I was nineteen years old in 1968 when I went to work as an airline stewardess for Standard Airways. We flew charter flights in and out of Vietnam, mostly at night, carrying military personnel and bringing wounded soldiers back to the United States. At that age, I thought of it as an adventure, a chance to see the world and serve my country in my own way. I had no real understanding of the danger around us or the depth of the trauma unfolding in that war.
We would land in the dark, the cabin lights low, our instructions clear but never fully explained. I remember the heavy silence when we touched down, and the way the air felt different—thick with heat, humidity, and something I didn’t yet have words for. We moved quickly, serving meals, offering coffee, passing out magazines and newspapers from home. We brought material to show the men what was happening back in the States—pictures of parades, families at the beach, sports scores, and movie stars. It was our way of saying, “Life is still going on. There is still a home waiting for you.”
Some of the wounded soldiers were quiet, staring straight ahead as if they were somewhere else entirely. Others were eager to talk, telling us about the towns they came from, the girls they missed, the cars they planned to buy when they got home. Many tried to be cheerful, making jokes, flirting, brushing off their injuries as “just a scratch.” I didn’t know then how much of that was bravado, how much was an attempt to keep from breaking down. I only knew that my job was to smile, to be calm and caring, to make the flight feel safe and normal.
In those days, I didn’t watch the news closely and I didn’t question what I was doing. The military personnel treated us respectfully, and I felt proud to be there, proud to bring these men home. I had no idea how vulnerable we were flying in and out of a war zone, no real sense of the risk we faced on every trip. It wasn’t until years later, sitting in a movie theater, that the reality hit me.
When Vietnam War movies began coming out, I avoided them at first. Eventually, curiosity and time wearing down my defenses led me to watch. As I saw the scenes of jungle combat, burning helicopters, and desperate evacuations, something inside me shifted. I realized, perhaps for the first time, the full extent of what was happening on the ground during those years when I was flying so casually in and out. The danger I had been in—what could have happened to our planes—landed heavily on me. More than that, I began to grasp what those men had endured before they ever set foot on my aircraft.
Years later, I volunteered at the VA hospital in Seattle. There, the war had a different face. It looked like young men in wheelchairs, older men shuffling down the corridors with canes, patients with missing limbs and scarred skin. It looked like haunted eyes and long silences, sudden outbursts of anger, men who flinched at loud noises or could not sleep through the night. Mental wounds were less visible but just as deep. I met veterans who had been in and out of psychiatric wards, who struggled with addiction, who could not hold jobs or maintain relationships. I saw the Vietnam War stretched out over decades in the lives of those who had survived it.
The more I learned, the more I felt a burning sense of outrage and sorrow. I began to protest the war and to speak out against what had happened—both abroad and at home. I joined demonstrations, carried signs, and lent my voice to those calling for change. Not everyone appreciated my stance. Some people believed I was being unpatriotic or disloyal to the soldiers I had once served on those flights. I tried to explain that my protest was not against the men, but against the policies and decisions that had sent them into harm’s way and then abandoned so many of them afterward.
Their disapproval hurt. Friends pulled away. Family members questioned my choices, and I learned quickly that some conversations were not safe to have, some beliefs not welcome in certain circles. From that experience, I discovered the hard lesson of discretion—of what to share and what to keep to myself. I did not stop caring or believing in what I had seen and learned, but I became more guarded about when and where I expressed it.
Looking back now, those flights in 1968 feel like a doorway between innocence and awareness. At the time, I was simply a young stewardess doing her job, handing out magazines and coffee to wounded soldiers in the dim light of a nighttime cabin. Only later did I come to understand the full story—the danger I was in, the suffering they carried, and the cost of a war that followed so many home and never truly ended for them.
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