When my three years of payback to the Army for school was completed, I wanted my blue uniform back. I went back in the Air Force. The Army had been a good experience and I would not lose any rank. The Air Force detailer told me that they needed an air evacuation commander at Hill Air Force Base, Ogden, Utah, if I was interested. As a commander of the 66th Air Evacuation Reserve Flight, I worked as one of the two full-time staff members. They warned me that this unit was up for possible closer. Their past overall inspection had not been good.
We did our flying with the 945th, a flying transport unit. Air evacuation used everyone else’s military planes, as we didn’t have our own. We used trips to Hawaii as long distance training flights. Two operational readiness inspections were held under my command, each receiving laudatory remarks. We were honored as the most outstanding unit in air evacuation. Members of our unit, whenever there was heavy action, we were called upon to assist in bringing home the casualties. Air Evacuations were controlled out of Clark Air Force Base in the Philippines.
There were three main routes from Vietnam to the States. One went up through Japan, where the military had a branch of the famous Fort Sam Burn Center located in Yokohama. From Japan there were two routes: One went back to the Philippines; another went to the States by way of Alaska and down to the Great Lakes Naval Hospital and on to the East Coast. The second went to San Francisco by way of Hawaii. The third went back to the Philippines by way of Guam. The military found that troops recuperated faster closer to home, so if a hospital close to home was capable of handling the injury, they were transported there.
In Vietnam there were three pick-up points: Saigon, Cam Rahn Bay and Da Nang. The nurse on temporary duty from the air evacuation squadron would set up the patient placement in the aircraft (load plans). At midnight, the nurse would call the Philippines to report placement and diagnosis. The air evacuation crews would meet about 2:30 A.M. for aircraft assignments. Aircraft had arrived the previous day with cargo and had to be converted to air evacuation. After the conversion the aircraft went to one of the pick-up points. The minute we touched ground in Vietnam, the loadmasters would start opening the clamshells, which were the back doors of the C–141. The doors were completely open by the time we got to our parking spot. Ambulance buses knew where we would be and were waiting for our arrival. When it was safe to drive up to the aircraft, they would load the ambulatory patients at the front of the plane and another ambulance bus would load the litter patients at the clamshell opening. Litters were placed three to four litters high, like bunk beds. Corpsmen stationed in Vietnam would assist the aircrew corpsmen in loading by using the load plan received at midnight. Meanwhile, the nurses were receiving report on the patients. After the aircraft was loaded, it began moving down the flight line for takeoff within an hour from first landing. It was just like clockwork. The aircraft became a hospital ward at 30,000 feet. All the nursing procedures—IV’s, dressing changes and TLC—that were done in a ground hospital were continued in flight. This gave the patient a complete continuance of care. This care, in addition to the knowledge that he was “going back to the world,” gave the casualties of Vietnam the highest survival rate.
Harry A. Wesche in United States Air Force uniform.
Upon completion of my flying assignments, I was sent to Brooks Air Force Base, San Antonio, Texas, where I attended the Air Force School of Aerospace Medicine. I completed a one-year residency in space medicine and was the first male in the space nurse program out of 20 nurses. I was sent to Edwards Air Force Base, California, to be the nurse for the first space shuttle, Enterprise. I was also in several other military programs, culminating in my retirement in 1983.
Harry A. Wesche during ejector seat training in space school.
My military experience allowed me to participate as a leader in medicine techniques and theory. Every time I was given a chance to learn something new, I jumped in with both feet. If I had it to do all over again, I wouldn’t change a thing. I had professional experience, gratification and pride in a country protecting freedom and peace and a strong family’s love. There isn’t anything more a fellow, such as me, could want in life.
Odette P. Willis
Odette P. Willis’s vast experience, as a professional and military nurse, allows her to give many details of the experience of caring for patients in many situations. She provides details that allow those who did not serve in those situations to appreciate how far nursing has developed.
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I wanted to be a nurse since I was probably 10 or 11 years old. All of the guidance counselors I had in elementary and high school geared me toward math and science. I also became a candy striper for the military hospitals in Nuremberg, Germany, where I was born and raised.
My father was an Army sergeant stationed in Europe during World War II. When he got off active duty after the war, he decided to stay in Europe. He worked as a civilian in the Department of Defense for the Army and Air Force Exchange System. My mother went overseas after World War II as a computer keypunch operator. They met and married in Paris and stayed. Twenty-six years later they moved just outside of San Francisco and they have been there ever since.
We moved only once while I was growing up. I was one of two children in my family and we both started in the Nuremberg School System. I graduated from the same school 13 years later. I was both a German and an American citizen until I came back to the United States and joined the Navy. I then had to declare my citizenship and I declared the U.S. The nursing schools in Germany started you out washing floors and you worked your way up. This was the very old German school system. My father said, “No, you are going to get an education,” and so I came back to the United States and went to nursing school.
I graduated from high school in 1969. I then applied to several schools in the United States, but because I was considered a foreign student, I had a difficult time getting in. I was accepted at Texas Women’s University. This is how I ended up joining the Navy. Air Force and Navy recruiters came to the campus one day during my sophomore year and talked to us about the different services. Since I was already familiar with the Army and Air Force, I thought I would take a look at the Navy. There was just something about the Navy I liked better than the Army or Air Force.
I joined the Navy in 1971 and accepted was in the Officer Candidate Program. I finished my last two years of school in this program. I graduated from college in 1973 and entered the July officer indoctrination class at Newport, Rhode Island. My parents were happy with my choice. My father had to sign for me to go into the Navy since I was underage. Since they were just outside of San Francisco, the recruiter there sent a chief petty officer out to my father’s house with all the paperwork. My dad told me the chief petty officer said I was probably one of the few students that didn’t need a scholarship program but was very eligible for it. I didn’t need it in the sense that I didn’t need the money to go to school but I was most eligible for it because my grade point was 3.9.
I got promoted to ensign in November 1972. That was a highlight because Admiral Duerk, who had just become an Admiral, came out to San Francisco for the promotion. People from the Midwest also came out to San Francisco and we were promoted to ensign together.
My first duty station was Philadelphia at the height of the Vietnam conflict. I was assigned to orthopedics. In Philadelphia there were four floors of orthopedics and I was assigned between all four floors. The amputee unit was on the first floor, the hand and ENT unit on the second floor, and the third and fourth floors had the general orthopedic units. That was my first experience with nursing and what an experience it was.
It was a learning experience working with the corps staff. It’s hard to believe those kids were 18, 19, 20 years old. It was interesting being on night shift and having all four floors with just one nurse and 160 patients. It was very scary now that I look back on it. I remember carrying a thousand keys in my pockets. We had antiquated narcotic lockers with a red light in them that we had to ge
t on a stool to reach.
I remember the four floors of orthopedic patients and trying to get all the pre-op patients ready for surgery by six o’clock in the morning. They had to be up, showered and all the charts and lab work together. One time I was the only one on nights. There were so many patients going to the OR, I thought that the best thing for me to do was to get all the first cases ready to go. I think there were seven of them. I got those seven ready and left the rest for the day shift. I will never forget being “chewed out” by the charge nurse for not having all 17 prepped and ready to go. I said, “But I couldn’t get it all done. There was just so much to do.” I was in the stairwell with my arms wrapped around the banister because I was ready to punch her. One of the physicians came up, realized what was going on and got another department head to come and basically split us up. I was told to just go home and she would deal with it.
I was in Philly from 1973 to 1975. In 1975, I was shipped to Guam. I was put on a 30-day notice to be shipped out to help with the evacuation of South Vietnam. The evacuees were coming to Guam for processing. I got put on three-day notice. I was given all these shots and I was sicker than a dog. They had to give them to us all together since they didn’t know when we were going to leave. I had typhoid, typhus, cholera, plague, yellow fever, and a couple of others, nine all together. I was sick for about five days.
After 30 days they took us off the roster to go. I was off the list for a week and then got a phone call saying I was going to leave the next day, be packed and ready to go. I closed up my apartment and gave my cat to one of the other nurses who had a family to take care of it. I had given a friend of mine the power of attorney to pay my bills and keep the apartment going. I was literally shipped off in 24 hours.
I and three corpsmen left Philly and flew to Chicago, where we picked up 50 other people. While in Chicago, I called my parents and told them I was going to have a six-hour layover in San Francisco. I didn’t know when I would be back, and asked if they wanted to come see me at the airport. They did come. There were about 75 to 100 of us when we got there from all over the country. We all boarded a United Airline flight and went to Hawaii, where we picked up more people. There were a lot of us working on the units from all over the country. By the time we got to Guam, we had about 175 of us.
We landed at Anderson Air Force Base on Guam and got bused down to the hospital. We landed about 3:30 in the morning and got to the hospital about 3:45. The chief nurse basically told us we were going to be working three shifts. There were a lot of us working on the units from all over the country. The day shift and evening shift were going to work ten hours and the night shift was going to work eight. We were given quarters and literally the room was a bunk bed. There were no curtains on the windows, it was hot, and it was dirty. We had a van and went to the commissary to pick up cleaning supplies. We spent most of the day cleaning and putting sheets and tin foil up on the windows. I had to work that night from 10 P.M. to 8 A.M., so I slept for a couple of hours before heading off for my first shift.
We had an open-bay ward. There were two sections of the ward. One was an open-air solarium that had bunk beds and the other was an open ward with the old metal crank beds so we put blankets on the floor underneath the beds because we had so many patients.
The first night we admitted 30 people. I had never started an IV or put in a foley catheter or put down an NG tube. I was the med and treatment nurse that night. I put in 30 IVs and I put in 15 or 20 Foley catheters because these patients were dehydrated. Some of them came in with some very exotic diseases. Some had malaria, typhoid, typhus, and one or two might have had cholera. We had a 12-year-old girl on the ward that had tapeworms. They were so bad they had gotten in her lungs. I will never forget because they said if she started coughing you need to grab some gloves and run because she would be coughing up a tapeworm and it would choke her. We literally would have to go and help her by pulling out a worm.
Over the course of three months we had 598 patients come through our unit alone. We literally saw everything. We had one patient who had been on board a military transport ship. It was a young boy who had developed seizures and had a cardiac arrest. They brought him to us and we put him on a ventilator. He eventually did pass away. His father had been very rich and he tried to offer us money to keep his son alive. They were very religious, too. The father cut off his own hair in an offering to the gods to help save his son. I have a letter that the father wrote, thanking us for the care we provided to his son.
We were on a hill overlooking Agana, the capital of Guam. In order for planes to land in Agana they flew over the hospital. This caused the patients to scatter because they were scared to death it was a bomb. They would just huddle in corners. On the pediatric unit the Corps of Engineers built boxes on stilts that could be used as cribs. The families would not let the nurses keep their babies in these cribs because they looked like coffins. I have pictures of babies on the floor in blankets. The only time these babies were in these boxes was when the nurses had to provide care for them.
If Vietnam refugee mothers were pregnant and within three months of delivery, they were kept on Guam until they delivered because we didn’t want to fly them. The mothers and their families were kept together at a little camp called Asan. When the mother was ready to deliver, she would come to the hospital. We had one mother who had five boys and delivered another boy and another mother who had five girls and had delivered another girl. When we went to discharge one of the patients, we matched armbands, and “low and behold,” the patient had the wrong baby. We couldn’t figure it out and so we took the baby back to the nursery and got the right baby. We went to discharge the patient and once again she had the wrong baby. We got an interpreter and found out that the mother that had all girls didn’t need another girl; she needed a son to take care of the family. The one with all boys didn’t need another boy, and so they just swapped babies. This was a normal cultural thing to them. Since the babies were born on United States property and essentially in the United States, we couldn’t just swap babies. We kept both families for a couple days and had a complete legal adoption.
Once the babies were delivered, we shipped the families to one of the three holding points in the United States, one of which was Camp Pendleton. There were several camps across the United States. Eventually the families were dispersed through churches and family organizations throughout the community. There was one person I met who was a refugee and became a nurse. I actually was working with her at Kaiser Permanente Medical Center in San Francisco.
When the experience on Guam was concluded, I came back to Philadelphia. Because of all the experience I had had, they put me in the surgical ICU and I was there for a year and a half. I did not like the experience at all. It was just too fast paced and scary for me. The patients were just really sick and I didn’t have the stamina for that kind of care. A year and a half later I got transferred to a different unit.
One of the things I remember about my ICU time was when we had a death. The patient was on active duty status. He was brought into the SICU on a ventilator. We knew he was not going to make it and it was decided to retire him. In order for his family to receive benefits he had to be retired and live until the process was complete. We needed to keep him alive until after midnight when his retirement would kick in. I remember that by 10 we knew it was going to be really touch and go. We did everything we possibly could. We put him on an external pacemaker, kept him on the vent, kept the IVs going. His retirement kicked in at midnight and we kept him going until about two in the morning just to make sure that everything was okay. When it appeared there would be no question about the retirement, we turned everything off and he died immediately. It was just the idea that what we were doing was to help the family. That will stick in my mind forever. I’ve actually seen and heard of it being done quite often just to ensure the family will get the retirement. This guy was in for over 20 years and was eligible for full retirement.
Odette P
. Willis in Guam.
We had a patient come in after a motorcycle accident. He’d hit something and flew off of the motorcycle but didn’t let go of the handle bars. He landed back on the motorcycle right over the gas can. When he was brought in his scrotum was swollen to the size of a basketball. It was very difficult to find a penis to put a folly catheter in. He survived.
The third thing that happened while I worked in the SICU, a friend of my family’s came in for surgery. Because he had a cardiac history, they were worried he wasn’t going to do very well. We brought him into cardiac ICU and did pre-op teaching along with his family. I happened to be on that day and taught the family. He had his surgery and I was able to take care of him. That was something they will never forget because I talked to the family and they said, “We’ll never forget how well you took care of us.”
Odette P. Willis at retirement.
I was sent from surgical ICU to psych and really enjoyed it. I was there for nine months and I was the charge nurse for the rehab psych unit. Margaret Whitecell was the department head. She was rough and gruff but a real “teddy bear.” I learned a lot of my management skills from her as she mentored me. The biggest thing I remember about my psych experience was when we had a young marine, 19, 20 years old, come in who had been stationed on a ship. We didn’t know what caused it but this guy went schizophrenic. He was so ill I will never forget him. We were giving him two to three hundred milligrams of thorazine an hour. We gave him 5 ml of Haldol every two to three hours. Nothing would touch this guy. We kept him in isolation. He would walk and walk and bang his head against the wall, or he would rock and rock. It took five days of round the clock medication to finally get him to fall asleep. He didn’t sleep for five solid days. Finally, when we got him to lie down long enough to sleep, we were able to start working with him. Eventually he was transferred to a VA hospital. When we did transfer him, he was beginning to come around. I’ve never seen such high doses given with no effect at all. You give someone a hundred mg of Thorazine; they’ll sleep for a week. This guy was getting a hundred to two hundred an hour. It was insane.
Vietnam War Nurses Page 21