Hidden History: The Donut Dollies in Vietnam is the latest book by multi-award-winning author and historian Richard Sand, Esq. This marvelous tome tells the unforgettable story of 627 women who served with undeniable bravery and compassion in the Vietnam War, only to return home with the ravages of Agent Orange and PTSD. Turned away from care by the Veterans Administration and private health care, they were left in the same situation as the men and boys who fought, died, and were wounded, facing the same circumstances.
This historically and sociologically significant work contains numerous interviews with Donut Dollies who served their military brothers and earned their stripes in the field. There are stories of murder, Viet Cong attacks, bounties on their person, and of the women’s remarkable dedication to bringing “A touch of home” to the troops.
As former President of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Jack McManus, said to a Joint Session of Congress: “The perilous service of the Donut Dollies in Vietnam has been overlooked or belittled because they are women!”
Their story led to a bill in Congress to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Donut Dollies and a separate Senate resolution praising their service.
Hidden History: The Donut Dollies in Vietnam is the latest book by multi-award-winning author and historian Richard Sand, Esq. This marvelous tome tells the unforgettable story of 627 women who served with undeniable bravery and compassion in the Vietnam War, only to return home with the ravages of Agent Orange and PTSD. Turned away from care by the Veterans Administration and private health care, they were left in the same situation as the men and boys who fought, died, and were wounded, facing the same circumstances.
This historically and sociologically significant work contains numerous interviews with Donut Dollies who served their military brothers and earned their stripes in the field. There are stories of murder, Viet Cong attacks, bounties on their person, and of the women’s remarkable dedication to bringing “A touch of home” to the troops.
As former President of the Vietnam Veterans of America, Jack McManus, said to a Joint Session of Congress: “The perilous service of the Donut Dollies in Vietnam has been overlooked or belittled because they are women!”
Their story led to a bill in Congress to award the Congressional Gold Medal to the Donut Dollies and a separate Senate resolution praising their service.
(Art by Frank Galuszka)
From March 26th, 1965, through 1971, 627 Donut Dollies, formerly known as Supplemental Recreational Activities Overseas, joined the more than 500,000-man American war effort in Vietnam.
In the words of the poet, Sara Haines, the Donut Dollies were “There to be life-affirming in an arena that destroyed life.”1
What follows are their stories, hidden as they were by bureaucracy, sexism, and the terrors of war.
These women deserve your respect and salute.
1 As quoted by Cathleen Cordoba in “Rumor of War”
Hidden History: The Donut Dollies in Vietnam
Frank Galuszka is a renowned painter whose work has been featured in over 200 exhibitions, with pieces displayed in museums and private collections throughout the US and abroad. He has done this piece of art for all the Donut Dollies and the soldiers they served: “God bless you all.”
They were college graduates in their early-to-mid twenties eager to see the world. Photographs show the young women in baby blue dresses, the uniform of the Red Cross Supplemental Recreation Activities Overseas program. But to the male service members who never forgot their visits, they were the Donut Dollies.
After two weeks of training at American Red Cross headquarters in Washington DC, the women were sent to Vietnam carrying canvas bags filled with games, gifts, books, and treats. During 12-15 hour days, they interacted with hundreds of troops, unflaggingly cheerful because, as DD Margaret Mott explains, “our goal was...to provide a smile and a brief respite from the conflict.”
In Hidden History: The Donut Dollies in Vietnam, Richard Sand spotlights these women who have been lost to time. From the mid-sixties to the early seventies, they faced the same risks as soldiers on the front lines--including exposure to Agent Orange--yet were denied recognition, medical benefits, and aftercare because they were not military personnel.
The strength of this moving account lies in Sand’s dedicated research. He interviewed dozens of individuals whose vivid recollections reconstruct touching moments as the women, sent out via helicopter, softened men hardened and wearied by combat.
First-person accounts and photographs--from both Dollies and servicemen--allow Sand to take a backseat in deference to the participants’ own words. And while this results in variability of narrative skills and a good deal of repetition--as each tells their story independent of the others--the authenticity is apparent.
Readers may cringe at their name, yet present-day beliefs that ‘Donut Dollies’ is ‘demeaning’ are addressed respectfully in the Foreword and Preface, providing context rooted in prevailing attitudes of the era. The women represented an ideal that historian Dr. Marie Stur calls “an image of American women as wholesome, girlish, and chaste”--and worth fighting for.
Sand is also intentionally inclusive. DD Shirley Hines Atkins admits, “I had to become used to being the only Black Female around.” Later, when she went on a solo visit--without the other woman she’d been paired with--“the first group of guys were all white” and kept asking, again and again, “where the other girl was...I told them, ‘A Chocolate Donut Dolly is all you get today.’ That broke the ice.”
The Donut Dollies enabled women to step forward during a moment in American history when the women’s movement introduced ideas of gender equity and increased autonomy
Paula Haley remembers, “Service members would ask me, ‘What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?’” Now a retired Air Force officer, “I realize that gender is not a factor when we are asked to stand up and be counted.” She was doing “the same thing a nice guy is doing. Freedom is not free, and war is everyone’s responsibility, regardless of gender.”
While the fit isn’t flawless, Sand arranges the puzzle pieces of the Donut Dollies’ overlooked service into a picture of those 627 women who, amidst 500,000 American soldiers, faced the horrors of Vietnam bravely, resolutely, and with undeniable grit.