Vietnam War Nurses

by Patricia Rushton

  In 1966, the Vietnam conflict was escalating and Captain C. Edwina Todd was the director of nursing at the Naval hospital at that time. She was asking for volunteer nurses to go to the US Naval Support Activity Hospital in Da Nang, Vietnam. I was seriously considering volunteering, as I thought that my extensive critical care skills and my flight nurse experiences would be beneficial in taking care of the casualties. I first discussed my decision to volunteer with LCDR Hovis, as she had been in Saigon during the conflicts there. She encouraged me to volunteer. I talked with Captain Todd. She had served in World War II and had been a prisoner of war in the Philippines. She encouraged me to volunteer and recommended me for the assignment to Da Nang.

  I was very pleased and a little apprehensive to go to Da Nang. I went to Washington, D.C., for a briefing to go to Vietnam. Eighteen Navy nurses were selected to go to Da Nang in August 1967. CDR Mary Ford Cannon was the director of nursing services and under her capable direction, the Navy nurses got the wards cleaned up and running very efficiently in a very short period of time. Casualties were coming in on a daily basis. As in past conflicts, when the first women were assigned to a medical facility, the doctors and corpsmen seemed to resent them being in the war zone. As time went on, they realized our value in helping them. We worked as a well-functioning team, which helped immensely with casualties increasing every day.

  Ward in Vietnam.

  The location of the Naval Support Activity Hospital in Da Nang posed some serious problems for the patients and staff as the hospital was located in front of and across the street from the helicopter base. The base was a prime target for the Viet Cong, but because of their utilization of very primitive rocket launches, some rockets fell short and hit the hospital first.

  While I was stationed at the hospital from 1967 to 1968, several parts of the hospital were hit with serious consequences. One rocket hit the urology clinic and demolished the building. Fortunately, no one was in the building at the time but the building needed to be rebuilt. Another rocket hit the surgical ward and several post-operative patients received shrapnel wounds and had to return to surgery. We tried to evacuate the patients as soon as their conditions were stable to hopefully prevent re-injuries. Still another rocket hit just in front of the intensive care unit, injuring a corpsman that was running out of ICU to obtain blood for a patient in the unit. The corpsman went to the OR to remove the shrapnel from his neck. The surgery was successful and the corpsman wished to continue his duties in Da Nang once he fully recovered.

  When the hospital siren sounded, we took cover either in our quarters, covering our heads with a helmet and putting on a padded flight jacket. If we were on the wards, we would cover the patients with heavy blankets as quickly as possible and seek cover for ourselves. It took a long time to get over the sound of that siren and my response to it. Even fire trucks making that siren sound bothered me at first when I got back to the States.

  In January 1968, during the Tet Offensive, the casualties kept coming in large numbers. We had to helicopter them to the hospital ships, the Repose and the Sanctuary, that were off the coast of Da Nang. There were so many casualties during the Tet Offensive that the hospital in Da Nang could not take care of all of them.

  The hospital itself was under attack and the Marines managed to hold the enemy off or the hospital would have been taken, as well. Bullets were hitting all over the hospital, which meant that the enemy was very near. We were still able to treat the casualties as they were brought into the hospital from the triage area. It seemed as if the casualties would never stop coming and the offensive would never end. It did, and even though the staff was exhausted, we were grateful we were able to function so well as a team and treat so many. I am sure that many lives were saved due to the excellent rapid medical treatment in the field by the brave hospital corpsmen, the courageous helicopter pilots that quickly brought them to the hospital under fire, and the well trained and dedicated hospital staff. We worked and worked and worked, day and night. It didn’t matter. All we wanted to do was save and treat as many of our troops as possible.

  We did go on R&R to Bangkok, Thailand, on one trip and to Hong Kong several months later. We got our hair and nails done and had a short rest. I didn’t really enjoy it that much. I was just so concerned with what was happening back in Da Nang and knowing how many people were getting killed, wounded and contracting various medical illnesses. We really couldn’t have a good time because we knew all the horror that was going on. I wanted to go back and help. I wasn’t afraid at all. It was just a matter of how sad this all was. You’d see people in the dining room on vacation and having a grand time. You’d think, “Do you have any idea what’s happening in Vietnam?” It was just such a contrast between coming from the devastation in Vietnam to Hong Kong where everybody was on vacation having a great time and seemed oblivious to what was going on in the world. I think today we’re all very well aware of what is going on in Iraq and Afghanistan. Vietnam wasn’t as televised. You didn’t have reporters with the troops. When you looked at these people outside Vietnam, you really couldn’t blame them for not knowing what was happening because they had no way of knowing.

  ICU in Vietnam.

  Ruth E. Purniton outside sandbagged Quonset hut.

  At the Naval Hospital in Da Nang, I was assigned to the surgical area. We had many medical patients with infectious diseases, malaria and trench foot from the troops being in swampy conditions. They were very sick and many of them died from malaria and other medical problems. I was astonished about the number of medical patients that die in a war zone before coming to Da Nang. I was mainly focused on the wounds that were caused by combat. We were confronted with all kinds of casualties as the North Vietnamese would put these land mines where the troops would drive over them with their tanks. The whole halftrack would be burning and you would have all these severely burned patients all at one time. Individual troops would step on the land mines and amputate their legs. After one fierce firefight with the North Vietnamese we did 21 craniotomies for troops with head wounds. The neurosurgeons took turns operating all day and all night until all 21 craniotomies were complete. We all thanked God that we were able to treat them so quickly.

  The craniotomy patients were medically evacuated by the Air Force flight crews to Clarke Air Force Base, Philippines. This was a big responsibility for the flight nurses to care for that many head injuries. These flight nurses had excellent training to transport all the injured patients safely with outstanding care, saving many lives. I really admired the Air Force flight nurses. It is one thing to have patients in a hospital, but another thing to try to manage them in flight, with all the changes in hematocrits and fluids and pressures. Of course, they had a lot of corpsmen with them. But still they were responsible for the patients because there was usually no doctor. They had physicians on the radio many times, but not on site, not on the plane themselves.

  The corpsmen did a magnificent job on the front lines with the Marines. They just did everything for the wounded until they could be evacuated to a medical facility. When there was a break in the fighting, the corpsmen would come to see if the patients they had treated in the field were still at the hospital in Da Nang. They were a very dedicated and totally capable group, which I admired very much.

  The generals and admirals all made rounds every Sunday. They came to see all their troops. They were wonderful about that. Occasionally we would have some congressmen or senators come see what was going on with their constituents. Martha Raye came several times. She’s an OR nurse and she actually assisted in the operating room. That was very interesting that she would be willing to help out in the OR in a war zone.

  We did have a little exchange, but I don’t remember that we bought much in it. We took a lot of personal things with us, like female personal things, because we knew they wouldn’t have those things there. If we needed something, we all would write home to our families. I remember sending home for a girdle and my sister sent me a girdle. She wrot
e back saying, “You’re in a war zone and you still need a girdle?” Even in Vietnam we had to fit into the uniform.

  Commander Mary Cannon was the chief nurse and she wanted to keep things sort of normal for us. Birthdays were coming up and so she insisted that we all have a birthday party. I was the chairman of the birthday party committee. I asked two of the nurses what kind of a cake they would like for their birthday. They wanted a small, two-layer chocolate cake. I went over to the cook and said, “We need a small, two-layer chocolate cake saying, ‘Happy Birthday’ on it. I’m going to be on duty. One of the nurses will come pick it up on her way off, around seven at night and take it over to the nurses’ quarters for the party.”

  Ruth E. Purinton at retirement.

  The nurse who agreed to pick up the cake came over and she said, “I’m coming to pick up the cake for the nurse corps birthdays.” The cooks go in the freezer and they bring out this huge cake. I mean huge. It took two cooks and the nurse to bring it over to the nurses’ quarters. While I’m on duty I’m seeing cake flying all over this hospital. I’m thinking, “My gosh, where did all this cake come from?” I got a note from Mary Cannon saying, “Please see me immediately after you get off duty.” I thought, “My gosh. What did I do?” She said, “Would you tell me what kind of a cake you ordered?” I said, “Yes, a small, two-layer chocolate cake saying, ‘Happy Birthday.’” She said, “Did you know it took two cooks and the nurse to bring that cake over and it fed a thousand men. It weighed 48 pounds!” The cooks only had cake pans to fit a thousand men. Not only that, but the cooks were spending all their day frosting that cake. When they took it out, the frosting melted all over it. It was very hot in Vietnam. She said, “If you think that’s funny, I’m going to take you off the cake committee.”

  I left Da Nang in 1967 realizing that our job had not been completed. There were still many troops being wounded and the conflict was still ongoing. However, when I left I did believe that our patients received the best medical care possible under such horrific circumstances. I will always remember the patients waking up and looking at us in our white uniform and asking us if we were angels. I assured them we were not angels, but that we were blessed to be there to take care of them and to get them back home to their families as soon as they were able to travel.

  On the way back from Da Nang, I stopped to see Edwina Todd, retired in California, to share some of my Da Nang experiences. She was very supportive of the Navy’s medical department effort to have the best medical and nursing care in her war experiences and in the current conflict in Vietnam. She was an outstanding role model for me and all the nurses that served with her.

  When I came home, I just remember being awfully tired. I was assigned to Naval Hospital Chelsea, Massachusetts, which was only an hour’s drive from my home in Chester, New Hampshire. I was so pleased to be near home after being so far away under such stressful circumstances. My family was very supportive of me when I returned home and assisted me in coping with the realities of war and to getting back to a sort of “normal” life.

  There were several other Navy nurses that had been in Da Nang with me at Naval Hospital, Chelsea, but we rarely talked about our time in Vietnam unless it was something that was funny, like me carrying grass seed to a war zone with “Keep off Grass” signs. Today, it is difficult to watch on TV again the many young people that are being killed and wounded in Iraq or Afghanistan and my heart goes out to their loved ones as they experience the horrors of war. Until you have been there, there really isn’t any way to explain how devastating war is. One can only pray that somehow the benefits of such decisions can possibly out weigh the human costs. I am glad that I volunteered to go to Da Nang to provide nursing care to the troops. If I were a little younger, I would definitely volunteer again for this present conflict.

  Maria V. Rossi

  Maria V. Rossi’s story demonstrates the diversity of experience of military nurses. It demonstrates how their experiences build upon each other, producing continually developing clinical and leadership skills.

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  I went to nursing school in St. Joseph’s Hospital School of Nursing in Hancock, Michigan, in the Upper Peninsula in 1963. I was kind of searching, so I took a year off after my junior year, and went to work for a year. I worked as a nursing assistant in my hometown hospital. It convinced me that nursing was where I wanted to be, so I went back to school. I graduated in 1967.

  The Vietnam War was going on, but I didn’t even think about it at the time. I went home to Iron Mountain, Michigan, and got my first job at Dickinson County Memorial Hospital, working on the surgical ward. After about 15 months I went to Green Bay, Wisconsin, and worked on a psychiatric ward at St. Vincent’s Hospital. It was really interesting and I learned a lot. I started getting itchy feet and I wanted something different. I remembered the recruiter talking to us at school. After talking to the recruiter in Green Bay, I decided to join the Navy Nurse Corps.

  They sent me to Newport in November 1969. At that point, the WOS (Officer Indoctrination School) was only four weeks. It was not just strictly nurses, but nurses and physical therapists. The class I was in was the last one for the year. There were only forty of us. We only learned to march once a week in the gym because there was snow all over, and they didn’t make us march from class to class. I graduated from there after four weeks, first in my class. I don’t think it made much of a difference in promotions. They pretty much stuck to the years and performance. Initially it was like 12 months, so after 12 months I was promoted to lieutenant junior grade. Then it was two years to lieutenant.

  My first duty was at Jacksonville, Florida. There were three people from my graduation class that went to Jacksonville. We all lived in the BOQ for the first six months. I worked on the orthopedic ward. We worked nights and evenings on three wards and we had 150 patients. They were not all as ill as they are today. You only had maybe 30 to 50 sick patients, and only three or four that required a lot of care. Then they transferred me to the surgical ICU and I worked in the surgical ICU until I left. They had a need and I could just work there. In about August 1970, Captain Duerk came to Jacksonville to visit. She was director of the Navy Nurse Corps then. My charge nurse told me I needed to go and meet her. I didn’t want to, but she said, “You need to go and meet her. If you don’t make an appointment, I’ll make one for you.” So I went down and talked to her, and she put you at ease really easily. She asked what my future plans were, and I told her I’d like to go overseas to Guam or Japan. She said that was interesting, and she talked to me a little bit and we ended our conversation and I left. Six weeks later I had orders to Guam. I told her if I went anytime soon that I couldn’t leave until Christmas. It was important to me to be home at Christmas because my brother had died that June and I wanted to be home with my mother. They changed my orders and I got to go home for Christmas. I got to Guam on the first of January 1970.

  I flew to Guam. I had to go to Travis and they had these huge flights that stopped on the way and dropped people off. Those flights were totally packed MAC flights. They took the families or unaccompanied active duty personnel. It took about 15 hours to fly over there with one stop in Hawaii. We got into Guam and were met at the airport. It was a holiday, being the first of January. The nurses were celebrating nurses around the world.

  I worked orthopedics and general surgery ward, and every once in a while, I got pulled in the nursery if they needed help. I was introduced to the medevac watch. It was 1971 and we were down to getting maybe three medevacs a week coming in from Vietnam. We could get as low as 20 but as high as 70 to 75 patients coming in. At that point, the hospital was about 200 beds, but it had a potential of more because they had sunporches that had bunk beds on them. During the height of the ’67/’68 Tet offenses, they had a branch hospital down on Asan, which is down the hill closer to the water. When I got there, it was closed and being used as a BOQ. We only used the sunporch beds for overflow for the people that weren’t very ill, or had minor inj
uries. We had dependents, orthopedic, surgical, and medical wards, an ICU and an OB area.

  The medevac watch system was kind of interesting. The A.M. and P.M. shifts assisted each other in getting the medevacs settled and getting those who had to work the next shift off as soon as possible so they could come back on their scheduled shift. It would take three to four hours to get everyone settled, bathed, fed and pre-op prepped if they were going into surgery the next morning. We hardly ever had medevacs back to back. There was usually a day in between. I don’t know how many nurses we had. We had the watch a couple of times a week, but we only had medevacs three times a week. We didn’t always know they were coming in. Sometimes we only got six hours’ notice. If someone was really severely ill, they would go to Anderson Air Force Base, and be picked up in a bus or by ambulance. Anderson is on Guam, too. The island of Guam is really small—15 miles long and four to eight miles across. They have little towns there and Agana is the capital. The hospital is on the cliffs overlooking Agana and the Philippine Sea. Anderson AFB is on the northern end of the island. The hospital is about mid-island. Depending on how bad they were, they would send a doctor in the ambulance. Otherwise usually the doctors didn’t go to the airfield.

  I stayed in Guam for 19 months. I got there January 1, ’71 and left in July of ’72. It was supposed to be 18 months and I was supposed to leave in June, but BUPERS ran out of money for transfers so I couldn’t get home until July. I missed my brother’s wedding.