a simple .doc file
That's the funniest thing I've heard all year

Sorry, didn't mean to be mean. Word documents are saved in a complex, propriety format that is way beyond the scope of VASSAL to be able to import and display.
HTML is a standardized format that Vassal does support and Ms Word will happily convert and save a .doc file into HTML format. You don't need to know how it works. The option Joel was suggesting you use simplifies the format of HTML to make it more compatible with the simple version that Vassal supports.
In the worst case, you could take screen shots of your word document, size them with a paint utility and save those as .png's or .jpg's and use those.
Regards,
Brent.