29 April 1969—“Just a note to let you know that I’m fine. Charlie welcomed our boss (Captain Bulshefsky, director of the United States Navy Nurse Corps) with a couple of attacks in the neighborhood community, so we went on alert. I’m certain she didn’t get much rest. All was quiet for a couple of days and then tonight we had two more alerts. They were throwing stuff at MAG16. I don’t know what was getting fired on the second time, but all we received, in the way of patients, were Vietnamese. On the first alert we got several sergeants that were watching the outdoor movie at their club. I was having dinner with a friend over at MAG–16. We had steaks almost ready when the incoming rounds started. Needless to say I went into a bunker and he went to work.”
28 April 1969—“I had lots of news to tell you but because of some of it I don’t know when this letter will reach you. The ammunition storage area near Da Nang Airbase exploded yesterday as the result of a brush fire. Anyway, the resulting multiple explosions closed the air base to all fixed-wing aircraft. Some helicopters were landing, however. Some of these blasts were so strong that the buildings were falling from quite a distance around them because of the shocks from the blast. These buildings in some areas are not that sturdy. One of the hangars collapsed. The Freedom Hill exchange reportedly flattened. The First Marine Air Wing area had to be evacuated. You know from your map we are some distance from the air base. We only heard the blast and saw the smoke.”
“I understand we did receive a massive number of patients as they had to be evacuated from the first hospital located there. We also got some of their doctors and corpsmen.” They had no female nurses there. This was a first line hospital. It was a Navy/Marine Corps facility but it was staffed by doctors and corpsmen only, unless they had a male nurse anesthetist, which they might have. “We also got some of their doctors and corpsmen hopefully to augment our staff. Again there were no injuries as result of explosions. Well, I think this brings me up to present. The immediate future should be interesting. I am going on the hospital ship Repose for a couple of weeks starting Tuesday.”
7 May 1969—“I am sitting in a cabin on the top bunk on the USS Repose. I came aboard yesterday and will only stay through Saturday or Sunday. I came out by helicopter, but I don’t know about my trip back. I am working on the neurosurgical and the plastic surgery ward plus another ward that has all medical patients. I really like the ship. It would not have been bad to be stationed on board. But, there are some advantages to being stationed in Da Nang.”
After 7 May 1969—“The puppies sound so cute (my dog had died and they had bought a couple of others). It won’t be long before I see them. The flight dates haven’t been published yet, but there is a possibility that I may be leaving a few days before the 15th. I have been packing so I could send my gear next week. I have been anxious to leave. I am a little reluctant to go now. I have worked with these kids (nurses and other staff) for a year and it is difficult to split up.”
An admitting or ER department.
I left Vietnam in July 1969. I left a little early. I was scheduled to leave the July 15 and I got out a little bit earlier than I planned. I didn’t quite get to the end of my 100-day calendar. We had to leave within five days of arrival of our replacement and mine got in a little early. We couldn’t wait. We had to go. At that point, because I wasn’t going to school until August, I had all of June and July before I went to school. We were pretty busy at the time I left. In fact they had sent some extra nurses to supplement the staff. So, I said to Helen Brooks, “Is there any possibility that you could request that I stay a little longer since I don’t go to school until September?” She said she couldn’t.
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Lou Ellen came home and completed her Navy time to retirement. After retirement she worked many years as a civilian nurse in home care. She continues to be active in the Navy Nurse Corps Association.
Karen Born
Karen’s account speaks to the difficulties of working in a wartime situation, but also developing positive relationships and good memories.
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I began my Navy career in 1968 at San Diego Naval Hospital during the Vietnam era. I quickly understood part of my job was to provide the student corpsmen with opportunities to develop skills and confidence because most of them would rotate through Vietnam eventually. I enjoyed teaching and helping the men understand when they attached to a Marine Corps unit they would have a great deal of responsibility. Hospital Corps School was originally 16 weeks long but, as the war progressed, it was shortened to ten weeks. The students had two weeks on the ward during which they gained some hands-on experience. I was teaching all the time, “You must do your best because your life and the Marines’ depend on you.” Necessity required these young men to mature quickly.
My primary duty was on the neurosurgery ward. When we worked evenings, we had to run two wards, both neurosurgical. When we worked nights, we had three units, two neurosurgical wards and an ENT (ear, nose and throat) ward. That’s when I learned about patients with their mouths wired shut due to different facial fractures. They ate liquid food meals through a straw. You’d be surprised what they would mix up so it had some taste. The men used to order pizzas which they pureed in a blender with a little tomato juice.
I was concerned when I learned I was assigned to the neurosurgical ward. I had not received any neurosurgery experience in college. My school felt it inappropriate for nursing students because it was so exacting. I thought, “Oh good, here I am working with corpsmen on a 48-bed open ward and I have never taken care of any of these kinds of patients before.” I quickly became educated about Striker frames and circle electric beds, how to turn the patients and keep them safe, and all the varying injuries with which the patients were returning from Vietnam. My corpsmen taught me so much. At that time the military still had the draft so we had a lot of well-educated high school and college graduates suddenly in the Navy as corpsmen. They were really nice guys and very willing to teach me the techniques needed to provide appropriate patient care.
My orders said I was supposed to be in Vietnam on January 15. I went from home in Ohio back to the West Coast and caught my scheduled flight. We stopped on Wake Island and Guam on our way to Vietnam. As we were landing in Da Nang, the pilot announced it might be a little bumpy. An hour earlier there had been a mortar attack on the runway and they hadn’t had time to fix the mortar holes yet. I thought, “Oh shoot, the runway got fired on. This really is a war zone but I’m going to a ship; I’m not really in a war.” We got off the plane and I looked around for someone who was supposed to pick me up. I had been assured I would be met and taken to the location where I would catch the mail boat out to the hospital ship, USS Sanctuary, AH–17, which would be in Da Nang harbor. There wasn’t anybody there. I started talking to other people who suggested that maybe my greeter was waiting for me at the pier. The veterinary technicians had their trucks at the airport because they were picking up some dogs so they offered to drop me off. At the boat pier there were a lot of military members who had come ashore and were waiting to go back out to their ships. We could use our one day off each week to come ashore and go to China Beach, the officer’s club or other places. Someone finally pointed out the Sanctuary. I was picked up and headed for the ship.
The water was rough and salt water was splashing all over us. By the time we reached the ship, I and my luggage were soaked. Ladies were supposed to go off first. Obviously when you’re wearing your summer blues, you’ve got on a skirt. We had no pant suits at that time. The guys wanted you to go first so they could kind of “peak” under your skirt. The officer of the deck took me down to the chief nurse’s office where the chief nurse said, “You’re a day late.” I said, “No ma’am, I don’t think so. My orders said I was to leave on the 13th. I left on the flight I was assigned.” She had totally forgotten about the International Date Line. She expected me on a certain day and I arrived a day later. That is why she had nobody to greet me. She was already reporting me for “missing m
ovement.”
I got aboard the Sanctuary around 1600. Junior officer meal time was at 1700, so I had an hour to get my “stuff together.” I reached my room and found so much salt had gotten into the locks of my luggage I couldn’t get the suitcases open to get out dry clothes. One of the other girls said to me, “Take your uniform off quickly and I’ll throw it in the washer and dryer.” Somebody else took my suitcases and was trying to get one of the engineers to see if they could get the salt out of the locks and get them open. I wore a very warm, wrinkled but dry uniform when I went to eat. I had my dinner in the officers’ mess and then came back to the nurses’ quarters to meet my roommate and others. I learned I was assigned to neurosurgery because of my experience.
I had a wonderful time in Vietnam. We worked hard and played hard. The patients reminded me I was in a war zone but I only remember the good times and dedicated shipmates. I worked neurosurgery for a while. Just like stateside, if you worked the day shift, you worked only one ward. If you worked PMs, you worked neurosurgery, urology, ENT, and the Vietnamese ward where we had women and children. When you worked nights, you had two complete decks. I could be responsible for a couple of hundred patients. There were one or two corpsmen working each ward and the nurse went from ward to ward as quickly as possible. The protocol said a nurse was the only one who could hang an antibiotic and almost all of the patients were on antibiotics. Each ward gave their antibiotics at slightly different times so you could get from one to the next. I’d hang the antibiotics, count the narcotics, administer pain meds to patients who needed them and run to the next ward. If you were working one of the days we were in Da Nang Harbor and had any patients being medevac’d, you had to make sure the charts were organized, signed off and ready to go by 0600. It was a very busy night for one nurse. It’s a wonder we survived it, but we did.
After a while I was moved to the medical unit and SOQ (Sick Officer’s Quarters). The medical unit had patients stacked three high in bunk beds. There were 80 patients on the medical ward and 20 on SOQ. The medical ward patients had malaria, dysentery, foot rot and cardiac problems. It seemed very strange to me to have cardiac patients in the midst of all this.
On medicine and SOQ I was working with my new roommate. We made it a lot of fun. An example of this was that on the end of every bunk was a little container with a life jacket in it. Because we had to take temperatures on all the malaria patients every four hours we would take the whistle out of the life jacket, blow and go, “Hey, everybody, listen up. Take out your thermometer, shake it down, put it in your mouth and the corpsmen will come around to check it.” The thermometers were at every bedside taped in a plastic syringe container filled with alcohol. We still used glass thermometers then. We taught each patient how to shake it down and place it in their mouth. The corpsmen would walk by, record the temperature, check their pulse, replace the thermometer back in the plastic container and move on to the next guy. The chief nurse thought this was very unprofessional. She felt the nurse should go to each bedside, call the young man by his name, take a look at him and talk to him. When you had up to 80 temperatures to take, orders to transcribe, and other things to do, going to every bedside and talking to each patient every four hours was a little difficult. We used the whistle for quite some time until she told us we couldn’t do it anymore. So we kept a lookout and blew it unless she was coming. I think most of the staff did this. I learned it from somebody who had already been there. It was one of those tricks we passed along.
SOQ is where I was introduced to the term “fragged.” We had an officer that came in with shrapnel in his backside. I asked, “How did that happen?” Someone informed me his men wanted to get rid of him so they fragged his bunk. They put a grenade under his bunk and let it go off. I think I saw two cases of fragging during my year tour which convinced me it was a true story. The patient denied that’s how it happened but, when I asked privately, he admitted it. I don’t know if he understood why but he probably could have told me who he thought responsible though he never did.
I was also introduced to “friendly” fire shooting of corpsmen when a corpsman arrived on board with his hand damaged. Somebody in his unit thought he wasn’t doing a good enough job so wanted to make sure he had an injury that would keep him from being out in the field. I think it blew off a finger. As I was talking to him I was reading between the lines. The patients won’t tell you unless you figure it out. He expressed relief about being returned to the States. Some of the guys were so scared. Not everybody is macho. A lot of men chose to be corpsmen because of their “conscientious objector” status. Then they found themselves in the middle of a foreign country being shot at anyway.
The majority of the patients recovered from malaria or jungle rot and would be shipped to Cam Ranh Bay, which was an R&R (rest and recuperation) center. They got a couple more weeks rest before being sent back to the field. A lot of surgical patients got to go home while many of the medical patients just got well and went back to their units. I had mixed feelings about patching these guys up and making them feel better while knowing they were going back to the war. I could only hope they made it.
The sickest orthopedic patient was usually in the middle of a three-level bunk bed so he was the easiest to reach. As they got better they went to the bottom so the staff could still provide care. As the men were recovering they went to the top because they were a little out of sight and had to have some mobility to get up and down. I was having discipline trouble with one of the orthopedic patients who needed an antibiotic injection. He fussed with me and the corpsman. The doctor arrived for rounds, heard the noise, inquired about the situation and listened to our explanation. He took the syringe, went over to the patient and shot it right through the pajamas into his thigh. He emphatically instructed the patient to stop giving the staff trouble.
Lieutenant JG Karen Born aboard USS Sanctuary July 5, 1970.
On the Vietnamese ward, several children had a history of polio. One of our orthopedists was doing surgery to straighten their crippled limbs. Because the Vietnamese were used to squatting over a hole in the ground, when they saw toilets they would stand on the seat and squat over the bowl. We were constantly cleaning up because there was urine everywhere. The bathroom was the worst part of the job because it took some training for them to understand how to use a flush toilet, but they did figure it out.
There were several typhoons during my year on the ship and we always tried to steer away from them. I remember a stormy night I was working and got really seasick. One of the corpsmen finally gave me a shot of Dramamine. For an hour the corpsmen didn’t know where I was. They found me asleep on a bench as a consequence of the medication, woke me and got me back making rounds although I was way behind. It did cure my seasickness by working nights. I’ve always been a night person. I liked working nights except there were so many patients needing care.
Patients lined up, awaiting medical evacuation from USS Sanctuary, July 1970.
I remember another rough, stormy night shift. Chest tubes back then consisted of a glass collection bottle on wheels. We would tie the unit to the bunk with gauze so it wouldn’t roll around. I was making rounds and realized the gauze holding the collection unit was about to break. I hollered for the corpsman to come help me as I blocked the chest tube unit wheels with my foot while holding onto the bunk because the ship was rocking. I didn’t want the chest tube yanked out of this poor kid. Just then the dressing cart broke loose from its ties and came rolling down the aisle between some of the bunks. It was about to crash into a bunk and all of the contents would land on the broken legs of another patient. I caught it with the other foot and one arm. I’m screaming for the corpsman, who is taking his good time getting there, and he wasn’t far away. He finally arrived and helped get everything secured in place.
Ward A–3 USS Sanctuary AH–17 June 1970.
The ship’s sailing pattern was three days in Da Nang Harbor, two days cruising off of Eagle Beach, which was part of Northern
I Corps, and two days off of China Beach. We had to be cruising all the time to prevent someone from attaching explosives to the hull of the ship. When we were moored in Da Nang Harbor, they had river boats constantly patrolling the waters looking for divers. All night long we could watch the boats circling the ship.
We alternated schedules with the USS Repose which allowed us to accept wounded directly, so the Army field hospitals wouldn’t get overwhelmed with casualties. During the day the hospitals would empty out those who could be flown by helicopter out to the ship, particularly the patients needing further treatment outside of the war zone. This would usually be about 30 to 40 patients. That way, during the night, when there were fire fights, the field hospitals would have empty beds to cope with fresh casualties.
Helicopter pilots preferred not to fly at night. Some Army helicopter units would send a representative out to the ship, hang up an invitation, and the first five of our 28-nurse compliment signed up could go in-country to socialize with the men. At first I recognized it was the same group of girls going all the time and thought that wasn’t fair. There was some kind of deal, one girl would hear about it and she would sign up her friends. At some point I got there first and listed myself and my roommate since I knew we would be off duty. On the scheduled evening, the helicopter flew out to the ship’s helicopter pad and picked up the five women. We were in our summer blue uniform of a skirt and jacket with our legs showing. The reason the men invited the Navy nurses was because we had “legs” and the Army nurses didn’t because they wore fatigues. I quickly learned to bring along a civilian dress. We had to leave the ship in uniform and arrive back in uniform but could wear civilian clothes if we were on a base in-country.
Vietnam War Nurses Page 6