military

A Complicated Leader in a Tumultuous War: South Vietnam’s Nguyen Cao Ky

Bill Thompson

April 30 is the 50th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, Effectively ending the Vietnam War and bringing a humiliating end to the American effort to prop up South Vietnam’s government.

An eyewitness to the events that day was a man who had also been a pivotal figure in trying to preserve South Vietnam, former Premier and former vice president Nguyen Cao Ky.

Ky Was head of South Vietnam’s Air Force but had
virtually no government experience when he was thrust into a leadership role in the mid-1960s.

Nguyen Cao Ky proved a complicated, controversial and flamboyant leader who frequently alienated his American allies.

Get your copy of Nguyen Cao Ky’s book

In 2002 Ky wrote in Memoir, one of the only books detailing the war from the South Vietnamese perspective. He called the book Buddha’s Child, and that’s when I had the chance to spend a few minutes with him.

Nguyen Cao Ky died in 2010 at age 80.

Margarethe Cammermeyer, And How She Fought Anti-Gay Discrimination in the Military

Bill Thompson
Photo by Zesar2005

President-elect Donald Trump has said that one of his first acts as president will be to remove transgender individuals from the U.S. military.

More than 30 years ago a well regarded military officer was kicked out of the service simply for being gay. And her subsequent legal fight catapulted her, and the issue of gay service members, to the forefront.

Margarethe Cammermeyer first joined the Army as a nurse in 1961. She met a man, got married, and was separated from the Army in 1968 because of a policy at the time banning pregnant women from serving.

She was later able to rejoin, and also divorced her husband. Then, during an otherwise routine security clearance interview in 1989 Cammermeyer disclosed her status as a lesbian.

Get your copy of Margarethe Cammermeyer’s book

In 1992 she was thrown out. But she filed a lawsuit in 1994 challenging her separation – and she won. She returned to the military until her retirement in 1997.

Cammermeyer’s case shone a bright new spotlight on the longstanding ban on gays in the military, and led to a sea change in LGTBQ rights.

I met her just a few months after her court viceroy, in the fall of 1994 when her autobiography Serving in Silence was published. That was the book, by the way, that was made into a television movie starring Glenn Close.

So here now, from 1994, Margarethe Cammermeyer.

Margarethe Cammermeyer is 82 now. She ‘s been married to her wife since 2012.

Laura Palmer

Bill Thompson

Memorial Day is the one day each year set aside to remember and commemorate and celebrate the sacrifices of thousands of men and women who have died in war over the years.

But of course, their deaths carry a long and wide ripple effect that can affect family members for years and generations to come.

Since opening more than 40 years ago, the Vietnam Veterans memorial in Washington DC has become an informal but significant collection point for memorabilia. Families of the fallen in Vietnam come to the wall to leave behind everything from letters and poems to medals and teddy bears.

In 1988, former Vietnam war correspondent Laura Palmer wrote a book about those items of memorabilia. She tracked down many of the families and interviewed them to get a broader sense of their loss. She ccalled her book Shrapnel in The Heart.

So here now, from 1988, my interview with Laura Palmer.