What is nursing? Nursing is giving back to others in their time of need. Military nursing is more than giving back. It is giving back to those who sacrificed their lives for our country. These brave men and women have sometimes gone through events that are unimaginable. Nurses sometimes do not receive the recognition that the front-line troops do, but as an Army Nurse caring for these heroes was recognition enough.
These stories are a compilation of experiences of three Army Nurses to include patients that have affected our lives, as well as what being in the Army Nurse Corps taught us. Some of these stories are more heart wrenching than others, but the honor of caring for these patients was and will be an integral part of our lives.
Serving in the Army Nurse Corps (ANC) was an honor and a blessing for the three of us. Each one of us, Paula Quindlen, Lt. Col., AN (R) Mary Jo Erskine, Capt., ANC, and Helene Harris, Lt. Col., AN (R). Each of us had personal and unique stories about patients who impacted our lives. Paula and Mary honorably served in Vietnam. Each one of us would like to share our stories.
Paula's story
I served in the Army Nurse Corps during a time of transition for women, the Army and the Army Nurse Corps. I started nursing school in September of 1966 and graduated in June 1969. I was attending a hospital school of nursing and joined the Army Student Nurse Program during my last year of school. I had no interest in the Army until a ANC officer came to our school and presented the Student Nurse Program and the opportunities offered by the Army. She looked really attractive in her uniform and was so well spoken. I guess I could see myself through her. During my last year of nursing school, I received a check each month as a Pfc. I was only 20 when I graduated as my birthday was the end of November. I felt I was much too young to settle down, so I saw the Army as an opportunity for travel and professional growth.
When I went on active duty in September 1969, women were still treated as second class citizens in the Army. One of my basic classmates was married and her husband was in college. She had to prove that she contributed a minimum of 50% of his upkeep in order to claim him as a dependent.
My first duty station was the base hospital at Fort Devens, Massachusetts. I learned a great deal during my short six months at Fort Devens. I cared for very young men who had returned from Vietnam with some devastating injuries. For the most part, I saw young men who were frightened, but who reached out and took care of each other. I started to see that the Army was indeed a family who were concerned for each brother. After six months at Fort Devens, I received orders for Vietnam. My roommate and I were going to go to Vietnam together. In the interim between receiving orders and going to Vietnam, I met and married a MSC Captain who had returned from Vietnam 8 months before. The day after we married my husband requested to return to Vietnam for a second tour. I was very, very young when I went to Nam. Growing up in a protective Irish/Italian Catholic family and attending a Catholic nursing school taught me nothing about life. The day we landed in Vietnam, I found myself in a shower with a Vietnamese Mammasan and a frog. For some reason that brought the reality of the experience to me.
I was assigned to the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai which was in I Corps. We supported the Americal Division. During my tour, we were very busy with casualties coming in every day. I worked in the ICU/RR units for 10 of my 12 months. I learned so much about medicine, nursing, myself and life. I found that the staff took care of the patients as if they were our brothers, because we really saw them this way. We saw such terrible loss of young American and Vietnamese lives.
Staff supported each other as we were all family. On the day that one of us had too much horror, each person took time to support the person who needed the support. We worked hard, partied hard and care so much for each other.
My husband did come over for his second tour three weeks after I got there. I was lucky as I had a built in support system. He helped me through my year in Nam and has helped me process my experience over the past 46 years.
Returning from Nam in May 1971, I was assigned to Ft Dix, N.J. Remaining in the Army helped as our military family always supported each member. I remained on active duty for 9 years and in the Army Reserves for another 14 years, retiring as a Lt. Col. After returning to graduate school, I joined the Department of Veterans Affairs Healthcare System, with my first VA being the hospital in Albuquerque, NM. From there I went to a small VA hospital in Marlin, TX and then on to the VA hospital in Temple, TX. Working for the VA made realize that many people did not see women as veterans and that many did not know that women were in Vietnam. I made it one of my goals to educate as many people as possible to the roles of women in the military over the entire history of our country.
In 1993, I attended the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial. I feel this helped in my healing. The day of the dedication there was a parade of the women who were in Vietnam. We meet up with women from our units in Nam who we had not seen in over 20 years. The parade passed male Vietnam vets who held up signs that read "Welcome Home Sisters". The signs meant so much to me because I realized that our brothers saw us as true veterans.
Vice President Gore gave a speech during the dedication and he mentioned how the Women's Memorial was placed across from the Vietnam wall at one end and the memorial which depicts three combat men was placed across from the Vietnam wall at the other end. He stated that it was as if the wall was embracing the two statues. To me it is as if we were all there together and we will be together forever. The day after the dedication, I went to stand by the statue all alone. I had a vest on that designated me as a Vietnam Nurse. A man came up to me and took my hands in his and said "I am a product of your hands". He explained to me that he had been injured in Nam and came to find a nurse he could thank. I was not his nurse, but he wanted to thank me. I was so very touched by this.
My experience in the Army Nurse Corps was positive leading to a life of fantastic experiences and growth.
Mary Jo's story
First let me say that the 12 years I spent in the Army Nurse Corps had a profound effect on my life and my career as a Registered Nurse. I entered the army as a naïve, young graduate in 1967. When I left the Army in 1979 I was a skilled, respected nurse who had so much love and respect for the people I had cared for, I went on and spent the next 24 years working in the VA hospitals to continue to care for these brave men and women.
I had some of the best assignments in the Army. Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver, Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu, Carlisle Barracks PA, and the hospital at West Point, New York. But most important was my experience at the 27th Surgical Hospital in Chu Lai, Vietnam in 1968-1969.
The majority of the time I worked Emergency Room and Pre-op where we got patients ready for surgery at the 27th. I can never forget walking into those long Quonset hut wards and seeing the rows of stretchers and sawhorses set up so litters could be placed on them. It seemed like we were either not busy at all or you would hear helicopters coming in and landing and suddenly everyone went into high gear. Each stretcher had IV poles, dressings, equipment for vital signs -- everything you needed for a critically injured patient. When a patient came in he was immediately triaged and surrounded by corpsmen, nurses, and doctors. Get name or assign him a number, cut off his uniform and boots, assess his wounds, start 1 or more IV's all while assessing his airway, breathing and any bleeding. You quickly learned how to tell an entrance from an exit gunshot wound. This took a matter of minutes. Then to x-ray and pre-op. The less injured they were, the more nervous they were when you came at them with a straight razor to get them prepared for surgery. The majority of the patients were more worried about their buddies than about themselves.
The injuries just kind of blurred together but certain patients stand out. The ones that came in missing 1 or both legs, or the one missing both legs and an arm. When I went to the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington DC he was there. I was so glad to see that he made it out alive. We had to be so careful removing boots when the men had leg injuries. More than once we found a foot hanging on by only skin and tendons. If a patient was injured so badly we know that he would not make it, he was placed behind a screen. These men did not die alone and more than once I held a young boys hand until he breathed his last.
We learned that napalm burns were only made worse with water so we kept a supply of copper sulfate available. The majority of those patients with napalm burns were civilians -- women and children. It was so hard to see these young innocents in so much pain and know there was little you could do for them.
The very worst day was when a plane crashed as it was taking off from the airport. Our hospital compound was next to the airport and the runway was very close to our perimeter. We heard the crash and suddenly started getting patients from the crash. This was a true mass casualty situation. Some of the men had clothes still on fire and one nurse was burned extinguishing the flames. There were many with severe injuries. The only patients we did not get were the head injury patients as the neurosurgeon was at the 312th Evacuation Hospital on the other side of the base. Someone suddenly realized that we had a physician who was going home on that plane after his 365 days in country and he had not come into the ER as a patient. We found out he had died on impact. For those who remember the MASH TV show, I still can't watch the episode where they kill off Henry Blake as it is too close to home! We later found out they had refueled the plane with the wrong jet fuel.
Many nights we spent in the bunkers outside our quarters because we had rockets landing nearby. But of course we checked first to make sure the rats were gone before we went in. If we were on duty, we got the patients under their beds or if they couldn't be moved we piled mattresses around and over them. Highway 1 ran along the edge of our compound and it was a major route for the Viet Cong and North Vietnamese. We also learned very quickly how to tell incoming from outgoing rockets and could sleep through the outgoing ones.
I should mention my most memorable and favorite patient. I met him at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center in Denver, CO. He was on the busy 78 bed medical ward I was working on and they weren't sure what was wrong with him. We had a fast patient turnover and he was sent to an outlying ward while he had his workup. He always said I had him kicked off the ward (not true!) He was readmitted a few months later and I got to know him better. One day I asked him what he was going to do after he was discharged. He said "I am going to stay here and marry you." And you know what? He did. We are still married 43 years later.
No matter how tired we were and how anxious to get home, when the time came, the majority of us would have stayed on to care for those brave men. And I always wondered what happened to the Vietnamese interpreters after the Americans left.
After coming back to the United States I worked almost every specialty. My favorites were neurosurgery and orthopedics. On the neurosurgery wards we did a lot of speech and occupational therapy with the brain injury patients. One in particular had a large area of the bone missing from his head due to his injury. But he was walking and talking when he was evacuated home from Hawaii.
One patient I will never forget had cancer of the head and neck. Although he had a tracheostomy he was able to talk and I spent a lot of time talking to him. As the cancer ate into his neck, it got closer to his carotid artery and we and he realized he would probably die of a catastrophic arterial bleed. And he did have several episodes of bleeding that we were able to stop with pressure. One day he went in to take a bath with the assist of the staff. The staff member stepped out for a short time to give him privacy. While they were out of the room he turned the hot water on full blast and scalded himself and died of his thermal burns. Did he do it accidently or on purpose? We were never sure.
We had several patients on Stryker frames. A Stryker frame is a hard bed that the patients laid on and when you turned them you tightened an identical frame on top and just flipped them. The first few times you prayed that they wouldn't fall out. These were for the patients who had spinal cord injuries and had to be kept in perfect body alignment. And one young man who had Guillian Barre Syndrome and had lost all use of his arms and legs. Luckily he was able to breathe on his own. He did eventually recover much of his movement by the time he left our hospital.
The morale of the patients was phenomenal. They supported not only each other but also the staff. They helped each other with meals, made beds, passed out linen. Most importantly, when someone was down and feeling sorry for himself, the guy next to him was often the one who gave him a pep talk or more likely a kick in the pants to get him moving again.
In addition to my nursing skills, I learned so much in the Army Nurse Corps. I learned how important it is to work as a team and that no matter the rank or MOS, everyone has something important to contribute. I learned that I could remember the name, diagnosis, date of admission and date of surgery, and the bed number of 78 patients at a time even though many of those patients changed on a daily basis. I learned that you can cook almost anything in an electric frying pan. And that no matter how horrible or how wonderful some experiences are, you will never forget them. Just as you will never forget the people you worked with who became.
Helene's story
My first experience caring for an active duty soldier was in 1975 at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu. I was brand new to the Army as a Specialist 5, a licensed practical nurse. I was working the night shift. Around midnight I had to wake the patients in order to obtain their vital signs. I woke a sergeant who had served in Vietnam. I turned on the light in his room and begun shaking him. He jumped about 6 feet in the air and started to yell at me, "don't ever shake me like that." I remember going to the nurse's station and thinking, "what did I do by joining the Army." Around 0400 he came to the nurse's and began talking to me. I think he realized I was new. He explained to me that in Viet Nam he and another buddy waited for the enemy in foxholes. They took turns sleeping. When the enemy started firing his buddy would shake him awake. He told me that when I shook him, he felt like he was back in the foxholes in Vietnam. Now that I look back, I realize that was post-traumatic stress disorder.
Another patient that had an impact on me was a retired Navy sailor. I was stationed at Tripler Army Medical Center in Honolulu where I cared for this retired sailor. He was on the USS Arizona when it was hit by the Japanese on Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941. He lost many of his "buddies". He was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer. He did not have any family and wanted to ensure that when he passed, he was cremated and his ashes scattered over the USS Arizona. He specifically retired in Hawaii so that it would be easy for his request to be honored. He passed in the middle of the night. We notified the Administrative Office of the Day (AOD). He managed to honor this Retiree's wishes and his body was cremated and his ashes spread over the Arizona.
As a brand new RN, I was assigned to a surgical ward at Irwin Army Hospital at Ft. Riley, Kansas. I cared for a Pfc. who was involved in a motorcycle accident. There was severe damage to his right leg and the probability of a future career in the Army was very slim. He so very much wanted to remain in service. While I was caring for him, I completed an assessment on his right leg. I had thought I was performing a standard assessment. I touched various parts of his leg all the while asking him if he was able to feel my touches. He said, "yes" to each touch. As I was documenting my assessment, I realized that I did not explain that he had to close his eyes! Imagine my dismay. When the surgeon came by and asked for a report on this patient, I gave him a complete report, except I did not tell him about his ability to detect touch. The surgeon was very nice and took me with him into the patient's room. I watched him perform a correct exam. As expected, the soldier was not able to feel touch with his eyes closed.
I have been so fortunate to learn from the Army physicians. I have not had one doctor who was not willing to work with me and teach me. I attribute part of my success in the Army Nurse Corps to the physicians who were willing to teach me.
This patient is another one that is so uniquely Army nursing. I cared for a Gulf War soldier who was evaced to William Beaumont Army Medical Center. He had three sand fly bites. I was going into his room to perform a dressing change. I thought to myself, "this should take about 20 minutes." When I removed the old dressing, I realized how serious these bites were. The wound was red and there was pus inside the wounds. I knew this soldier would require pain medicine prior to beginning the dressing change. I was actually in his room for over one hour. As I was leaving his room, I really appreciated my job in the Army Nurse Corps.
While stationed in Korea, I was fortunate enough to be one of six nurses to care for 19 burned Marines. Two helicopters crashed into one another. All 19 Marines were brought to the 121st Evacuation Hospital in Yongsan, Seoul, South Korea. I was assigned to care for 4 of the 19 Marines. All four that were assigned to me has severe second and/or third degree burns over 30-40% of their bodies. We worked 12-14 hour shifts seven days a week. To me, it was an honor and privilege to be selected. I could have worked 24 hours and would not have complained!! Two of my four patients had to have endotracheal tubes (ETT) inserted to assist with their breathing abilities. I remember the Marine Captain coming around to check on his troops. He looked at one Marine, who was a Private and said, "I thought you didn't make it. I told your parents, I don't know what happened to you." The Marine started to cry, but couldn't talk due to the endotracheal tube inserted. I told him that I would call his family. Korea is about 13 hours ahead of the Central U.S. This happened about 1500 Korean time, which was about 0300 at the Marine's home. It was quite difficult to call to the U.S. from the 121st Evacuation Hospital. We had to go through the overseas operator, sometimes the connection worked, sometimes it did not. I stayed almost four hours after my shift in order to call his family. I finally was able to contact them. His father's voice, at first sounded angry. He said, "is this a joke?" I told him, "No, I am Captain Harris, one of the nurses caring for your son". He sounded as though he was crying and said "thank you" about ten times. I explained to him that his son could not talk to him, but at this time he was doing well.
I also remember the distinct smell of burned skin. We had to debride, or remove dead skin once a day on all four patients. This was extremely time consuming, at least one hour per patient. My Corpsman would debride and I was standing by pushing Morphine into each Marines IV. The smell of burned skin permeated the whole room. It was never easy to handle the smell, but we became used to it.
At the end of two weeks, all nineteen survived and were send to the burn unit at Brooke Army Medical Center. I think the hardest part for me was not being able to say goodbye. The team from the burn unit were anxious to move them to San Antonio. One of my Marines took off his dog tag and gave it to me. I treasure it and still have it out for me to look at.
For me, serving in ANC was never a job, but was a privilege.
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