Introduction
Women participated in various capacities in the Vietnam War but medical positions took up the largest percentage. Some of them served in hospitals; others were in medical evacuation flights, the Navy through ships and even makeshift medical units. Female military personnel played a large role in saving the lives of many soldiers.
These women were just as exposed to the dangers of the war as those who actually got into combat. Special emphasis will be given to nurses because without their contribution, so many soldiers would have lost their lives or suffered from deteriorating conditions in the War
How nurses contributed to the war
Some of the nurses in the Vietnam War started serving in the war by coincidence. A case in point was the Army Nurse Corps which had sent a group of three American Nurses to train nurses in Vietnam. However, they soon became overburdened with the situation prevalent in Vietnam and had to respond accordingly by caring for members of the American Navy.
Eventually, medical units were set up and began expanding in order to incorporate those many injuries that kept increasing as the war got more intense. The Army had set up a number of hospitals and convalescent centers that would provide medical services to people in combat (Purcell, 24).
It should be noted that the women who served in the War as nurses gained titles as a result of their work, some of them were called Colonel and others were Brigadier. Colonels were regarded as the chief of the nursing group while Brigadier Generals were given this rank as general officers when they had served for long as chiefs within their positions.
Chief Nurses also played the role of nurse consultants especially in the surgeon rankings. Usually, these nurse leaders would carry out a number of activities that included assigning all incoming nurses and giving them positions in the respective medical units. They would coordinate nursing duties in theaters. This was an important component of their work because most military officers urgently needed operational intervention.
However, work could not be done haphazardly; standard procedures needed to be established so that the patient care would not be compromised. These chiefs would also ensure that all the concerned nurses provided quality services to the patients under the care. All hospitals had chief nurses who were the representations of the chief nurse in these units. They had ward masters who also assisted in achievement of these objectives.
Not all nurses were female; a small proportion of nurses in the Vietnam War were male as well. Statistics indicate that about 21% were male while the rest were female. These women had their own family obligations since a large number of them were married.
The US Army was considerate enough in such circumstances because it would try as much as possible to assign members of the same family in areas that were in close proximity to one another. However, when a nurse became pregnant when serving in Vietnam, she would be returned back to the US. When nurses arrived in Vietnam, they would spend about twelve months in the war as that was the standard allocation time for them.
The Army had instated replacement centers that would countercheck a nurse’s expected duties and hence direct them to their respective locations (Norman, 15). An immense level of flexibility was needed in order to do anything in the hospitals, evacuation units or medical units set up. Resources were inadequate and in poor conditions, casualties were many and in dire conditions.
Staff members were not adequate enough to meet the needs of all the patients and what was worse was that their lives were still in danger. These women needed to sacrifice a lot in order to get things done. They needed to be fast on their feet and needed to think very quickly as well, they also had to be willing to take on various positions even when these were not conventional nursing duties.
For instance, most medical units lacked cleaners, well instituted sewer and disposal systems. The serving nurses needed to mop, clean and perform many sanitary duties just so that the hospitals or units could have some semblance of cleanliness around them (Gurney, 1).
Many nurses would have had an opportunity to work in any other part of the world but they chose to go to one of the most troubled countries of the world i.e. Vietnam. Many of them were inspired to do this for a number of reasons. Some of them wanted to serve their country by playing a part in this crucial war and nursing was their only gateway to do so.
In other words, a sense of patriotism was one of the driving forces behind these women’s participation in the war. Others were simply moved by the conditions in the war. They had read and heard about the suffering and pain undergone by the war participants and they felt like they could help. These individuals felt that it was part of their calling to help people who were most in need of it.
On the other hand, other nurses had less sentimental reasons. Some were looking for a sense of adventure and felt that Vietnam would give them an opportunity to challenge and push themselves. Some wanted to be as close to combat as possible so they felt that this would be a great opportunity for them.
Nurses had various experiences in those various locations because these largely depended on the kind of living conditions that they found in their course of duty. For instance, some nurses lived in tents and had to battle with the elements as night. It was especially difficult for them when it rained. In fact, some locations were so dire that all the dressings, bandages and other medical waste would float around in pools that formed after it rained.
It was a horrific scene that required immense self control and stoicism. However, other nurses had it easier; they lived in makeshift huts and at least these were better than the tents. Others were even luckier and had separate rooms but these were often in the hospitals. Others also lived inside trailers and the latter had the advantage of better ventilation since they were air conditioned.
The worst conditions often occurred when hospitals were moved to new combat operations because no living quarters existed there and nurses needed to find shelter in those tents. In fact, most accommodation was hot and humid; nurses had to live in open bays. Since patients were coming in and out, then there was plenty of noise and their beddings were bug infested (Baker, 628).
In order to respond to the frequent relocations, the US Army created Medical Unit Self Contained Transportable Hospitals (MUST). As the name suggests, these hospitals contained a series of basic amenities that included hot and cold water, waste disposal, electrical power, air conditioning and internal heating. They were made of rubber and could thus be inflated or deflated as the need arose.
They were mostly transported through aircrafts such as helicopters and on land, they were transported through tracks. However, the MUSTs were not without challenges. The nurses had to contend with all the discomfort that came from moving in rough terrain. Vietnam was not especially keen on building roads especially in areas that were characterized by combat operations.
What was even worse was that electricity could fluctuate from time to time thus rendering most of the systems inefficient. It was also common to find enemies targeting these units because of the inflatable nature of the hospitals. There was poor drainage in those units and most amenities needed to be maintained. Nurses therefore had a very hard time giving service in these units.
Emergencies were common so nurses could not take any time off at such times. However, when things were not so bad, then they were expected to work twelve hours a day, on all days of the week except one. Many nurses were sleep deprived and this was actually considered a privilege in most times. They were not expected to segregate because a patient was a patient to them.
Some of the servicemen such as aircraft operators, switchboard coordinators and others formed part of this mix of patients that were served. Nonetheless, American troops were the largest proportion that came for emergency services, surgical care or intensive care. Troops from Allied armies were also served by these nurses as well. They also treated children, men and women from Vietnam as they were all victims of the war.
The latter category would normally receive emergency care in those US Army units when the need arose. On other hand, locals could not access these medical facilities. Consequently, some American nurses would volunteer to conduct sick calls in villages. These activities would occur during their off days when they had left their respective areas of work.
They would also give basic services like immunization to those who needed them in children’s orphanages. Consequently, these nurses did not just restrict themselves to the stated missions enlisted in their medical units. Their voluntary work clearly illustrated how most of them pushed beyond their call of duty (Gurney & Piemonte, 32).
It should be noted that American officers were especially vulnerable to tropical diseases and these accounted for a larger portion of the cases that were handled by nurses. In fact, battle field injuries were responsible for 31% of the cases while 69% were due to various diseases that these officers acquired or got during the war.
Some of them included fever, malaria, diarrheal illnesses, venereal diseases, skin complications, hepatitis and so many other tropical diseases. Most of the nurses came in from the US when they were unfamiliar with these diseases but had to learn very quickly because those represented the largest proportion of those who came in. However, 60% of all cases needed to be admitted into hospital as they could not be discharged in their states.
This percentage was dramatically minimized in order to increase the level of flexibility that the hospital units could have when new admissions occurred. Despite this greater proportion of tropical diseases, one must not forget the fact that the Vietnam War also had a very large number of direct war assault injuries. For instance, the war had booby traps and grenades and many individuals would be hurt by these devices.
Weapons that could emanate rapid fire led to development of numerous wounds amongst soldiers. Normally, those very soldiers would be wounded near water ways that had certain human excreta. Wounds became more complex and nurses in this war therefore had to deal with more complex cases than usual (Spurgeon, 61).
Conclusion
There is no doubt that women played a crucial role in the Vietnam War given the dire conditions that they worked in and the stress ridden, resource poor and fast paced environment that was prevalent in those hospitals. Their role was crucial in preservation or improvement of quality of life in this war.
Works Cited
Baker, Eleanear. Caregivers as casualties. Western Journal of Nursing research, 11.5(1989), 628-631
Gurney, Cindy & Piemonte, Robert. Highlights in the history of the Army Nurse Corps. Washington DC, US Military History Army Centre, 1987, 32
Gurney Cindy. An overview of nursing in Vietnam. US center of military history, Washington DC, 1990, 1
Norman, Elizabeth. Women at war: story of fifty military nurses who served in Vietnam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania press, 1990
Purcell, Shirley. Oral history in ANC historical files. US Army center of Military History, Washington DC, 1987, 24
Spurgeon, Neel. Medial support of the US Army in Vietnam. Washington DC, Department of the Army, 1973, 61