The Navy continues to be a significant part of my life as I continue to work as a civilian in orthopedics at Portsmouth Naval Hospital. Attempts at helping people cope with life changing events continues to be challenging and rewarding. Every day I am honored to work with today’s heroes like those motorcycle and trauma victims where insight and peace of days past affect the lines of military personnel and their families. My friend from high school days has now been my wife for over 36 years. Our life focuses a lot on people living on the margins of society throughout the world and family. A deep faith in God and sharing our gifts from God seems natural. We anticipate using the gifts we have to be tools for God’s hands just like in the days of a young corpsman in Vietnam.
My thanks to friends, such as Ed LaVenture and Mary Cannon, who continue to be mentors on life experience 101. My parents, parents-in-laws family, especially my wife, Karen, have always been available and supportive in reminding me of God’s love and care. Thanks also to Pat Rushton and the Nurses at War Project for allowing me to share and reflect on a challenging time of war and post-war insights of a young “lead steamer,” hospital corpsman and nurse.
Shalom
Mary Lou Ostergren-Bruner
The next account is another very personal story of a nurse’s experience on the front in Vietnam. It imparts to the reader the physical and emotional situations nurses found themselves in when serving in-country. It expresses a desire for education, nursing experience and adventure, addresses naïveté we have already seen about the war and the developing reality of the situation, and their feelings toward patients, colleagues and country.
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My father instilled in me the principles of patriotism, serving our fellowmen, and doing something for your country. He taught those principles by example and so my later choices to be a nurse, join the military and service in Vietnam felt natural.
When I graduated from nurses’ training in the 1966, I worked at the Minneapolis Veterans Hospital, as the need for nurses was great. During that year, I came to appreciate what these men and women did for their country. There was a special bond among the patients and respect for one another. I decided in spring 1967 to join the Army.
Vietnam was in the newspaper and on TV. I knew a war was going on, but I knew the military was all over the world. I didn’t plan on Vietnam, but planned on seeing the world and having a new experience.
I took my oath of office May 1967 with my mother and sister at my side. In July my best friend’s brother, a Navy corpsman, was killed in Vietnam. We spoke little of this loss then, even less later. I imagine it was not easy to see a friend leave for military training shortly after her brother’s death.
I was a loner at this point. I didn’t join on the “buddy system” and could not bring myself to sign on as a student nurse. In September 1967, classes at Fort Sam Houston were very large, 350 to 360 medical personnel including doctors, dietitians, dentists, and nurses, all officers. Upon my arrival, there was no room on base, so we were housed in a small hotel. Training sessions were held to learn how the military operated in such areas as etiquette and how to wear the uniform. A few days were at Camp Bullis learning to use a compass, how to use a gas mask, hold a .45 revolver, touring a mock Vietnamese village, practicing triage on the injured in a tent hospital, traching a goat and watching old films from the archives.
We kept hearing about deployment to Vietnam right out of basic training. People were upset and had been clearly misled by recruiters. If I was going next, I needed more experience. When the opportunity came up for the operating room course, I requested it, knowing in my heart it would be helpful.
I received orders for Letterman Army Hospital, San Francisco, California. Part of the training as OR nurse was to train the OR technicians, some of whom ended up in Pleiku, Vietnam. The OR class was cut short due to a growing need in Vietnam. After 30 days back in Minneapolis to say my goodbyes, I departed for Travis Air Force Base. A classmate and I boarded our plane for Vietnam; a commercial airline. We were the only females onboard besides the stewardesses. Twenty-four hours later we landed in Long Binh. The heat and smell in Long Binh was sickening. The heat was humid, like Minnesota summers, but the stench was indescribable. I smelled that again years later watching the movie Platoon, even though I was nowhere near Vietnam.
We were allowed to request our duty assignments since nurses were needed everywhere in Vietnam. My friend and I were split up. She said to the chief nurse, “I’m a California girl. I want to be on the water.” She was sent to Chu Lai. I said, “I’ve never really been in the mountains, being from Minnesota, so, I’ll take the mountains.” I was assigned to the 71st Evacuation Hospital, Central Highlands, Pleiku.
From Long Binh to Pleiku we traveled by a C130 cargo plane. We were placed in back. Only sling seats back there and not knowing how to use them, we sat on the floor, dress uniform and all, and just held on tight. I met a married couple going to the same hospital who became good friends over the next year. This was one of those many moments I asked myself what I had gotten into.
I never saw anything like it. First day on duty, I was not prepared, even after looking at the training films they showed us in basic training. Every wound was filthy. There were guys with legs and feet missing, gaping chest and abdominal wounds, and arms barely attached. We used gallons of normal saline to rinse wounds. They were debrided or cleaned out and left unsewn. They were filled with gauze and wrapped to come back another day for more debriding. You also had gaping head wounds and facial trauma. Amputees were frequent. A lot of times it wasn’t just an arm, but it was more than one limb. They were all young and they look like your kid brother. We had every type of MD and surgical specialist at the 71st and we kept them all busy. If a physician’s specialty wasn’t on our table in the OR, he could always assist another surgeon.
Entrance to the 71st Evacuation Hospital, Pleiku.
Neurosurgeries or head cases were the most difficult to take. The corpsmen, like me, worried about the outcome. I always scrubbed, so they didn’t have to. I think we hated those cases because losing an arm did not mean your life was so very different, but losing who you are; not recognizing family and friends, not enjoying the life you remembered was not easy for us to think about. Life expectancy was tenuous, infection was common. One corpsman, years later, told me I always had tears in my eyes during such cases.
At first, I was checking names of the wounded and finding out where they were from. States close to Minnesota found me connecting and chitchatting. Then I stopped as the wounds intensified and the numbers increased. All of a sudden it was too personal, too hard to handle.
Upon arrival we worked eight-hour days and took call. Many a night I was awakened and called to work. Shortly after I arrived, we went to twelve-hour shifts, six days a week. Blaring sirens sounded with red alerts and rocket attacks. These would send me hitting the floor of the hooch, usually at night. As the rockets whished overhead and thudded into the ground, making the earth shake, my roommate and I took shelter together and prayed the rosary. I decided if I was going to spend nights wearing a flak vest and helmet and seeking shelter under the bed, I would rather be working. I requested night duty from 7 P.M. to 7 A.M. I was the only nurse on the shift working with six corpsmen. When busy due to a “push” with multiple casualties and running all five operating rooms, we would call in some of the day shift. I often worked twelve plus hours.
The littlest things kept us going, boosting our morale. These were things like celebrating someone’s birthday with a cake baked in an electric fry pan, talking endlessly of one’s plans for return to the world or the compound gossip, planning gag gifts for the staff at Christmas, decorating a tree branch for the holidays, sharing mail and “care packages,” complaining about the higher-ups and the white-glove inspections and especially the food. We shared stories of R&R trips to Japan, Hong Kong, and Australia. We had Friday night steak fries and dances with live bands, which were usually lip-synching Filipinos. They were a
ctually quite good.
We played tricks on one another like filling out paperwork for surgery for Colonel Clause and a party of eight injured as his aircraft came down Christmas ’68, then calling the head nurse out of bed in the middle of the night. We could have been in reindeer poop big time, but she had a great sense of humor.
Our compound was the size of several city blocks surrounded by concertina wire, a lot of dirt and little greenery. Looking into the distance you could see the higher elevations. The Fourth Infantry Division was on Dragon Mountain and we were in the valley. We had a Special Forces Camp relatively close as well. They worked with the Montagnards, who were native to the area and were our allies.
The hospital was made up of Quonset huts forming a cross. They housed the emergency room, x-ray, lab, surgery and recovery. At the time, mid ’68–’69, the hospital had seven wards and close to 600 beds. Our main duty was to stabilize and evacuate patients for more surgery and or recovery to convalescing hospitals in-country and out of country, such as to Japan. We were both a surgical hospital and a medical facility. We had enlisted barracks, an enlisted club, theater, pool, chapel, Red Cross building, hospital headquarters, recreation hall, officers’ quarters, officers’ club, volleyball court and a small post exchange and barbershop. A Vidal Sassoon stylist visited during this year to give the nurses haircuts.
Vietnamese babies born November 1968.
We had guard towers, similar to a forest ranger’s tower, but not as tall, overlooking the countryside. These were manned by our hospital corpsmen after a 12-hour shift. Our neighbors were engineers stationed on Radar Hill at the old 18th Surgical Hospital at the ARVN Camp. There was an Air Force base up the road a bit from the city of Pleiku. For exercise and entertainment we walked to other bases to visit post exchanges and to downtown Pleiku. Occasionally we got a ride in a jeep, a “deuce and a half” or a taxi called a Lambretta. It was a way to see the lush, green countryside, which was not as stark as our compound. Except for R&R, we were restricted many times to the compound during “high alerts.”
Weather was overall mild, windy, and cooling down in the evening, making it almost pleasant. The monsoons were another story. It rained so hard it looked like night all day. We wore ponchos over the uniform to stay dry. An umbrella would have been ripped to shreds. We had deep trenches on either side of the walkways so the rain just ran off the flat ground and filled the trenches. Our hooch never flooded, but every article of paper, bedding or clothing was damp. I don’t remember how long the rains lasted, days or weeks. Some of the smells I believe were due to the high humidity. Everything lingered in the air. We had metal lockers in our rooms in the hootches. To keep mildew from growing up the sides, we hung a bare electric bulb inside. As we turned in our summer dress uniform and heels for fatigues and combat boots, the stateside articles went into the locker for the next year.
This country, halfway around the world, was primitive. There were no sturdy buildings, super highways, running water or electricity in the Highlands. The Vietnamese and Montagnards lived off the land, farming and making a life now totally disrupted by war. The Pleiku Hospital was damaged by bombs and the ill and injured came to the 71st. We also visited the villages and brought medicine to them. If someone needed surgery, we brought them to our hospital with the entire family in tow. This aid was suspended during “high alert” because of enemy activity in the area and when we were busy with the wounded.
One day, one of our docs had been sent the ingredients for an Italian feast. He wanted to treat the entire OR staff. There was a community room on the officer side of the compound so everyone was assembled ready to eat when one of the company commanders appeared and sent all of the enlisted back across the line that divided us. It was okay for officer and enlisted to work alongside one another but not to share a meal. The mess hall was divided as well.
One evening at the officers’ club, in walked actress and comedian Martha Raye, dressed in her Green Beret and Special Forces uniform with her photo journalist, Sean Flynn. I grew up watching black-and-white films of his father, Errol Flynn. This was a high-light. They had come to visit our patients. They did so frequently. Later, we learned Sean Flynn never returned from Vietnam, having possibly been captured or killed.
In August 1968 we received a GI with multiple injuries. We called just about every surgeon on base and hours of surgery ensued; eye, facial, neurology, orthopedics. One particular doc would not give up on this young patient. Back then you did not have the resources or time to follow everyone’s outcome. Years later, this doc found our patient married with a family. He was happy even though his blindness and amputations were visible reminders of what this GI went through. He was glad to be alive. A television special and magazine article allowed the rest of us to know about this great outcome. This knowledge allowed us hope and peace in knowing it was all worth it.
One moment, meaningful beyond words, was the welcome home parade in November 1993 in Washington, D.C. We had come to dedicate the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. People lined the streets and at the end stood a patient from the 71st Evacuation Hospital calling out my name. He had come to our surgery in March 1969 and had come to the parade to personally say thank you to me. Thanks are few and that’s okay because I recently learned 98 percent of all wounded making it to a hospital during the Vietnam War survived.
Tears still fall freely, the days of Vietnam are not behind me, but rather they are part of me. The stories are unending, but the pages here are limited. When asked, “How did you make it?” I answer, “By the grace of God and with family support through prayers and mail and the greatest team of coworkers in all of Vietnam.
As of 2012, I am still in the Minneapolis area and married for over 40 years to the man who remains my biggest cheerleader, telling all who will listen that he is married to a veteran. We have two children and five grandchildren. We are blessed. I live by our motto in Vietnam, “Remember the good times” and pray for peace.
Ruth E. Purinton
Ruth E. Purinton landed in Vietnam in the very early days of the war, having volunteered to be one of the first 18 Navy nurses assigned to the Naval Support Activity Hospital in Da Nang in August 1967. She was essentially a pioneer in caring for troops in the war zone. She speaks of the experiences and challenges of caring for seriously wounded troops there. Ruth expresses her gratitude that the wounded were provided exceptional medical and nursing care so quickly after being wounded. She speaks of the difficulty of returning home and the support of family and friends in making the transition less stressful.
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I had always wanted to be a nurse. After I graduated from high school at Pinkerton Academy in Derry, New Hampshire, in 1953, I applied to several nursing schools. I was accepted at the Peter Brent Brigham Hospital in Boston, Massachusetts. Graduating in 1956, I started at the hospital, working for Dr. Dwight Harken as a cardiovascular nurse. This was an exciting position. Dr. Harken was the pioneer in cardiac surgery and valve replacements with patients coming from all around the world to have this renowned surgeon perform their heart surgery.
After several years at the Peter Brent Brigham Hospital, I accepted a position at the Mt. Sinai Hospital in New York City in the recovery room, assisting with their open-heart surgery patients. I decided that military nursing would provide me with excellent nursing experiences, plus I would be seeing a lot of unique places.
I went to the Navy recruiter in New York, but the Navy did not need any nurses for at least nine months. I went to the Air Force recruiting office and filled in the extensive application and in several weeks, I received a telegram that I was accepted for a commission in the United States Air Force Nurse Corps.
As part of my application to the Air Force, I had requested hospitals in California, Florida and Texas. The acceptance telegram that I received stated that I would be assigned to the US Air Force Base, Sidi Slimane, Morocco. I called the nurse recruiter immediately and stated that there must be a mistake in my orders, as I had requested C
alifornia, Florida, or Texas. She said that it was not a mistake. Even though the Air Force did not usually send a person overseas for their first assignment, she felt that with my experience and maturity I could be assigned overseas for my first assignment. So, off to Morocco I went, staying almost two years. The Moroccans would not renew the lease for the base and the hospital and the base were closed. Some change from a big hospital in New York City to Sidi Slimane, a very small hospital, a B-52 base surrounded by sand.
To finish out my two-year obligation in the Air Force, I was assigned to Beale Air Force Base in California. After completing my two years of active duty, I stayed in the reserves in California and went to flight school in Montgomery, Alabama. The reserve unit I was assigned to was responsible for medevacuating patients to and from bases in Korea to Travis Air Force Base Hospital in California.
I stayed in San Francisco, trying to get my nursing degree and working part-time at a local hospital to pay the bills and keep my nursing skills current. The Navy Nurse Corps was still on my mind and I applied for and received a commission in the Navy in 1965. After officer indoctrination at Newport, Rhode Island, I was assigned to Naval Hospital, Portsmouth, which was a large teaching hospital, where I had the opportunity to update my clinical skills. I was assigned to the surgical intensive care unit (SICU) and my supervisor was LCDR Bobbi Hovis. I enjoyed working in the SICU, as that had been my area of expertise in the past.
Vietnam War Nurses Page 17