"'I never got a chance to be a girl, ' Kate O'Hare Palmer
lamented, thirty-four years after her tour as an army nurse in
Vietnam. Although proud of having served, she felt that the war she
never understood had robbed her of her innocence and forced her to
grow up too quickly. As depicted in a photograph taken late in her
tour, long hours in the operating room exhausted her both
physically and mentally. Her tired eyes and gaunt face reflected th
e weariness she felt after treating countless patients, some dying,
some maimed, all, like her, forever changed. Still, she learned to
work harder and faster than she thought she could, to trust her
nursing skills, and to live independently. She developed a way to
balance the dangers and benefits of being a woman in the army and
in the war. Only fourteen months long, her tour in Vietnam
profoundly affected her life and her beliefs."
Such vivid personal accounts abound in historian Kara Dixon
Vuic's compelling look at the experiences of army nurses in the
Vietnam War. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, Vuic allows the
nurses to tell their own captivating stories, from their reasons
for joining the military to the physical and emotional demands of a
horrific war and postwar debates about how to commemorate their
service.
Vuic also explores the gender issues that arose when a
male-dominated army actively recruited and employed the services of
5,000 nurses in the midst of a growing feminist movement and a
changing nursing profession. Women drawn to the army's patriotic
promise faced disturbing realities in the virtually all-male
hospitals of South Vietnam. Men who joined the nurse corps ran
headlong into the army's belief that women should nurse and men
should fight.
"Officer, Nurse, Woman" brings to light the nearly forgotten
contributions of brave nurses who risked their lives to bring
medical care to soldiers during a terrible--and divisive--war.
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