Courageous Women of the Vietnam War

by Kathryn J. Atwood

  EXCERPT FROM A LETTER TO ANNE KOCH VOIGHT FROM AIR CAVALRY SERGEANT ROBERT McCANCE:

  I never forgot the care you gave me those many years ago. I never forgot your name I guess cause you were so kind to me at a time when I really needed the touch of a mother’s hand. I really never gave your plight, that of a nurse in a combat zone, much thought until I watched a TV documentary several years ago concerning combat nurses and the emotional trauma you people were experiencing every day. I never realized the scars we left not on you but in you.

  Anne near the nurse’s station. Anne Koch Voigt

  The bulk of her time was, of course, devoted to saving lives. One day she was standing at the nurse’s desk within view of the bed of a severely wounded helicopter pilot who had been shot down. His femoral artery—the large, deep artery in the thigh—had already been repaired once. When Anne glanced in his direction, she saw that his sheets were turning bright red. His femoral artery had ruptured again!

  She raced to his bed, pressed her hand on the ruptured artery, and yelled for help. The pilot was rushed to the ICU and immediately given 8–10 pints of blood, 8–10 more in the operating room while surgeons worked to repair his artery, and then the same amount when he returned to the ICU. After he had stabilized and was put on a plane for Japan, the doctor that accompanied him brought along five more pints of “just-in-case blood.” Anne always wondered if he survived.

  Blood transfusions saved many lives in Vietnam. In fact, having blood on hand was so crucial that when young American fighting men first arrived in Vietnam, many were immediately brought to the 93rd Evacuation Hospital to donate blood.

  Anne could see that this terrified many of these “wide-eyed” recruits; having to donate blood immediately upon landing obviously made these already nervous young men even more so. It was a stark reminder that they also might soon be wounded—or worse. “I knew they were scared and worried,” recalls Anne. So to keep them from excessive alarm, the medical personnel made certain that the donations occurred in the back of the hospital, as far away as possible from the patients.

  Although a doctor’s order was generally necessary to begin a blood transfusion, the nurses had standing orders to do so on their own in emergency situations. Once Anne was caring for a patient whose bandages needed constant changing because his multiple wounds were leaking too much plasma. He asked Anne for a pain shot. “Soon he became white and was starting to go into shock,” Anne recalls. “Right at that time, his blood work came back showing he needed blood.”

  Anne quickly gave him one pint of blood, “which did the trick.” He stabilized. Then she went to the head nurse and told her what had happened. The head nurse rechecked his blood level. It was still low. She gave him one more unit.

  When a new doctor learned that these nurses had taken it upon themselves to give blood transfusions without waiting for his orders, he was “shocked and upset.” He didn’t initially realize that this particular situation had been life-threatening or that the nurses had long been coping with similarly serious situations, often on their own, without a doctor’s assistance or orders.

  By the end of December 1969, it was time for Anne to leave. She had, like most nurses in Vietnam, a “short-time calendar,” precisely tracking their remaining days of service. On her second-to-last day, her superior officer unexpectedly called to tell Anne she was leaving a day early. Because she was caught off guard, Anne didn’t get a chance to say good-bye to all her friends. Some of them she never saw again. “I had the wrong assumption that somehow I would be able to find them all back in the United States,” she says.

  Anne receiving an Army Commendation Medal for meritorious service in the surgical intensive care unit, shortly before leaving Vietnam. Anne Koch Voigt

  Anne’s homeward trip took her to Hawaii, California, and finally Philadelphia. Dressed in her “Class As” green army uniform, she turned a corner in the Philadelphia International Airport and came face-to-face with her first representatives of prejudice against Vietnam veterans: a mother and daughter, perfect strangers to Anne, who gave her “the ugliest looks.” Anne wanted to say to them, “I haven’t done anything wrong. For a year I’ve worked as hard as I could taking care of wounded GIs; 12 hour shifts, 6 days per week.”

  But Anne was shy and didn’t say a word, not to these two, nor to the many who would follow them. During the postwar years, while Anne worked several different nursing jobs, she was frequently asked bizarre questions and had to endure insinuating comments that stemmed from sweepingly erroneous perceptions about Vietnam veterans in general and Vietnam nurses in particular.

  Anne tried not to dwell on these people with their mistaken notions, but her mind did often return to her wounded patients in Vietnam. She knew she had done her best at the time, saying later, “You always knew that the person lying there could be your brother, cousin, or friend, and you wanted to get him home in the best shape possible and as soon as possible.” But she had no way of knowing who had survived, especially since the nature of the 93rd’s work had been to keep the men only for a few days.

  One soldier had stayed at the 93rd for over a month, however, and so he—and his unusual name—remained in Anne’s memory longer. Larry Sudweeks had received a chest wound so massive he had been put on a ventilator. Many years later, he and Anne reconnected via letters before reuniting in person at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, DC, on November 11, 2013, Veteran’s Day.

  Anne had also been in Washington 20 years earlier at the memorial’s dedication, and she is glad it has become a place where women veterans of other wars can find a sense of belonging: when she visited the memorial in 2013 she saw American veterans of the Iraq and Afghanistan wars there in addition to those from the Vietnam War. “It may not have started out to be their memorial, but it has become theirs also,” she says.

  LEARN MORE

  “On Veteran’s Day, the Women Who Saved Lives in Vietnam Got a Much Deserved Thanks” by Petula Dvorak, Washington Post, November 11, 2013, www.washingtonpost.com/local/on-veterans-day-the-women-who-saved-lives-in-vietnam-got-a-much-deserved-thanks/2013/11/11/591c44c0–4b1e-11e3-ac54-aa84301ced81_story.html?utm_term=.cef71404bcb2. This article includes the story of Anne’s reunion with Larry Sudweeks.

  A Piece of My Heart: The Stories of Twenty-Six Women Who Served in Vietnam by Keith Walker (Presideo, 1985).

  Women in Vietnam: The Oral History by Ron Steinman (TV Books, 2000).

  DANG THUY TRAM

  Communist Field Surgeon

  ON JANUARY 1, 1969, Dr. Dang Thuy Tram recorded in her diary the words of Ho Chi Minh, part of a message he had sent to all those fighting for the Communist cause in the South: “This year greater victories are assured at the battlefront. For independence—for freedom. Fight until the Americans leave, fight until the puppets fall. Advance soldiers, compatriots. North and South reunified, no other spring more joyous.”

  Thuy had thought of little else since December 23, 1966, when she had left her beloved family in Hanoi and begun the arduous, dangerous trek down Ho Chi Minh Trail, the network of roads used to support the Vietcong (VC) in the South.

  Three months later, Thuy had arrived in Duc Pho, a district in the south-central Quang Ngai Province. The people of Quang Ngai had been heavily involved with resistance against the French during the First Indochina War and were now fighting the Americans and the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN) soldiers. Thuy was assigned to work as the chief surgeon in a Duc Pho clinic, saving the lives of VC fighters and North Vietnamese Army (NVA) soldiers so that they could return to the fight.

  Dang Thuy Tram. Vietnam Women’s Museum, Hanoi

  While Thuy derived great satisfaction from her work, several things caused her intense grief. One was her thwarted attempts to be accepted into the Communist party.

  Her motives for wanting to join the party were not like those of many people she knew who simply wanted to advance their careers. Thuy believed that being a party member would allow her to serve th
e Communist cause more effectively. She recorded in her diary what she believed to be the aims of a true Communist: “Our responsibility is to fight for what is right, to fight for righteousness. To win we must strive, think, and sacrifice our personal gains, perhaps even our own lives…. I will dedicate my lifelong career to securing the rights of the common man and the success of the Party!”

  Why wasn’t Thuy allowed into the party? Her parents were educated. Her father was a surgeon who enjoyed Western music, and her mother was a lecturer at the Hanoi College of Pharmacology. Thuy had studied medicine and also enjoyed reading Vietnamese poetry along with French and Russian literature. To her great frustration and sorrow, her educated background branded her as bourgeois—that is, middle class and materialistic—and therefore unworthy of Communist Party membership.

  Thuy’s dedicated medical work and obvious devotion to the cause, however, eventually gained the respect of local Communist Party leaders. On September 28, 1968, she was finally accepted, writing in her diary, “My clearest feeling today is that I must struggle to deserve the title of ‘communist.’”

  Thuy would also struggle to master her emotions. She found it difficult not to befriend the young men who were risking their lives for Vietnam’s unity. “I have a physician’s responsibilities and should maintain some degree of objectivity,” she wrote, “but I cannot keep my professional compassion for my patients from becoming affection…. Something ties them to me and makes them feel very close to me.” When the men left the clinic, Thuy often felt as if she had lost a family member.

  And when she treated the same patients more than once, her attachment to them became even greater. A soldier named Bon came under her care on three separate occasions. Thuy first treated him for a minor leg wound. He was brought to her a second time for a shoulder injury that resulted in a severe loss of blood. Bon was worried that his shoulder might not heal enough to bear the weight of a gun.

  It did heal, and after Bon had recovered, Thuy saw him one day from a distance. “Greetings, Doctor!” he cried, waving his healed arm in the air. “My arm is as good as new!”

  But on January 9, 1969, Bon was brought once more to the clinic, his clothing soaked with blood. A mine had lacerated his leg. Thuy amputated it, hoping the operation would at least save Bon’s life. It didn’t.

  Surgery being performed in a tunnel. Vietnam Women’s Museum, Hanoi

  “Oh, Bon, your blood has crimsoned our native land…. Your heart has stopped so that the heart of the nation can beat forever,” Thuy wrote in her diary.

  She also recorded a very different emotion on this sad occasion, writing, “Hatred for the invaders presses down a thousand times more heavily upon my heart…. We will still suffer as long as those bloodthirsty foes remain here.”

  Two months later, on March 13, Thuy was again saddened by the death of a Communist soldier. She conducted one operation on him, but a second would be necessary to save his life. Although his chances of survival were slim, Thuy wanted to perform the second operation. But she kept this to herself when the rest of the medical team unanimously decided against it. The young man died.

  In his pocket, Thuy discovered photos of a girl, a letter promising faithfulness, and a handkerchief embroidered with the words WAITING FOR YOU.

  Thuy couldn’t get the young man—or his faithful girlfriend—out of her mind. Again she blamed the Americans for this sorrowful loss, describing it as one of the many “crimes committed by the imperialist killers.”

  At the end of March, she was ordered to report to a different clinic, this one treating both civilian and military cases. The new area, as well as most of the others where Thuy had practiced medicine, were “free-fire zones”; that is, civilians considered friendly to Americans had been evacuated, so the Americans considered anyone remaining to be the enemy and could fire on them without previous orders. This meant that whenever any Americans approached, the clinic personnel had to evacuate. On April 28 Thuy described such an evacuation in her diary:

  It’s not yet 8:30 a.m., but I urge people to move the injured. I follow them, carrying as many supplies as possible. We trudge up the slope to the school, sweat pouring down our faces, but we dare not pause to rest…. Less than an hour and a half later, a barrage of gunshots goes off nearby, so close to us that it seems the enemy has already reached the guard station. I tell all the patients to prepare for another move. We are not ready to do anything, but our terror-stricken highlander guerrilla brothers rush in, saying that the enemy has reached the irrigation gutter. All the local people are fleeing the area.

  Thuy was determined not to abandon any wounded. But toward the end, the only people remaining to help evacuate the patients were a few “skinny, sickly teenagers.” The Americans were almost upon them. Finally, only one patient remained, a man named Kiem, who had a broken leg. The only medics left in the clinic now were Thuy and a petite female medical student. Thuy ran to get help. Two male medics returned with her, telling her “between ragged breaths” that the Americans had shot one of the wounded soldiers. Then the medics helped Thuy carry Kiem into an underground shelter, where they all hid for an hour until the Americans left the immediate area.

  By 4:00 that afternoon, the entire clinic—staff and patients—had arrived safely at their new destination.

  But they were never really safe. From April 1969 on, the medics and their wounded were constantly on the move as the increasingly intense fighting grew closer. Each day Thuy could hear “the roar of planes tearing the air” while gunshot volleys rang out day and night.

  On May 20 Thuy described another brush with death. Several American HU-1A helicopters, which ARVN soldiers used at the time, and a scout plane had circled near the clinic’s location. Thuy was very worried by “the intensity of their search.” The area was then hit with exploding grenades, and the house the medics were using as a patient’s ward filled up with smoke. All the medics and patients rushed into the bunkers under the house. When the helicopter circled away to begin another pass, Thuy rushed back up into the house to save any stragglers. No one was there—all had escaped. She returned to her shelter and waited out the barrage. It lasted an additional 30 minutes. When it was over, the staff moved the clinic to a new location.

  Transportation of the wounded in 1968. Vietnam Women’s Museum, Hanoi

  But the Americans knew that Communists were in the area. Four days later, Thuy heard an attack of “bombs, bullets, artillery shells, and airplanes,” describing it as “a maelstrom of sounds … usually heard in war movies.” On July 16 she described a similar raid: “Where each bomb strikes, fire and smoke flare up; the napalm bomb flashes, then explodes in a red ball of fire, leaving dark, thick smoke that climbs into the sky.”

  During these raids, Thuy always worried about the people she knew and loved. “From a position nearby, I sit with silent fury in my heart,” she wrote. “Who is burned in that fire and smoke? In those heaven-shaking explosions, whose bodies are annihilated in the bomb craters? … Oh, my heroic people, perhaps no one on earth has suffered more than you.”

  On July 27 the Americans attacked the hamlet where she was staying. By nightfall, nearly everyone had fled. Thuy walked alone to Pho Quang, a nearby village. It too was deserted. The house she entered was “eerily empty.” The village trees had been destroyed. The smell of gunpowder was in the air. The road was pockmarked with craters from artillery.

  Thuy finally located a woman, who told her it would be impossible to follow the rest of the villagers, because of enemy shelling. As if to emphasize her point, an artillery explosion suddenly illuminated the pitch-darkness.

  This was an unusually dangerous situation for Thuy. Because Communist surgeons were so valuable in the South, they normally traveled with an armed guard who directed their way. Now Thuy had to navigate for herself, and she wasn’t sure what to do. “If the enemy comes, where should I run?” she wondered.

  While Thuy was confused, she rarely feared for her own safety. After she regrouped with
the other medics, she was sent out on a nighttime emergency mission and bravely walked through hostile territory with her guard. “Perhaps I will meet the enemy, and perhaps I will fall, but I hold my medical bag firmly regardless,” she wrote in her diary.

  She hadn’t yet met the Americans face-to-face, but Thuy had definitely heard them from the underground shelters and bunkers, walking, shouting, and searching for their hidden enemies. When the rainy season began and the underground hideaways filled with water, hiding became increasingly difficult.

  Her attempt to stay one step ahead of the Americans soon cast her out of doors, hidden in some bushes, “soaking wet and shivering.” Yet she was happy, even at this moment of difficulty, “to be a part of the resistance, to be in this very scene” with her comrades.

  On December 31, 1969, Thuy wrote, “Death is close. Just the other day, if I had been a few minutes late, I would have been dead or captured. We started to run when the enemy was less than twenty meters away. Fortunately, no comrade or wounded soldier was lost.”

  But one day she found the body of a dead comrade on the road. Next to him, in the fresh mud, were the prints of large boots. The road was covered with electrical wires from American mines.

  On June 2, 1970, Thuy’s new clinic took a direct hit. Five patients were instantly killed, and the surrounding area was devastated. “Trees downed in every direction, houses flattened or knocked askew, tattered clothes blown up in the tree branches,” Thuy described.