Steel Flowers: The Women of the Vietnam War (1964-1975)

This unique collection of oral histories fills a gap in the history of a war typically told by American and South Vietnamese veterans, mainly men. The Vietnamese women veterans, dehumanized in US war propaganda, deliver a collective condemnation of war in this compelling and balanced account compiled and edited by Sherry Buchanan.

They were known as the Long-Haired Army, part of the communist National Liberation Front or Viet Cong fighting for unification and liberation from US-occupying forces in the former South Vietnam. They lived clandestinely in the jungle, in tunnels, and in villages in the liberated zones, under bombardments from the air, land, and sea. They served as snipers and artillery gunners, as logistics supply personnel, and as unarmed civil defense workers, spies and couriers, doctors and nurses, actors, singers, and poets.

The veterans share memories of their fighting exploits, of caring for children and family during war, and of the pain of lost loved ones. They remember wartime lovers killed in combat, and friends who died too young to have known love. A guerrilla fighter describes the trauma of abandoning her crying baby in the jungle to save her platoon, another about sparing the life of American soldiers, and another about rape when detained without charge.

Their stories of torture, sexual abuse, and rape in the US-administered prisons and interrogation centers of the former South Vietnam fill another gap in history. The torture of American POWs in North Vietnamese jails has been well documented. In contrast, the torture of women, NLF combatants and civilians, has not. Survivors describe the infamous tiger cages, the beatings, waterboarding, and electric shock. They also reveal the story of their organized prison rebellions against their criminal treatment by prison authorities.

They share their post-war memories, their gratitude of being able to have children in spite of injuries, Agent Orange, and torture. They talk of survivors' guilt and PTSD, of looking for the remains of lost loved ones after the war, and of caring for less fortunate sisters-in-arms. Their stories must be shared.

In a spirit of reconciliation, the collection includes testimonies from American and South Vietnamese women who served in Vietnam and their negative and positive interaction postwar with the other side in an effort to rebuild a new Vietnam.

Two million Vietnamese civilians were killed across North and South, a million to two million Vietnamese combatants, and over fifty-thousand American combatants. The International War Crimes Tribunal in 1967 unanimously found the United States "guilty on all charges, including genocide, the use of forbidden weapons, maltreatment and killing of prisoners, violence and forceful movement of prisoners."