Vietnam War Nurses

by Patricia Rushton

  One morning I awakened and pushed aside the mosquito netting around my wooden, four-poster, cot-type bed with wooden slats under a futon-type mattress. As I swung my legs over the side, my left leg felt very heavy. I looked at it, and saw it was twice the size of the other! I thought, “What on earth is going on?” Being bit by mosquitoes is something that occurred constantly of course. However, the day before, we had run out of gloves, so just washed our hands with alcohol between dressing changes. I was changing a dressing when a mosquito bit my ankle. I had just reached down and scratched it without thinking about it. I now had a red streak going from ankle to thigh!

  I hobbled over to the hospital and the supply of penicillin was exhausted. We contacted our one Army pilot to ask him to fly to the various US and Vietnamese medical facilities around our area to find some penicillin. The only type in the field at that time was called Bicillin K, which was to be refrigerated. The pilot went everywhere. None of the US hospitals wanted to give any to him, especially when he told them it was for a Navy nurse working in a province hospital! Finally he did find some that was outdated by three years and had never been refrigerated. I gave myself shots with those long needles twice a day for about ten days. At least it took care of the infection so I did not have to be air evacuated to Saigon in either the one U.S. Air Force or the one U.S. Army two-seated plane in our city.

  The day we arrived into Saigon, South Vietnam, we went to visit our friends at the Naval Hospital there. They were turning the hospital over to the U.S. Army that day. After that, we were the only two Navy female nurses in country during that year. This was 1966–67. The following year as we were leaving the country, the Navy started sending female nurses up north to Da Nang. I had gone there to visit at the request of the director of the Navy Nurse Corps who wanted a report on the hospital. As Florence Nightingale had written many years earlier, when only men run hospitals, there is a great deal of dirt! However, the doctors and corpsmen here provided treatment that was swift and wonderful!

  The director of the Navy Nurse Corps asked if I would go on recruiting duty from Vietnam. I said I would go to Minneapolis. She said my friend was already there. Did I want San Francisco? No. New York? No way! Chicago? No. She asked where I did want to go. I said I would go to Quantico. That turned out to be really good for me. Since most of my patients were Marines who had just returned from Vietnam, I had an opportunity to sort through my feelings and some of my post-traumatic stress talking with them. I worked everywhere. I was in charge of our small, in-service education department while simultaneously working as head nurse, first on pediatrics and then SOQ.

  Coming back to the U.S. from Vietnam, we were boarded on a civilian aircraft. We had been told to not wear our uniforms home so we were in civies before we landed. After landing at a California Air Force base, we stowed everything military into our bags then hailed a cab to the civilian airport. When I got aboard the Northwest Orient plane to Minnesota, there were several male and female flight attendants. One of the men asked if I had just come back from Vietnam. I was so surprised I stopped immediately and quickly scanned myself to see if I looked military, but could find nothing amiss. I was afraid to say yes, but worried about saying no. Finally, I told the truth. The attendant then said they had something special for me. Now I was really worried! But he smiled and asked if I would like a nice steak and some real ice cream. He showed me where I could lie down across the seats in the rear of the plane and brought extra blankets, pillows, and coffee. Wow! How different my homecoming was from so many of my friends. I eventually wrote to the airlines and told them about their wonderful attendants.

  My chief nurse at Quantico called me in one day and said, “Check your schedule the day after tomorrow. I want you to get a fresh uniform and report to the White House.” I was incredulous and said, “The White House?” “Yes, you have an invitation from the president to be there when he signs the bill allowing women in the military to attain the rank of general and admiral.” A few days later I had lunch at the White House with Lyndon Johnson and Hubert Humphrey and about 20 other women from the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps. I know there were at least two or three Navy nurses there. President Johnson took pains to sign that bill with all 20 different pens so each of us could have one. That was an honor. The president talked to us and shook each of our hands as we were photographed. The photos were then sent to us at our duty stations. That was 1967. Until then, the only Navy female captain was the director of the Navy Nurse Corps, and commander was the highest rank any other female could attain. The same was true of the Army and the Air Force.

  After Quantico, I was given the Minneapolis recruiter position. I recruited nurses from North and South Dakota, Minnesota, parts of Wisconsin, Iowa, Illinois and Michigan. On recruiting duty, I soon found no one outside of nursing understood what a nurse is or what kind of training is required to become a nurse. They thought we walked into a school, were handed a bedpan and a syringe, and presto, we were nurses. Even the commanding officers of the recruiting stations attempted to recruit men and women with inadequate backgrounds, telling them they would be given the necessary training in the Navy. Educating other recruiters as to requirements of nursing education, such as being a National League of Nursing (NLN) accredited school, etc., became a continuing additional duty.

  I loved recruiting duty. I was privileged to work with the directors of schools and departments of nursing at all of the hospitals, colleges, and universities in seven states. This was the height of the Vietnam War. Male recruiters were being given a very hard time at those colleges and universities. I was often asked to go with them as they were not harassed as much when I was there. I would say to the protesters who besieged our display,

  “Wait a minute. I just got back from Vietnam. Let me tell you what’s going on here. If you don’t like the war, don’t talk to us. Talk to those who sign bills about war, your congressman and your representatives.”

  I always filled my quota so the recruiting command just kept increasing it! We are very blessed in the Midwest area with very patriotic citizens. In the 60s, we had many good schools, colleges and universities with nursing programs, and schools of nursing anesthesia. I recruited many nurse anesthetists. The critical shortage, as in every war, was for OR nurses and nurse anesthetists. If they were male, these nurses were usually sent to Vietnam. One man, a nurse anesthetist, came to me and said, “I’m going to join the Navy because I don’t want to go to Vietnam, as my wife’s pregnant. I know I am going to be drafted. I don’t want to go in the Army. I want to go into the Navy. Promise me I won’t go to Vietnam.” I said, “I can’t make you that promise.” “Who can?” I said, “You can call Washington, but I doubt anyone can promise you that.” He called Washington and they assured him he wouldn’t go to Vietnam. He walked into my office about eight weeks later and said, “I was on my way to my duty station in Pensacola, Florida, with my wife and child when the state patrol stopped us to give me dispatch orders for Vietnam.” His wife had already been to Florida and bought a home. He was irate. I said, “I cannot do a thing about it. I never promised you this would not happen.” That was difficult.

  I told those women who were being sent to Vietnam they would at least have access to running water and electricity, whereas I had not! My female Navy nurse recruits were not going to be sent to Vietnam. Most nurses knew to join the Army if they wanted to be sent to Vietnam immediately. The Navy usually wanted us to be in the military a few years before we were sent to an overseas duty station.

  I had been on recruiting duty in my office in downtown Minneapolis for almost two years and was getting ready for work one morning. A call came from my Commanding Officer, “Kay, don’t come into work today. Your office has been blown up.” Eventually we learned some students from the University of Minnesota had been found. They had planted explosives to blow up the government building where my office had been as a protest to our involvement in Vietnam. My office was closest to the street and down a small flight o
f steps. On one side of the steps was my office. On the other side was a bathroom. It took a while to get it all repaired so I worked at the other end of the building.

  I met and married my husband while I was in Minneapolis. We lived in a home just off a highway in St. Paul. It was not far from what, during World War II, had been an arms plant. During Vietnam, they were still making armaments for the military. Our home was on three acres of land, as was every home in that area. My office had one car we used when we were in town that had U.S. Navy recruiting signs on the sides. One of the chiefs, a lieutenant, and I took turns driving it, then picking up or dropping off the others. Thus, the Navy recruiting car was often parked in my driveway.

  My friend came over one night to watch a Navy program on the television with me. Vern had gone to bed. The movie we wanted to watch started at ten o’clock. All of a sudden, we heard a terrible explosion. The whole house shook. I tried to dive under the bed. My friend ran outside to find out what happened. I was screaming, “Don’t go outside, it’s not safe!” By the time I got up off the floor and was running to the door, she ran back in and said to call the police and the fire department as the house next door was on fire. The fire department was already on their way. In the midst of this, my husband came out of the bedroom into the hallway and just missed being impaled by the roof entry door slamming down. The dent in the floor was three inches deep!

  Someone had obtained plastic explosives from the arms plant and placed them behind the refrigerator of the house next door. The entire house just went up and came back down like a pancake and in pieces. It moved all of the rafters in our house. Pieces of their house were lying on top of our house, all over the yard and on the other side of the house as well. It was scattered around about nine acres of property. Our neighbors in that house had been asleep in bed and died in the explosion.

  Suddenly two men I did not know were standing next to me on my lawn. It was not surprising to me as everyone within several miles had heard the explosion and were attempting to get as close to the action as possible, although the police and firemen had set up barriers. One of these men took my arm and pulled me aside to show his badge and ID card. He and the other man were from the Office of Naval Intelligence, now NCIS. He said I was to do two things now that both my office and the home next door had been blown up within the past months. First, I was to not drive a Navy car home again. How they knew I had been driving the Navy car I don’t know, as it wasn’t in my driveway at that time. Secondly, I was to find another house and move. The next day the headlines in the newspaper read, “Maybe They Got the Wrong House.” That certainly did not make me feel very safe! Those who planted the explosives were never found. Eventually the neighbor’s son built a new home on the site.

  Later, my friend went back to active duty in the Navy. She had been back on active duty in North Carolina one week when I got a late evening call from a nurse who had been in Vietnam with me. I was excited to hear from her so started asking her many things. Finally, she almost shouted and said, “Kay, you’d better sit down. I’ve got something important to tell you. Please just sit down.” She told me our friend had been out jogging around three o’clock in the afternoon, when she got off work, in the courtyard around the hospital at the Marine Corps base. Someone had come alongside her and said, “Can I jog with you?” She said, “Yes.” All she remembers is that he was very young, perhaps, 18 or 19. The next thing she remembered was she was under a tree and he was punching her. He broke every bone in her face. Her face was wired for a long time and she later had to have abdominal surgery where his punches had damaged her internally so badly she had developed adhesions. She also had to have her spine fused. Of course, she was told it was her fault as she must have done something to cause that! She is medically retired from the Navy. ONI (NCIS) felt since she had been at my house the night when the house was blown up and now this happened there had to be a connection. While I am sure there were other such incidents in other places in the U.S., I haven’t heard of them and do not know of any other nurse recruiters who had such problems. Terrorists do not think about what they are doing or whom they are damaging, only about their cause. How do they sleep at night?

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  Kay chose to leave active duty status in order to spend more time with family. She joined the Navy reserve and worked as a civilian nurse, working for the next 35 years in the same hospital. She went back to school for her master’s degree. She and her husband were able to adopt a child and then went on to give birth to a child. Kay was active in the United States Navy Nurse Corps Reserve for 22 years. She remained active in advocating for patients and nurses. She was instrumental in beginning the Navy Nurse Corps session at the annual AMSUS (Association of Military Surgeons of the US) meetings. She was involved in the inception and formation of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C., and formed support groups for nurse veterans, an idea that had its inception in Kay’s Vietnam experience. Kay also served as adjunct faculty at a local college and a nurse educator in the community hospital setting.

  Lou Ellen Bell

  Lou Ellen Bell was an experienced United States Navy nurse when she went to Vietnam. Her story is a mature and detailed look at the Vietnam experience. The following are excerpts from that experience.

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  I was on recruiting duty when I received orders to Da Nang, Vietnam. I didn’t have any qualms about going. I wanted to go. I asked to go. Whenever I asked to go, the Navy detailer said, “How many more recruiters am I going to have ask to go?” I guess we were all requesting that as our next duty station. It was hard to talk about the need for nurses in combat when you hadn’t been there. I ended up with some of the people I knew, though none of those I recruited. The Navy wasn’t sending them over quickly, which was a good thing. The Army nurse that was recruiting was fresh out of a college baccalaureate (BS) program. She spent six months at Fort Bragg, and they sent her to Vietnam. I cannot imagine, with such little nursing experience beyond a BS degree, being able to cope with the situation in Vietnam.

  When we arrived in Vietnam, we called for someone to come get us, as per our orders. We were supposed to call the chief nurse. They wouldn’t put my call through to the chief nurse because it was after bedtime. I told them who I was and why I was calling and they still were refusing. I said, “Well, let me speak to the officer on duty.” I spoke to him and he assured me he could not put a call through to the nurse’s quarters. I said, “Well, there are five Navy nurses over at the terminal. Would you arrange to have transportation come pick us up and take us to the hospital?” He said, “Oh, certainly.” He called main administration and asked them to send someone. They said they didn’t have anyone. Ultimately the transportation came from the hospital.

  I told the officer of the day there were five women and a whole lot of luggage. Each one of us had two and three pieces or more. I told him to make sure they brought something big enough to hold everything. The truck that came was a pickup with a cab large enough for the driver and five passengers. The back was closed in so people could sit there or it could be used for cargo. As it pulled in, we headed out to it and saw doctors getting into our cab. They were, of course, in long pants and we were in dresses, our light blue uniforms. It was very hard, in a dress, to get up in the back of a truck. The driver, bless his little heart, was a young enlisted man. He said, “Excuse me sirs, I came over here to pick up five nurses and five nurses will be in the cab before this truck will move. If you care to come with us, you can get in the back.” He called and got another truck to pick up our luggage.

  As we were on our way to the hospital from the airport, you couldn’t go beyond a certain point without showing identification. It was not American military personnel at those checkpoints. They were Vietnamese. They were the Vietnamese we were there to support. When you approached the concertina wire, like barbed wire, at these checkpoints, the only way you could get past was to get clearance through this person who was a foreign national.

 
; We didn’t go directly to the hospital. We went to something called the “White Elephant,” which were the administration offices for the whole area. We had to fill out a lot of papers. I said, “Is there a possibility we could finish this tomorrow? We are very tired. I don’t know about anybody else, but I’m not thinking clearly enough to fill out all this paperwork.” He said, “Well, I don’t know. You really need to finish this paperwork.” I said, “That’s fine, we will do it tomorrow. Please take us home to the hospital.” When we got there, the chief nurse had heard we were coming. A lot of nurses were up to greet us. We got to bed about four o’clock in the morning. This young MSC officer had told us we needed to be up and ready at eight A.M. to go finish checking in, which we did. By eleven or so we had done all kinds of stuff.

  It was so hot, at least 120 degrees. It was July in Vietnam. I said to another nurse checking in the same time I did, “I’m about to pass out.” She echoed the exhaustion. I said to the MSC officer, “Is there some place around here that is cool that we can get something cool to drink?” He said, “No, the only place would be back at the hospital.” I said, “Good, so take us back to the hospital so we can have lunch.” He said, “You need to finish checking in.” I said, “I’m not doing anything else until we have a chance to get something cool to drink and an opportunity to find out who we are again. We’re exhausted.” Nobody contested. There was nobody really senior to me. I think somebody else was a lieutenant or lieutenant commander, which is the same as I was. I had just come from recruiting and so I was pretty bossy. He said, “Well, I’ll pick you up at one o’clock and we’ll go finish checking in.” I went to get something to eat. I figured I’d be all ready if I did that. The others went to their quarters. They had just had all they could endure. That may have been also why they weren’t talking. When they got over there, Mary Cannon took one look at them and said, “Go to bed. You’re not worth anything to me until you get some rest.” When I got over there, she told me the same thing. She said, “Right now if I needed a nurse on duty there is not one of you that could work.” I said, “But he told us we needed to finish checking in.” She said, “And you can do that tomorrow. I’ll take care of it.”