It was a very sad time because the way the public reacted to the war was to blame the military. They got angry with the politicians, but they also would get angry at the victims. They would be very abusive to those in the military and very abusive to these injured sailors and Marines.
I remember being angry at the injustice of the people who protested the war. I was angry at them for thinking those of us in the military, especially nurses and physicians, were people who thought it was okay to go to war. If you thought it was okay when you went in, having some strange perception war was glorious or noble, it didn’t take you long to realize that was stupid. There isn’t any glory in war, yet there were people who thought the people who were to blame for the war were the people in the military. That was the tragedy of that war. The members of the military didn’t get support or acknowledgement. When it would come out that some were drug addicts, they were treated as criminals. These guys weren’t criminals. They were trying to figure out how to cope with impossible situations and their response came out in very bad ways.
One time, at Newport, I went into the medication room. Another nurse was there. It didn’t look like she was actually pulling up narcotics. When I asked her what she was doing, she said, “Just leave. Just get out of here.” “No, what are you doing?” It turned out she was replacing Demerol with normal saline. She had a husband who had been a Marine in Vietnam and had come back horribly wounded. He decided he didn’t want to live anymore. They had come to the conclusion she would help him commit suicide. She was going to take home enough narcotic so when he decided to kill himself she would have the narcotic ready for him. She told me this heart-wrenching story about this being the thing she could do for her husband and pleaded with me not to interfere. I understood she was doing what she thought was right. Her sense was her husband was the most important person in the world. She understood other people would have to suffer if she did this, but it came down to her being willing to do anything for her husband. He was a hero. I had to decide if I was going to be complicit or not. I made the decision I still think was the right, ethical decision. I reported it. She was gone within 24 hours and I have no idea what happened. The situation still causes me pain. I know she believed she was doing the right thing. I know I did the right thing. In doing the right thing there were a lot of people who were terribly hurt.
For those of us not in-country, that is in Vietnam, there is a lot of discussion about what our colleagues in-country experienced. They did go through amazing stuff. I can only imagine how awful that was. It was also not a picnic to be in CONUS, the continental United States, taking care of these guys. There were guys that would plead with you to let them die or plead with you not to let them die. You had no power one way or the other. You would just do the best you could. Some of the senior nurses would take us aside and tell us in no uncertain terms we had to be less involved. They wanted us to be less emotionally involved. I know that was the way they insulated themselves. It was a very traumatic time. I know I needed help to get through that.
I was fortunate in having a friend who knew of a French/American nun who was in Fall River, Massachusetts. She was a nurse existentialist. She was assigned to St. Anne’s in Fall River, not too far from Newport. There were a couple of us that would talk to her. She taught us a lot about existential caring, how to be in I/thou relationships without destroying yourself, and how you learned to get as much from the relationship as you gave to it. You learned to be kind of like an artesian well, so you didn’t go dry. You learned the danger signals. She was very helpful. She was one of the few people who never blamed the victim. She acknowledged what kind of a tough situation a lot of us were in.
One of the things that came out of the experience was I decided to go into OB as a specialist. I just wanted to get as far away from medical-surgical nursing as I could get. That is how I ended up as a clinical nurse specialist in high-risk perinatal (baby care).
I got out of the military when I became pregnant. I worked as a civilian nurse for a couple of years, then went back to school. Just as I was finishing my master’s degree, the law was changed. Now they would let women be active duty with dependents. So, I went back in. The time I was civilian nurse was also a tough time. I think there were many military nurses who had the same experience. When we were in the military, we did a lot of independent stuff because we were the people that were there. When you got out into the civilian sector, you couldn’t practice that way. You couldn’t give the patient any information. You had to say, “You’ll have to talk to your doctor about that,” or “I can’t tell you what your blood pressure is.” You had to have permission to teach or to be a nurse. I got into trouble a lot. I think a lot of military nurses did. Some got out of nursing because of it.
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Elizabeth Barker retired from the Navy as a captain after working many years in women’s health care. She continues to teach others to be outstanding nurses who are sensitive to the needs of patients, families and colleagues.
Catherine (Kay) M. Bauer
Catherine (Kay) M. Bauer tells of her experience in Vietnam as one of the nurses in-country during the early days of the war. She continues telling about serving in the United States during the Vietnam War, explaining the turmoil and unrest that existed then.
Kay struggled against poverty and prejudice to obtain her nursing education. Once in the profession she chose to serve in the United States Navy Nurse Corps and she served in numerous locations, performing many different types of nursing. She was about to resign her commission as an officer in the corps when she was offered the opportunity to perform a different type of nursing than she had ever done before—in a war zone in Vietnam.
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I had requested an appointment with the Naval Hospital Director of Nursing (DON) Service to tell her my plans and resign my commission. She said, “Kay, just a minute. You have been in the Far East haven’t you?” I had just come back from Japan and Guam. She said she had a position on a Navy surgical team headed to Vietnam with an OR nurse instructor and doctor who had been board certified as a general surgeon.
The DON called Washington as I sat there to get me assigned to this team. I would be a member of a seven-person forward surgical and advisory team. There were no U.S. military hospitals in the very south delta area of Vietnam. Thus, the Vietnamese would allow us to use one of their province hospitals in return for us providing surgical service to their military and civilian personnel as well as our own troops. We were also to be “advisors” to the Vietnamese nurses and the one doctor to help update their medical procedures.
I called home to tell my mom and dad I would be getting orders to Vietnam. My mom said to me, “Is Vietnam where you would like to go?” I said, “I think so.” She said, “That’s good.” In the background I could hear my dad cussing a bit and saying. “There’s a &%$+ war going on there!”
I knew there was a war going on. While in charge of pediatrics at Great Lakes Naval Hospital, we taught basic pediatric nursing to the corpsmen sent to us from hospital corps school. Upon completion, they received orders to Fleet Marine Force School at Camp Pendleton, CA. From there they were sent to Vietnam with the Marines. They were like little brothers to us. If they had trouble with their girlfriends or wives or children, we would help them in whatever minor way we could. If they got married or had a child, we would have a small shower for them. We would listen intently as they told us of their plans for when they were finished with the Navy and asked our advice as to schools and training, etc. Then we started getting KIA/MIA (killed or missing in action) messages with the names of our corpsmen on them. That was very hard.
A week before we traveled to Vietnam, our entire team was sent to Washington D.C. to meet and be together before leaving the States. Our team consisted of an orthopedic surgeon, a senior ranking nurse, a second physician, a CRNA or nurse anesthetist, me, a Navy chief and a young Army captain medical service corps officer. His job was to speak “Army” for us. Other than a few
advisors and the river patrol boats (RPBs), there was no Navy in our assigned area. All of our supplies would come via the Army. Our Navy chief, senior to me in age, was a very nice, talented man. He was both a laboratory and x-ray technician and had been in the Navy a while.
We were not on a military compound like the Army and Air Force nurses. The province hospital in Rach Gia, Kien Giang Province, in which we worked, was on the ocean at one side of the city. It had been built by the French shortly after the turn of the century. We had no running water or electricity and there were no screens on the louvered windows and doorways. We lived in a two-story house onto which some American contactors had added a second level. Our room was on that second level. It was so small we could barely walk around in it. The only bathroom was downstairs. The temperature outside hovered around and above 90 F. every day except during the monsoon, rainy, season when it dropped into the high 70s and low 80s. We wanted some space to walk around. We needed more room. Before long, we moved across the bridge from the hospital to another place. The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) could now send civilian nurses to work with us as there was room at our place for them. At times we attended USAID and joint US forces nurses’ meetings in Can Tho, which was north of us at the US Army Fourth Corps Headquarters. South Vietnam had been divided by the Army into four headquarter areas: 1 Corps, 2 Corps, 3 Corps, and 4 Corps.
The Vietnamese had one doctor for five million people, but no surgeons. We provided surgery. Vietnamese patients couldn’t see our doctors until they had been referred by the civilian doctor who was their chief of medicine. One day, Sergeant Phu, a sergeant with the ARVN (Army of the Republic of Vietnam), came to the other nurse and me. He was one of the smartest men I have ever met. When the Germans were there, he was sent to Germany to study medicine. When the French, Chinese, and Japanese were there, he was sent to their home universities to study medicine. He spoke all of those languages, including every dialect of Chinese, fluently. If we could not figure out via Vietnamese or English what a patient was attempting to say, we could talk with Phu. He would interpret for us. The Army assigned a medic to work with us and Phu. Some of them thought they knew much more than this Vietnamese sergeant. Finally, we were sent a really nice Army sergeant who was smart enough to know Phu was smarter than any of us and worked closely him.
We would go out into the areas around our city to see those who could not get into the hospital. We were careful not to venture out too far. One day Phu came to talk about the ARVN dependents. They couldn’t be seen by the one civilian doctor because they were not civilians. They couldn’t be seen by the one military doctor because they were not military. He asked if we would come over once a week and see them if he built a clinic. If we recommended the dependents be seen by either the civilian doctor or our surgeons, they could do so without anyone “losing face”! In about a week the clinic was built. We went there each week to conduct sick call. Many times we provided topical antibiotics, such as bacitracin ointment, or gave piperazine for intestinal worms, especially ascaris infestation.
Sergeant Phu asked if we would venture out into the deeper woods with his troops to get to some of those who were unable to get into the provincial hospital. He said not to worry because his heavily armed troops would go with us, and also everyone knew who we were and we cared for everyone. We were still a bit concerned until we actually saw the large number of “guides” decked out in various types of uniforms and an array of armament from head to toe!
In our home, we had an Army crank phone, such as you see on the movie Mash. We would be called from the hospital in the middle of the night when a bus or an area had been blown up. It was always at night when most of the action took place. At the hospital it was triage and treat. For any Americans involved, it also meant transport the next morning or asap. When we asked the number of Viet Cong personnel for whom we had provided care, after these events, we were usually told, “many,” or, at times, “a few.” The Vietnamese had very little medical care. They had a buddy system where they learned basic first aid to care for each other.
A U.S. Army advisor to an ARVN unit asked three of the nurses to go with him to an outer island one day. There had been an outbreak of plague and we were needed to administer the vaccine. We got permission from our commanding officer. Two of us said we would go. We were leery when we found out we were going via an Army boat. Our fears were soon realized.
Soon after the junk boat was finally underway, five hours later than the time we were told to report, the oil smell overcame so many aboard that most were vomiting. Fortunately, it was pouring rain so we went on deck and hovered under the tarps we had brought along. When we got out into, what seemed to us, the middle of the ocean, a smaller fishing boat came alongside. We transferred onto that, but it only took us to where we could see the island. We then rolled up our pants legs to wade the rest of the way into the beach. We carried our supplies of alcohol, glass syringes, steel needles, vaccine, a Bunsen burner, etc., on our heads and backs. This was before backpacks so we wrapped all of the supplies in our tarps and slung them over our shoulders or heads. All the nurses wore under our fatigues was swimsuits. We began giving the vaccine injections after doing some clinic work in a small tent the medics had set up.
As the hours passed and the sun was going down, I looked out and saw the boat from which we had waded into land, moving further out and around to the other side of the island. I walked over to the Army captain and asked where the boat was going. He said it was going to the leeward side of the island for the night. “How do we get back?” He said, “You are staying the night. Didn’t I tell you?” I said, “No way! We only have swimsuits on underneath our fatigues, have nothing else along, and where do we sleep?” “We will stay at the mayor’s house. However, before we do, we are expected to go to dinner at some of the councilmen’s homes as soon as we are finished here.”
Councilmen’s homes were square huts made of bamboo fronds and pieces of salvaged tin with dirt floors and thin cloths hanging from the ceiling to divide the spaces into separate rooms. They cooked in the middle of the floor on kerosene stoves. We ate dinner squatting alongside them on the floor, then went to the mayor’s house. The mayor had a house similar to ours in Rach Gia, with tile floors, louvered windows and doorways, but no electricity or running water. They had a separate, tiny, open-roofed building outside, housing a large cement tub of rain-water where we washed up a bit. We had shucked our fatigues and swam awhile to get clean when we realized our predicament. Swimming in our one-piece bathing suits was much to the dismay of the adult islanders. In their culture it was okay to be naked from the waist up, but very immodest to show off our bare legs! Now we just wanted to wash off the salt water. There was only one bedroom unutilized in the mayor’s home. The nurses were not allowed to go in that bedroom as only the men were allowed there. Mosquito netting was draped from the ceiling around the large polished wooden table for us. In the morning they woke us so they could clear the table for breakfast for us and the family. We had a long talk with that Army captain when we returned to Rach Gia!
Another ARVN Army captain came to us at the hospital one day. He had received a portable generator and a new movie and wanted us to come and watch it with him and his men. We should have learned not to listen to Army captains, but we got in a jeep and drove over there after work. By this time, if a moving vehicle had a motor, we could figure out how to start it. We drove to the ARVN compound for the movie. We were so intent on watching the movie, we failed to note the time until we realized it was dark outside. We jumped into the jeep and took off for our abode. We knew the bunkers outside of the city on either side of the bridge were manned by armed troops at sundown. “I hope they realize this is our jeep coming in, because they have M–14s!” We drove over the bumps of that dirt road as fast as we could and made it home just in time to hear our crank Army phone ringing. The building in which we had been sitting had just been blown up by claymore mines the Viet Cong had set up
while we were watching the movie! It was INSIDE of the ARVN compound! The whole area was blown away. If we hadn’t left as soon as we did, we wouldn’t be here today. Casualties from there, both Americans and the Vietnamese civilians and military, were brought into our hospital where we did triage and treatment the rest of the night. Several days later we went back to look at what was left of the structure and take pictures. One American and a number of Vietnamese soldiers had been killed.
We set up nursing education programs and taught those several times each week. Most of the Vietnamese nurses at that time had three months of training. Since there was only one doctor for five million people, nurse midwives handled all deliveries. Because of that, they were given about 18 months to 2 years of training. They were very good. Of course there was no such thing as a C-section, so those who needed one usually died, along with the baby they were carrying.
The hospital closed down at night. The families, who took care of patients all day, now enclosed the entire wards in mosquito netting and slept on the floors alongside the patients. A cement sluice ditch had been built many years before in the center of the hospital compound where water came in from the ocean, swirled through, and returned to the ocean. That water area functioned as a toilet, bathing area, laundry room, and a supplier of drinking and cooking water. Fresh water coming in was used for drinking, cooking, and washing clothes while bathing and then bathroom use was restricted to the area where the water swished back to the ocean. We had several large, cement cisterns collecting rainwater around the hospital that were used for drinking and cooking whenever it rained. Ocean water was only used when the cisterns were dry.
At our home, we had a large hole, about 5' × 7' in the ceiling of our “kitchen,” beneath which was a huge, cement cistern, about the same size and 6 feet high. We finally commandeered some screening to put over that hole so nothing except water could drop into our cistern. We had little spigots on the sides of the cistern from which we could drain water for drinking and cooking. Every so often we could commandeer a portable generator to pipe water upstairs to our “bathroom” by a small spigot through which water could be forced to squirt onto us. It was cold, but at least it was running water to stand under.
Vietnam War Nurses Page 2