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  • Gulf War Nurses: Personal Accounts of 14 Americans, 1990–1991 and 2003–2010
  • Erin M. Hess
Gulf War Nurses: Personal Accounts of 14 Americans, 1990–1991 and 2003–2010. Edited by Patricia Rushton. Jefferson, NC: McFarland & Company, Inc., 2011. 196 pp. Softbound, $35.00.

In Gulf War Nurses, editor Patricia Rushton shares the stories of American nurses who served in a variety of locations throughout the Persian Gulf and in other countries during the conflicts in the early 1990s and 2000s. The eleven women and three men featured in the book represent numerous branches of military service, from the U.S. Navy, Air Force, and Army Nurse Corps, to the Army, Navy, and Air Force Reserves, among others. Rushton’s selection of interviewees and excerpts in Gulf War Nurses aims to highlight the courage, determination, and capability of nurses in wartime situations and to recognize the sacrifices nurses make for their country, for their patients, and in their personal lives.

Rushton begins a four-page introduction by focusing on the importance of nurses as leaders and decision makers. She argues that nurses’ patients and [End Page 346] families often do not truly realize “what it means to be ‘a nurse’” (1). Rushton goes on to summarize the early years of her military nursing experience with the Navy Nurse Corps (she joined in 1967, served stateside during Vietnam, then continued as a reservist) and transitions into a discussion of her and her fellow reservists’ experiences of being called to duty after Iraq invaded Kuwait in August 1990. Rushton appropriately relates her own experience and that of her colleagues as examples of nurses’ willingness to fulfill their duties and serve their country.

Following the introduction are fourteen chapters, one for each interviewee’s personal account, that range from four pages to over twenty pages. Each chapter is prefaced by a blurb that summarizes the interviewee’s background or gives other relevant facts that inform the reader. The personal accounts are revealing, and common themes include the difficulty of being separated from family, the tough and often dangerous life on base, long hours of high-stress work, treating horrific injuries and dying patients, sacrificing for colleagues, readjusting to life back home, and dealing with post-traumatic stress. The accounts support Rushton’s objective to present nurses as an invaluable resource.

The interviews featured in the book were conducted as part of the Nurses at War Project, “a continuing long-term project to gather the accounts of nurses who have served during wartime,” led by Rushton at Brigham Young University (3–4). Regrettably, only a few sentences discuss the project directly, and the information given is inexplicit at best. For example, Rushton states that “the main goal . . . is to acquire the accounts. . . . A second goal is to share these accounts, in some way, through presentation and publication” (4). The reader is left to wonder whether the accounts are archived, where they are located, and how to access them. This reviewer assumed that there was a website for the Nurses at War Project and did find the site, thanks to Google. However, the website is not mentioned in the text, and the web address only appears as a reference at the end of the book. Rushton squanders an opportunity to promote the project, and this oversight is an example of many other shortcomings that detract from the significance of this book and the interviews it contains.

Gulf War Nurses certainly seems to be based on a collection of “oral histories,” although Rushton never uses that term. Whatever interviews lie behind the polished narratives in the book could have value as oral histories, but that is difficult to determine for two main reasons. First, the book does not include any description or explanation of methods. There is no discussion of how interviewees were recruited, what medium was used to capture the interviews, when or where the interviews took place, whether release forms were obtained, etc. It is even unclear who interviewed the nurses featured in the book, because Rushton states, vaguely, that she has “interviewed nurses for the Nurses at War Project” (1). Second, and most importantly, the personal accounts read as single-voiced...

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