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

3. The Professional Strains and Moral Dilemmas of Nursing in Vietnam

3 The Professional Strains and Moral Dilemmasof Nursing inVietnam There is a timelessness to a nurse's recollections of war. Whether she served near the trenches of France in World War I, in North Africa during World War II, or in Cu Chi, South Vietnam, each remembers long hours working with grievously injured men. The recollections that follow in many ways correspond to Vera Brittain's Testament of Youth, her account of World War I nursing , or Theresa Archard's G.I. Nightingale, a record of nurses in the North African and Italian campaigns of World War II. Wartime nursing is particularlystressful because of the age and the severity of injury seen in the patients. It is easier to accept disability, even death, in the elderlythan in the young. An elderly person has experienced work, friends and family, sports and good books, health and illness, seasons and holidays. A young person is only on the verge of such a life. Most patients in Vietnam were so young that nurses often looked at them to see if the boys lying on the stretchers or beds were high school 28 Women at War classmates. More likely, wounded soldiers reminded the nurses of their younger brothers or friends. In Vietnam, the average age of the nurses interviewed was twenty-two years, the average age of enlisted men was nineteen years.1 The rapid evacuation system for the wounded saved many lives that would have been lost in previous wars. Casualties from the battlefield could arrive at hospital receivingwards(emergency rooms) within minutes of injury. For example, one woman remembered looking at the wristwatch on a patient as she prepared him for surgery. His watch had stopped seventeen minutes earlier , the moment he was wounded. Mortality rates at militarymedical facilities were underthree percent.2 Although it salvaged lives, this system also created a dilemma about the quality of life left for some of the men. Nurses spoke of the guilt and confusion they felt when they sent severely disabled patients home. "Imagine," said one women, "working on a twenty-year-old soldier who only had one arm left. What did he have? I used to wonder what the rest of his life would be like. They were [all] in the prime of their lives." Every professional nurse sees death and trauma during the course of a career. Nurses who work in war zones deal with a lifetime of sadness and loss in one year. The women felt maternal and protective instincts toward their young patients. These feelings often turned to anguish and anger when the nurses realized their patients would never be normal, functioningadults. It was emotionallywrenchingfor the nurses to look on row after row of comatose, brain damaged young soldiers. "I used to wonder," remembers one nurse, "if my patients had ever kissed or made love to a woman, if they graduated from high school or if they were in the middle of a college education. Did they have families of their own or were they planning to become fathers?" Most questions remained unanswered. This lack of information had merit because once the nurses learned personal details, the objective lamina they had developed to shield themselves from emotional overload disappeared.3 The pain and suffering belonged to people with names and personalities, not just patients. A nurse who worked at the sixty-seventh Evacuation Hospi- Professional Strains and Moral Dilemmas 29 tal in Qui Nhon illustrated how difficult it was to uncover personal details about patients. One morning, she found a ditty bag next to her assigned patient. These bags were small canvas or leather carriers the men used to carry shaving equipment and other personal items. If a nurse had reason to go through a ditty bag, she usually found pictures of girl friends and wives, mothers and fathers, children and pets. This nurse opened her patient's bag to see if there was any useful information in it, for he could not talk to her. He had a severe head injury and burns. In his bag she found his ring from West Point Military Academy in New York. She looked at this young man, who was swathed in bandages because he did not have enough skin left to prevent bacteria from entering his body. It was hard for her to imagine him marching in the Long Gray Line with his sword and feathered hat at West Point's weekly...