Donut Dollies in Vietnam: Baby-Blue Dresses and OD Green - Paperback

by Nancy Smoyer (Author)

The young women who served in South Vietnam with the Red Cross Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas (SRAO) program were known informally as Red Cross recreation workers. To the American men who served during the Vietnam war they were simply Donut Dollies.

Ask any Donut Dollie why she was in Vietnam and she would tell you that she was there because the men were there. Ranging from large bases such as Cam Ranh Bay to forward Landing Zones and firebases, their job was to provide GIs with a brief respite from the war through games, Kool-aid, or just their presence.

In Donut Dollies in Vietnam: Baby-Blue Dresses & OD Green, Nancy Smoyer, who served as a Donut Dollie during 1967-68, writes a poignant memoir of her Vietnam experience, both during and after the Vietnam war. Based on Nancy's photographs and letters and tapes home, as well as emails written to veteran groups since 1993, she pulls together material from others to share the emotions and events she and other Donut Dollies experienced.

Author Biography

Nancy Smoyer was raised in Princeton, New Jersey, and attended college in Colorado. After graduating from the University of Colorado in 1965 she went on a 15-month round-the-world trip, traveling and working in England, Israel and Australia. During her trip, she came to appreciate how reminders of home could be a soothing balm for Americans far from the States.

It was also during that trip that she decided to go to Vietnam, even though she had no clear opinions about U.S. involvement in the Vietnam war, to try to bring a touch of home to the American servicemen stationed there. In early 1967, she joined the American Red Cross Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas program and served as a Donut Dollie in Vietnam between April of 1967 and April of 1968.

That year-a year Nancy describes as "the high point of my life"-profoundly influenced her future. Since returning from Vietnam almost 50 years ago, she has worked to assist veterans and their families both in Washington, DC and Fairbanks, Alaska where she has lived since l972. She has volunteered with the Friends of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC and continues to volunteer at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial every year. After receiving her master's degree in Community Psychology, she volunteered as a counselor at the Fairbanks Vet Center and also organizes a yearly Stand Down.

In 1993, Nancy returned to Vietnam as part of the Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project. During that trip, she, along with three American combat veterans, worked side-by-side with former Viet Cong and NVA soldiers to renovate a clinic at Cu Chi-one of the places Nancy had been stationed during the Vietnam war.