they arrived, OâNeill and the others in her unit were issued uniforms and addressed by a series of officers. One sergeant in particular was a dead ringer for the recruiter she had encountered in Chicago. He stepped up on the stage and made a remark that would stay with her forever. âFor you nurses, you might have been told that there was a waiting list a mile long for Vietnam. Well, thatâs no longer the case. I say by the end of this year half of you will be in Vietnam.â He continued, âThe other half will be on orders for Vietnam.â It was then that the reality hit. OâNeill remembers thinking, âOh my God. I asked to go to Hawaii, and Germany, and the Philippines, Fort Sam Houston, or anywhere else, but not Vietnam.â
The historian Kara Dixon Vuic has described the military training that nurses received. It is striking to note that men and women inducted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era received the exact same training with the exception of twenty-two hours. In those hours, the men had weapons training and other combat-specific instruction. Women, by contrast, learned how to fire a .45-caliber pistol. Much more time was spent on uniforms and insignia, as the Army insisted that women be appropriately dressed. 3
OâNeill, like many nurses headed for Vietnam, felt grossly underprepared for combat medicine. She had dealt with emergency room trauma in her nursing training. She knew what it meantâand looked likeâwhen people died from traumatic injuries. But for the most part her experience with death was limited to the elderly. Now she would encounter peers as patients.
When that hit home, OâNeill paid a visit to the people at the base education office to explain to them that sending her too close to combat would be a mistake. She asserted that she knew nothing about trauma medicine and feared that if she treated someone in Vietnam, she would hurt the person. The desk officer told her about an opening in the operating room. In her previous training, OâNeill had spent a couple of weeks in an operating room and had found the work interesting. It was then that the officer let the other shoe drop. Of course, he told her, if you go into the operating room, theyâre going to send you over there for sure. In the end, she figured that she would be sent no matter what.
âTheyâre going to use me over there anyway , â she thought. âAt least I will know something . â
As it turned out, the operating room course was the best and most informative one OâNeill had ever taken. She felt she learned a great deal about pre-op and postoperative care, although many of the skills would be unnecessary in Vietnam. Soldiers were more often than not patched up and shipped out to secondary-care stations as quickly as possible. Still, she realized that what she was learning would be extremely useful upon her return to civilian life. As part of the training she was sent to work in the amputee ward, where she not only treated the physical wounds but also gained exposure to the emotional and psychological dimensions of such wounds. Again, this was more real-life drama than she had bargained for, but OâNeill knew the experience would serve her well. During her operating room training, OâNeill received her orders to Vietnam. She arrived there in May 1969.
When she landed in Vietnam, a clerk-typist asked where she wished to be stationed. She knew nothing about the country and cared little for hard facts about the conflict. She replied that she would accept anything. The typist suggested a place in the northern portion of South Vietnam called Phu Bai, where the Twenty-Second Surgical Hospital was located. She accepted.
For the most part, doctors and nurses seek to remain unaffected by the cases that come before them. Giving excellent medical care requires distance, an ability to remain focused on the complicated tasks required to treat a patient,
The historian Kara Dixon Vuic has described the military training that nurses received. It is striking to note that men and women inducted into the U.S. Army during the Vietnam era received the exact same training with the exception of twenty-two hours. In those hours, the men had weapons training and other combat-specific instruction. Women, by contrast, learned how to fire a .45-caliber pistol. Much more time was spent on uniforms and insignia, as the Army insisted that women be appropriately dressed. 3
OâNeill, like many nurses headed for Vietnam, felt grossly underprepared for combat medicine. She had dealt with emergency room trauma in her nursing training. She knew what it meantâand looked likeâwhen people died from traumatic injuries. But for the most part her experience with death was limited to the elderly. Now she would encounter peers as patients.
When that hit home, OâNeill paid a visit to the people at the base education office to explain to them that sending her too close to combat would be a mistake. She asserted that she knew nothing about trauma medicine and feared that if she treated someone in Vietnam, she would hurt the person. The desk officer told her about an opening in the operating room. In her previous training, OâNeill had spent a couple of weeks in an operating room and had found the work interesting. It was then that the officer let the other shoe drop. Of course, he told her, if you go into the operating room, theyâre going to send you over there for sure. In the end, she figured that she would be sent no matter what.
âTheyâre going to use me over there anyway , â she thought. âAt least I will know something . â
As it turned out, the operating room course was the best and most informative one OâNeill had ever taken. She felt she learned a great deal about pre-op and postoperative care, although many of the skills would be unnecessary in Vietnam. Soldiers were more often than not patched up and shipped out to secondary-care stations as quickly as possible. Still, she realized that what she was learning would be extremely useful upon her return to civilian life. As part of the training she was sent to work in the amputee ward, where she not only treated the physical wounds but also gained exposure to the emotional and psychological dimensions of such wounds. Again, this was more real-life drama than she had bargained for, but OâNeill knew the experience would serve her well. During her operating room training, OâNeill received her orders to Vietnam. She arrived there in May 1969.
When she landed in Vietnam, a clerk-typist asked where she wished to be stationed. She knew nothing about the country and cared little for hard facts about the conflict. She replied that she would accept anything. The typist suggested a place in the northern portion of South Vietnam called Phu Bai, where the Twenty-Second Surgical Hospital was located. She accepted.
For the most part, doctors and nurses seek to remain unaffected by the cases that come before them. Giving excellent medical care requires distance, an ability to remain focused on the complicated tasks required to treat a patient,
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