We really saw the worst of it, because the nurses never saw any of the victories. If the Army took a hill, we saw what was left over. I remember one boy who was brought in missing two legs and an arm, and his eyes were bandaged. A general came in later and pinned a Purple Heart on the boy’s hospital gown, and the horror of it all was so amazing that it just took my breath away. You thought, was this supposed to be an even trade? These soldiers were dying for nothing; the politicians back home were throwing their lives away. But they didn’t know them. The nurses knew them all.
One of the hardest things was that we weren’t allowed to feel proud. There’s one soldier who haunted me for years. He was very sick with an infection, so I read him a letter his mother had written to him. She was a farm lady from Kansas, and she was telling him about home. At the very end she said, “We’re so proud of you, son.” I was glad she’d said it, because for a long time hardly anybody did. Three days later he died. When I was getting ready to go Stateside–after six months in Saigon and six months in Pleiku–some nurses who were just coming over told me to be sure to go to the ladies’ room and change as soon as I got back. Nobody wanted to be reminded, and they didn’t want to talk to you about your experience. They hardly knew how.
