2 or 3 things I know about her

Time Magazine May 6, 1966

Disneyland East

The excess baggage of war has always included women. Strumpets
trailed the trumpets of Joshua at Jericho and marched in the
legions of Rome. Sir Gawaine was not the only knight-errant; in one
year alone, the crusaders counted the aid of 13,000 camp followers
in their quest for the holy sepulcher. In World War I, they were
the vivandiérs, in Saigon today, the b-girls are called tea
girls. Wherever two or three soldiers gather together, prostitutes
ore sure to flock, adding to the disorder that follows in the wake
of armies everywhere.

Nowhere was the shock of massive encampment grater in Vietnam
than in the sleepy little town of An Khe in the barren central
highland. Late last summer, 21,000 troopers of the U.S. 1st Cavalry
(Airmobile) set up tents and helipads near An Khe. Prostitutes and
profiteers swarmed into the town; prices for everything from beef
to beer soared, ad did the incidence of disease among the
americans. Dysentery and other intestinal diseases multiplied
fourfold within four months. venereal disease soon afflicted nearly
an third of the G.I.s.

Moderate Tearoom

By sheer weight of numbers as well as dollars, the cavalrymen
were hurting An Khe and being hurt by the uncontrolled squalor and
rapacity of the riff-raff. So just before things boiled over in Tet
New Year roistering last January, Air Cavalry General Harry W. O.
Kinnnard stepped in and declared all of An Khe off limits to his
men. prices soon dropped back down toward normal, the disease rates
dropped. But the men of the air cav, out fighting in the jungles
for weeks at a time in some of the bitterest, bloodiest battling
the war, had little to come home to. in march, the division's first
cases of "battle fatigue" showed up.

It was the Vietnamese village elders who came up with a
solution, which Kinnnard reluctantly accepted as the best among
unhappy alternative: the fist brothel quarters built exclusively
for American soldiers in Vietnam. Half finished, An Khe plaza. as
the sign at the M.P. gatehouse declares, or "Disneyland " as the
G.I.s call it, is a 25-acre sprawl of concrete blocks an surrounded
by coils of concertina barbed wire. Each parlor consists of a bar
with eight cubicles opening off the back. eventually there will be
40 parlors, bearing such rubrics as Paradise, Caravelle, Golden
Hind, Hill Billy, Washington, and the Moderate Tearoom.

The Least Harm

In the bars already open, teen-age boys serve as waiters,
carrying bottle openers tied to the ends of rags. the panache with
which they knock the cap off a bottle of beer, sending the top
sailing to the ceiling, lends lively contrast to the sloth-like
movements of the bar's eight girls, shuffling from soldier to
soldier. The price of a "short time" varies with the demand from
$2.50 to $5 and inevitably had produced grumbling. "General
Kinnnard ought to put hid foot down." complained one cavalry-man
last week. "Five bucks is too high. he ought to make three bucks
the standard price." The plaint is, of course, misdirected. An Khe
plaza is a creation of the Vietnamese and urn by the Vietnamese,
albeit for Americans.

American military police do patrol the compound and check the
pass of each G.I. entering. Vietnamese girls who want to work in
Disneyland must obtain a special entertainers card and visit An
Khe's clinic once a week for a medical examination by Vietnamese
doctors and U.S. provided shot of a long-lasting penicillin-type
drug to suppress disease. Forced to choose between morality and the
morale of their men, the division's officers are clearly troubled
by Disneyland. but as one colonel explained, "We wanted to get the
greatest good for our men with the least harm." For visitors to An
Khe, even clerics and chaplains, Disneyland is as hard to condemn
as it is to condone. In that respect, it is not unlike war itself,
of which Disneylands-and far worse-are an inevitable
accompaniment.