{"id":832,"date":"2023-11-26T01:14:33","date_gmt":"2023-11-26T01:14:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/?p=832"},"modified":"2023-11-26T01:14:36","modified_gmt":"2023-11-26T01:14:36","slug":"female-vietnam-vet-journalist-reflects-on-battlefield-experience","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/?p=832","title":{"rendered":"Female Vietnam Vet, Journalist, Reflects on Battlefield Experience"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n

By Shannon Collins, Army News Service<\/em><\/p>\n<\/p>\n

WASHINGTON \u2013 Growing up in a newspaper and military family, Karen King-Johnson wanted to serve her country.<\/p>\n

In 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, she attended Officer Candidate School and commissioned into the Army as a public affairs officer.<\/p>\n

She said she was inspired to join the Army by her father, a World War II infantry officer who fought with Gen. George Patton\u2019s 3rd Army before being killed by a mortar blast Nov. 11, 1944.<\/p>\n

While in Vietnam, King-Johnson served as the command information officer for the U.S. Army Vietnam in Long Binh and circulation manager for the Stars and Stripes newspaper, publishing 100,000 copies each day. She led a team of 43 enlisted photographers and combat correspondents.<\/p>\n

She led a team that distributed the publication in five shops in Vietnam. King-Johnson and her staff also produced another publication, \u201cThe Army Reporter.\u201d If a pallet didn\u2019t get delivered, she and her team personally delivered it via a helicopter.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe were in the field every day, taking pictures and riding with the units,\u201d she said. \u201cTwo of my guys are on the Vietnam Wall [Memorial].\u201d<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

King-Johnson and her staff often embedded with U.S. troops in the field and worked with civilian media. They escorted dozens of media, including legendary American reporter Walter Cronkite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe flew almost everywhere we went, and I had a jeep with a [.50-caliber] machine gun,\u201d she said. \u201cThere were 754 correspondents in Vietnam. Our job was to escort them safely in and out. We were out in the field, delivering papers. If troops were moving, we were moving.\u201d<\/p>\n

They also dealt with logistical challenges in the field. King-Johnson and her staff wore 75-pound wet cell pack radios on their backs that weighed 75 pounds to sustain battery life.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe radio had to have a 10-foot antenna on it,\u201d she said. \u201cI had a clip on the back of my helmet so it wouldn\u2019t hit me in the head. The young guys would climb the trees and get the antennas up higher so we could communicate with the Air Force. We didn\u2019t want [enemy forces] dropping bombs on us.\u201d<\/p>\n

She said they had to \u201cshoot, scoot and communicate.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cOur job was to make sure everybody back home knew what the guys were doing over there and tell their stories, to make sure no one was forgotten,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n

She served in Vietnam with back-to-back tours from 1970 to 1972.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe VC [Viet Cong] would try to come over the wires at night. They\u2019d turn our ammo around against us, the mortars we had on the outer fence. If we ran out, then they blow back on us. We had to get smart about that,\u201d she said. \u201cThey attacked at night.\u201d<\/p>\n

Her cousin was a medical evacuation helicopter pilot who flew night and day. He was shot down in 1968. The POW\/MIA team is still looking for his remains.<\/p>\n

From medical evacuation pilots to nurses to infantrymen, everyone loved the newspapers. If people didn\u2019t get the paper, she heard about it from the three-star general down.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

\u201cEverybody loved us,\u201d she said. \u201cWe were their favorite thing. They liked us better than food trucks with hot meals. We always gave them extra film. We were using 35-milimeter. My guys would take pictures, and they\u2019d send the extra photos home to their parents. They thought we were great.\u201d<\/p>\n

When she returned from Vietnam, she served at Army Recruiting Command and then at Army Training and Doctrine Command, writing field manuals like her father. While there, she met her husband, who served in the Air Force as a Titan II missile commander but retired from the Army and became a federal judge.<\/p>\n

King-Johnson, who retired as a major, said she highly recommends serving in the military to the next generation. She said the military provides unique professional training experiences.<\/p>\n

\u201cName a commercial pilot that didn\u2019t get their training in the military,\u201d she said. \u201cYou can get so much on-the-job training for free. There are so many different career fields. They\u2019re doing sub training; you\u2019re not going to do that anywhere else in the world. I\u2019m amazed that the American people don\u2019t know what their military does. The military is decades ahead in planning. They knew they were going into the Middle East back when I was in Vietnam.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n\t\t\t\t\t
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tThis entry was posted
\n\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\ton Sunday, November 26th, 2023 at 01:00\t\t\t\t\t\tand is filed under Army<\/a>, Guest Post<\/a>, History<\/a>.
\n\t\t\t\t\t\tYou can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0<\/a> feed.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tYou can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.<\/p>\n

\t\t\t\t\t<\/small>\n\t\t\t\t<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

By Shannon Collins, Army News Service WASHINGTON \u2013 Growing up in a newspaper and military family, Karen King-Johnson wanted to serve her country. In 1965, as the Vietnam War escalated, she attended Officer Candidate School and commissioned into the Army as a public affairs officer. She said she was inspired to join the Army by […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":833,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-832","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-army"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=832"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":834,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/832\/revisions\/834"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/833"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=832"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=832"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/daily-bullet.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=832"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}