending “the boys” of Gary’s boat cases of chewing gum, books, and newspapers.  It was in this way that she related to the war.  Sending comforts of home to soldiers abroad brought the war home to her.

            My great grandmother is still confused about what the United States was doing in Vietnam.  During the war she saw the action as “unplanned and not real well thought out-—kind of sudden” (Augie Horton).  The only effect she sees in hindsight is “the damage it did to those boys and their families, the kids that died over there and the ones that came back” (Augie Horton).  Again, her understanding comes in terms of home.

            One generation removed, my grandmother viewed the war with attitudes both different from and similar to those of her mother. Like Augie Horton, Gwen Horton Bryant engaged in combat from the home front.  For example, after learning how poor the quality of water in Vietnam was, she “sent Kool-Aid by the scads and blows [i.e., by the truckload] —that was one way they could kill the taste” (Bryant).  She even remembers kiosks in the malls where people could have items sealed in tin cans to send to friends and relatives in Vietnam.  A tall stack of tattered letters from her brother is the greatest testimony of Gwen’s role as a home warrior.  Most of Gary’s letters are replies to messages she sent; there are even letters from members of his crew thanking her for writing to them.

            Like her mother, Gwen knew little about the war and its motives.  She says that “it wasn’t like World War II, where everybody knew what we were fighting for.  This [Vietnam] was completely different; it was for someone else” (Bryant).  Looking back, Gwen perceives the Vietnam War as political, and she knows that the conflict had something to do with Vietnam and democracy.  However, the only threat the war presented in her eyes was to her brother’s life; the fact that her three children could lose their uncle at any time was the biggest influence on her opinion of Vietnam.  She could see most of the “big picture,” but her attention was only focused on one part: the effect on her home.

            While her grandmother worked at a department store and her mother took care of her younger brothers, Margie Bryant Barmer was beginning some of the most event-filled years of her life.  My mother was a sophomore in high school when her uncle was called to Vietnam.  Most of her memories about the war are images and bits of conversations.  She remembers seeing Gary off, and she can recall sending and receiving letters.  One instance stands out in her memory: “One Sunday morning your granddaddy [Herbert Bryant, Gwen’s husband] was cooking breakfast, and Gwen was really upset.  Gary hadn’t written for weeks, and she was going to have to call ‘the damn Red Cross’—that was one of the only times I ever heard her curse”(Barmer). Margie also remembers seeing the war on television, even getting tired of it.  She rarely read about it in the newspaper, for her connection to the war was intensely personal.  Her concern was for her uncle, someone she associated with home.

            My mother was somewhat more informed about Vietnam than her mother and grandmother.  She says that she “knew all along” that the war was politically motivated.  Somehow, though, this did not seem to have much to do with the lives being lost in Vietnam.  From a distinctly teenage point of view, Margie says, “I think I was seriously worried that there would be no boys for me to date—they were all in Vietnam.”  As trivial as her confession may sound, it has serious implications, for this candid statement is just one of the many real concerns of those at home during Vietnam. So what is so important about the perspectives of three generations of women on Vietnam? Augie Horton, Gwen Bryant, and Margie Barmer represent a major facet of the war. Of course, combat and politics might be seen as the most important aspects, but the home was as much a part of Vietnam as the battlefields and round tables.  These three women knew different eras and understood the war in varying degrees.  They sent letters and care packages and thought of a loved one daily.  They worried when a son, a brother, an uncle faced danger; they rejoiced when he came home unscathed.  These women understood the war on a personal level.  For them it was a war on the home.


Bibliography

Barmer, Margie Bryant.  Personal Interview.  20 February 1999.

Berman, Larry.  Planning a Tragedy: The Americanization of the War in Vietnam.  New York: Norton, 1982.

Bryant, Gwen Horton.  Personal Interview.  20 February 1999. 

Horton, Augie Raburn.  Telephone Interview.  20 February 1999.

Horton, Gary Raburn.  Letter to Gwen Bryant .  18 August 1968.  Unpublished.
—.  Letter to Bryant Family.  12 July 1969.  Unpublished.