Fort Chastity, Vietnam, 1969: A Nurse's Story of the Vietnam War

by Bernadette J Harrod RN

Overview

It was 1969 and the war in Vietnam was at its height. At the time, author Bernadette J. Harrod was twenty-four years old and a full-fledged operating room nurse. Inspired by President John F. Kennedy, she volunteered her services and became a member of the Army Nurse Corps stationed on the front lines at Phu Bai, Vietnam, a forward base camp in the demilitarized zone.

In Fort Chastity, Vietnam, 1969, she shares her story of what nursing was like in a combat zone, standing covered in mud and blood, sweat and tears, serving her country in a war-torn jungle far away from home. Harrod describes working twelve-hour days, six days a week-more when there was a push-operating on wounded soldiers who had suffered massive injuries. Saving life and limb was the prime mission of the operating room nurses. Harrod tells how she was ill prepared to handle the horror all around her. After fourteen months in a blood bath of hell, now considered a combat veteran, she was sent home.

With poetry and letters written to home included, Fort Chastity, Vietnam, 1969, offers a firsthand look at the war and its aftereffects from the perspective of both a nurse and a woman caught in the trauma of war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781491773932
Publisher:	iUniverse, Incorporated
Publication date:	10/07/2015
Pages:	142
Sales rank:	865,310
Product dimensions:	5.90(w) x 8.80(h) x 0.30(d)

Read an Excerpt

Fort Chastity, Vietnam, 1969

A Nurse's Story of the Vietnam War

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By Bernadette J. Harrod

iUniverse

Copyright © 2015 Bernadette J. Harrod, RN
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4917-7393-2

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CHAPTER 1

Opening

Many were wounded in Vietnam, and I was one of them. The silence has been the second wound, a festering old wound that cries out for cleaning and air.

I break my silence to stand up and be counted, for and part of my healing is to acknowledge what it was like to be in Vietnam as a nurse, a woman, and a survivor.

These words are written so that you may know my story and so that I may know my pain and begin my healing.

I hope you enjoy my journey and that you will never have to go where I have been and that peace will be with us all.

Why Did I Go?

"Why did you go?" is the question I often hear. I do not know why you cannot understand. I grew up with John F. Kennedy, and his words were burned into my soul. When Vietnam was on fire, I chose the side of the patriots who responded when Uncle Sam called them to go.

When I was little, I went to bed every night with my six-gun slung on my bedpost. So it was only natural that this young Annie Oakley heard the distant call and battle cry of the wounded warriors in Southeast Asia.

It was 1969, and at the time I was a full-fledged operating room (OR) nurse. I had graduated from a three-year diploma program in nursing in 1966 and had stayed at that hospital, the Faulkner, to train as an OR nurse. To the army, I had a critical MOS (military occupational specialty). OR nurses and nurse anesthetists were premium catches for the front. You can't do an operation without an RN to keep track of sponges and equipment and assist the anesthetist. Thus the great number of nurses in Vietnam were like me — OR and critical-care nurses.

I called the army to voice my interest. And I was courted, signed, sealed, and delivered to Vietnam six weeks after signing on the dotted line.

The Setting

The valley was beautiful. The mountains loomed in the distance. The Twenty-Second Surgical Hospital (Twenty-Second Surg.) was nestled in the country among the villages. Rainbows were prevalent; we enjoyed one almost every night. Going out to see the rainbows was a gift. People had peace symbols on their helmets, and one night in the dark, Mary (a hippie-type nurse) painted the new wooden mess hall with love flowers. Everywhere there were posters that read, "War is harmful for flowers and other living things."

Yet there we were, young patriots answering the call to fight the spread of Communism. The inconsistency, the lack of validation was with us even in Vietnam, which we referred to as "in country." We weren't sure about our purpose or our mission. The seed of doubt was within us, and when we returned to a nation hostile toward the war — forgotten and denied any glory for our efforts and the enormous loss of limbs and life — we were angry.

The entire country suffered from posttraumatic stress syndrome (PTSD). The United States was in denial about the war, and as a country responded with a horrendous drug and alcohol problem and a loss of spiritual values. I find it very sad, and I mourn a country that denies its soldiers, its aging parents, and thinks only of me, me, me.

Initial Shockwave ok with move

It was a war fought by babies. The average age of the men was nineteen. They were mostly black and Hispanic city kids and poor midwestern farm boys. I didn't operate on any lawyers or accountants or medical residents. This was a war of teenagers — poor lower-class men who gave their lives and their limbs. I'll never forget their eyes.

I wasn't prepared to work on POWs or to take incoming rounds. There had been no warning that I would operate on Charlie (nickname for a North Vietnamese soldier) or that the Red Cross on our hospital would not be respected by the Vietcong (VC). Six weeks of basic training at Fort Sam Houston, Texas, was not enough preparation for the enormity of the injuries, hours of work, and scope of responsibilities. There was no reprieve or escape. There were three OR nurses, and we worked twelve-hour days, six days a week — more when there was a push.

Hamburger Hill was an unrelenting bloodbath that resulted in numerous double and triple amputees. The moral dilemma of treating the soldiers or letting them slip away was one we faced every day. When a body is blown apart and you have to piece it back together, you ask yourself, "For what? So they can commit suicide later on? So their families can turn away in horror?" After a while, the ceaseless parade of trauma victims made me shut down and just operate. After a few months, I didn't look over the OR drapes to see the faces of the wounded soldiers. I concentrated on the operation at hand and depersonalized the surgery.

Even so, the anger at the devastation rose to fury, but as a nurse, I couldn't grab an M-16 and go out and kill a few "gooks." There was no respite for the horror that surrounded me every day. Today, I am surprised at the number of people who thought nurses carried guns. Maybe if we had struck back instead of shut down emotionally, we would have been better off.

Shakespeare says "to suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous fortune or to take up arms against a sea of troubles." I remember wanting to take an M-16 and open fire, to take revenge, to retaliate. I dealt with the effects of combat but was never able to strike back. It would have helped if I'd carried a gun, but that was not my role. I am a woman, a nurse, a caregiver, a lifesaver.

I stood covered with mud and blood, sweat and tears, serving my country in a war-torn jungle far away from home.

Vietnam Experience

Nam was a collection of people serving their own time, fighting their own war. Even in the hospital unit, we were all strangers to each other. We all came and went out of Nam at different times. Some were "short"; some were "cherry" (new). There was very little esprit de corps. The short-timers hung together, and the new in country fostered friendships among themselves.

The nurses had little to do with the donut dollies. We felt we worked harder than they did, and we were too tired at the end of the day to chitchat with them anyway. The enlisted men (EMs) stuck together, and the docs were the docs. They had been drafted and were unhappy to be there. The nurses were older than most of the EMs, better educated, and officers. The ratio of EMs to nurses was so high, the system forced the nurses to retreat to our hooches to avoid the huge numbers of men. Nam was different. Everyone was fighting his or her own personal war and focused on his or her own DEROS, which stood for "date eligible for return from overseas." There was no group consciousness.

Without a front line to fight on, the war took place in a series of base camps. Platoons fought for areas, gave them up, and tried to regain them for control at a later date, if necessary.

Enemy soldiers would be brought to our hospital half blown away. We would operate, and they would go to the holding ward guarded by the Army of the Republic of Vietnam (ARVN), the South Vietnamese Army. When we were hit, it was because we had a high-ranking Vietcong officer in our holding ward. I was neither prepared for nor able to cope with this manner of war. We were surrounded by chaos. The country was out of control. Enemy soldiers looked the same as ARVN troops. Women and babies — innocent victims — were caught in the crossfire in neighboring villages.

The worst memory I have of Phu Bai, where the hospital was located, is of the day we did a C-section on a mother who had been hit in a nearby village. We delivered the baby dead. He caught a frag between the eyes and was killed in utero. The memory burns, an indelible mark that may never be erased.

In-Country Experience

Phu Bai was all right — that is, if you liked mud in the rainy season and dust during the dry season.

Life for the nurses at Phu Bai was at best primitive. Our hooches were small, wooden structures divided into four rooms. You could hear every conversation in the adjoining room. We each had a screen door and one window and a cot to sleep in. We had no fans or air conditioners. We did have the only flush toilet on base — the "it" toilet. The showers were wooden, bug-invested spider havens. The bugs in Nam were big IAGREE TO WRITE OUT SOS. ALSO SAY IT WAS CREAMED HAMBURGER ON A WHITE SAUCE PUT ON A PIECE OF TOASTenough to throw a saddle on. The mess hall was a tent that served dried eggs and a variety of unpalatable slop. We dunked our tray in a rinse bath and soapy water on our way out of the mess hall.

Nam was dry and hot, 120–130°F half of the year. The sweat would just pour off me. The second half of the year, December to March, was wet due to the monsoons. It would rain for days, weeks, and months. I was always wet — with sweat, rain, or blood. For fourteen months I showered with bugs, slept on a cot, and dined on dried food.

Letters from home and care packages kept me going. Mom sent me brownies, a box of "Fishes," and a tape recording from all my brothers and sisters. I had a small reel-to-reel recorder, and I would listen to their voices and cry. Making a tape to send home was difficult. There was no good news to tell, and the sound of distant bombing would have scared my mother.

The Twenty-Second Surg. was on a plot of land no bigger than a football field. There was no place to go. You couldn't take a walk to the perimeter and back. The lack of space, both personal and community, was very restrictive. The living situation was ancestral. We ate, slept, worked, and partied together. There was no retreat. The only escape was internal: you had to block down and become a hermit in your hooch.

My Phu Bai experience encompassed a number of significant traumatic events. We were under threat of attack because the hospital was the furthest north on the evacuation chain. Hospitals were not considered sacrosanct by the enemy. We were a Surgical MUST (Medical Unit, Self-Contained and Transportable). We sat on the cusp of the Hu border, ten miles south of the DMZ. Our hospital consisted of five inflated Quonset hut–type wards and four boxlike operating rooms. We had a holding ward for wounded Vietnamese. The ARVN and US intelligence officials would interrogate them before sending them to the ARVN hospital to ensure that they were not VC. The hospital received four mortar attacks during my fourteen-month stay. I was horrified that we would be shelled because I thought we were protected by the Geneva Convention.

The Twenty-Second Surg.'s function was to save life and limb. We opened bellies, did temporary colostomies, and removed arms and legs. Every operation was so bloody, we had to work hours to hose down after surgery. Our patients only stayed two to three days, until they were medically stable enough to move to an evacuation hospital. As an OR nurse, I never saw the fruits or the consequences of our labors. The patients were medevaced out of the surgical hospital to the evacuation hospital in Chu Lai and then to Japan or Hawaii and eventually home. There was no closure to what I did in Nam, and there never has been. It seeps and pulsates like an open wound. And I wonder if I will ever meet the boys on whom we operated. Will I ever close the circle?

We never talked about our feelings or what happened that day in the OR. We went from a bloodbath to a beer bash. War was hell, and we were the "round eyes" invited to every function in I Corps. The marines, the Seabees, and the officers at the Twenty-Second Surg. were always having barbecues, and we were expected to go to those functions. Fuel barrels were split lengthwise and used as hibachis to grill the chicken. Beer and booze flowed like water, and the round eyes were sought after by every American GI, officer or EM, married or not. If you weren't an alcoholic already, being in country helped you on your way. It was a sure quick fix for forgetting the pain. We partied like there wouldn't be any tomorrow.

I was in a purely chaotic situation. Never before had I been sought after (I invited someone to my junior prom). Now, I was a movie star! I couldn't cope, and I was tired and ill prepared for the horror all around me. I needed someone to depend on and protect me. I found the chaplain's assistant a real doll. He had the midwestern twang and broad shoulders, and was a college graduate. So I did the obvious thing. I married him! In a war-torn country, I married an enlisted man. It helped me survive the chaos. Once I was Leo's wife, I had the love and respect and friendship of the EMs on the base. I was safe, protected, and totally lost in the love bubble. I could decompress with lovemaking after a hard day in surgery. After all, war was hell.

But there was no reprieve for the nurses. We were stuck working twelve-hour days, six days a week. There was no opportunity to rotate back to a field hospital. I was in country in Phu Bai for fourteen months, living on a plot of a base camp that was no bigger than a football field.

The confinement and the never-ending casualties were so draining that after a while the nurses shut down and remained isolated in their hooches, or they turned into party animals. The Freedom Bird (the plane that returned military personnel to the United States) seems faraway when you're new in country. When I was a newcomer, I involved myself in Med-Cap and visits to the orphanage in Hu. In a way, that was a little escape into normalcy.

One of the nurses had a sewing machine,. and we would sew, and she would sing peace songs on her guitar. No men were allowed. It was girls' night out. Inside the Fort Chastity nurses' barracks, we tried to keep fragments of what and who were intact and alive. Mary played her guitar, Sue sang peace songs, and I learned to play the harmonica ... somewhat. And I strung up a clothesline in my hooch and hung up new words and their meanings. I memorized Shakespeare, Thoreau, and Frost when I wasn't saving lives. I formed a running team; we would jog to the perimeter and back each day, round the barrels of burning human feces, build up a sweat, and head back to our own hideaway, Fort Chastity, Phu Bai, Vietnam.

One of the problems of being in Nam is that, mentally, we were never there. We never discussed our day in surgery. We talked about what we did "back in the world" and what we would do when we got out of hell. But we never talked about the present, the now, Nam. Mentally we were home before we left the airport in Da Nang. The denial was like Great Wall of China wall — thick, tall, and never-ending.

To reinforce this, our chief nurse put us on the "invite circuit." We were expected to accompany her up the road to the officers' club at the marine post. As "her girls," we would get all dolled up in our civvies, pack into a jeep, and head up to a strange club, where we were courted by officers we didn't know. They probably had wives and five kids each at home, but for the evening they were all miraculously single. I truly hated those functions — the shame and the deceit. I had dried blood under my fingernails after a busy day in the OR, and yet I was expected to function as a lady and an officer with a bunch of loved-starved strange men.

I don't want to sound like an angry Vietnam vet. It was one of life's intense experiences, and some good comes from every phase, every partaking. What I learned from my Vietnam experience is the value and price of peace. I never take my freedom for granted. Green grass, blue skies, distant clouds, and Big Macs — I cherish them all.

I grew up that year. The experience was invaluable, something to tell my grandchildren. I am different from having served, a little bit more spiritual, a little bit more thankful.

(Continues...)

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Excerpted from Fort Chastity, Vietnam, 1969 by Bernadette J. Harrod. Copyright © 2015 Bernadette J. Harrod, RN. Excerpted by permission of iUniverse.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
Excerpts are provided by Dial-A-Book Inc. solely for the personal use of visitors to this web site.

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Table of Contents

Contents

A Note to the Reader, ix,
Introduction, xi,
Opening, 1,
Why Did I Go?, 2,
The Setting, 3,
Initial Shockwave ok with move, 4,
Vietnam Experience, 6,
In-Country Experience, 7,
I Wonder, 12,
Lies My Country Told Me, 14,
Common Misconceptions, 15,
Coming Home, 17,
We Are Not Invisible, 18,
Being A Woman In Vietam-1969, 19,
Post Traumatic Stress Syndrome, 21,
Closing the Circle, 23,
PTSD or Not, 26,
Post Vietnam, 28,
Something Good Can Come from Any of Life's Experiences, 29,
Reactions to the Conference: A New Beginning, 30,
How Vietnam Changed Me, 32,
Healing, 34,
The Aftermath, 35,
Endings, 36,
Favorite Things, 37,
Categories of Injured on Helicopters, 40,
Letters Home, 41,
Poems, 80,
Army Hospitals in Vietnam, 99,
Navy/Marine Corps Hospitals in Vietnam, 101,
Air Force Hospitals in Vietnam, 102,
Issues and Concerns of Female Vietnam Veterans, 103,
Appendices, 105,
A. Letters of Support, 108,
B. The Statue, 111,
C. Forming Support Groups for Female Veterans, 120,
Glossary, 123,
Afterword, 129,