Women at War: The Story of Fifty Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam

Introduction

Introduction This book grew out of the rigors of the academic process—in short, it picks up where my doctoral dissertation ends. Seven years ago, I became interested in the military nurses who served in Vietnam. I was doing some summer reading—a popular book about Vietnam. In it, there were two accounts of nurses who had served in the war. It had never occurred to me, a nurse, that there had been women in the war. I was intrigued.That fall, as part of my work toward my Ph.D., I was assigned to write a paper for a nursing course that was taught by a professor who was particularly interested in history. The story of those two nurses had stayed with me, and I decided to use my academic assignment to learn more about the women who served as nurses in Vietnam. I discovered that virtually no one had been interested enough in the subject to pursue it. I found no statistics, no articles, just a two-page summary written by the army surgeon general in 1973. The academic in me was surprised: this seemed like such an obvious subject for study and exploration. The woman in me was alarmed: here was a part of history—the history of women—that might be lost. Who were these women? Why hadn't anyone written about them? What was it like to be a nurse in a war zone? 2 Introduction I decided to make the subject my dissertation. I wasn't committed to my subject, wasn't involved with it is any personal or political way. I had no particular view or message to send; rather, the idea of studying nurses who served in Vietnamsimply seemed worthy. I enjoyed the work during those early stages of research and I learned much about these women. But the more absorbed I became in the study, the more I came to realize that as I looked more closely at them, I was uncoveringsomethingof myself. My mother had been in the SPAR (the women's branch of the Coast Guard) during World War II. She spoke often of this time as being the best years of her life. She showed the family pictures of herself in a fitted blue uniform. She looked so young, so different from the woman who raised five daughters and worked full-time as a schoolteacher. I thought I might see in the women of Vietnam something of my mother and something of her generation. So it was to be a personal as well as a professional "project," a dissertation and a discovery. When I began my work in 1983, the national indifference over the Vietnam war was just beginning to end. That year, the delayed celebration of the Vietnam veteran began. Parades, memorials, and written tributes appeared. Along with their male counterparts, nurses who served in Vietnam began to be seen in books and on television talk shows. But the public unveiling of these women was charged with controversy. A schism developed in their ranks. Some said the war was a good experience , some a bad one. Some claimed psychological scars, some said they had come home untouched.Everyone, it seemed, had a point of view she wanted to stress.1 The interviews 1conducted for this book taught me that there was no standard experience or common reaction to the war. Rather, these fifty stories illustratethe variety and the incredible extremes of war. I thought it was important to show the spectrum of their experiences, that it was not one woman's story that was important, but all their stories, together. The history of nursing is filled with accounts of Florence Nightingale, the first modern nurse and first scientific healer in our profession, and other early leaders. But the thousands of women who carry the profession forward every day in hospital Introduction 3 wards, offices, and, yes, on the battlefield are rarely mentioned in the history books, at least those commonly read outside the profession. The nurses 1met and interviewed were women in the ranks—in every sense. They were middle-class; married, divorced , or single; childless, or members of suburban PTAs; committed to an ambitious career plan, or working to help pay the mortgage. Some were committed to their profession, their calling . Others saw nursing simply as a way to make a living. Looking back today, I can say there was really nothing remarkable about...