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A Nurse Serving Vietnam

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A Nurse Serving in Vietnam In April 1956 the “Army Nurse Corps” ANC was sent to Saigon, Vietnam. The three nurses who were sent over there were to teach the South Vietnamese nurses the “care procedures and techniques”. They were not sent over there to treat United States soldiers, they had to teach the Vietnamese nurses. Those treating the United States soldiers came from the “American Embassy Dispensary”. In 1959 that place taking care of our soldiers could no “longer meet it’s mounting requirements”. Everyone had something to do with it, the Navy, Medical people, the U.S. Army, the dental people and the Air Force. The tri-service had two “Army Nurse Corps officers” and it lasted three year. The women who were in Vietnam went through a lot. The women who served were exposed to a different culture, “sex, trauma and death”. The American nurses who served moved to a Vietnamese hospital, and they had to train the Vietnamese nurses. They tried to train them “in a better way” and tried to learn the Vietnamese language of the Vietnamese nurses. There were nurses who were making all kinds of money, not from the services they would normally give either. Some of the nurses ended up coming home pregnant, and some, came home rich with many being pregnant plus rich. Many nurses that would come back to United States were considered sluts just for being friendly and many were more then, just friendly. The nurses that finally took care of our soldiers would listen to the many stories told by our soldiers “about the girl back home,” they would put on makeup and put ribbons in their hair, just to get the soldiers minds away from the terror of war and themselves. As the years passed and the nurses became involved in the wars they were coming home from Vietnam psychologically traumatized because as one nurse stated, a mortar “hitting

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