Women+in+Vietnam+War+2

 =Women Getting into the Vietnam War= ==When the government decided to take women into the nursing corps for the war, they decided that women who applied had to be plain and considerably older than the soldiers they would treat, so that there would be no scandelous behavior between the nurses and the patients. Also women had to have at least one character reference from a pastor or priest to prove that they were of the highest moral caliber. When the American troops were sent to Vietnam, armed forces recruiters visited nursing schools seeking volunteers for the army, navy, and air force nursing corps. And any nurse who agreed to serve for three years after receiving their license were given a monthly payment that would cover living expenses and tuition. This was often a very appealing benefit to women from poor families because women thought it was hard to pay for tuition while going to school. About seven thousand women served in the war as nurses. Many of theses women were in the army and they worked in one of the ten surgical facilities, ten field hospitals, or eleven evacuation centers, which were sites in which seriously wounded soldiers were sent to other hospitals in Asia or America to be treated.==



=Being in Vietnam and Caring for the Wounded= ==Although many women were caring for the wounded, they did face the same hardships as the men did. The women trucked through the same mud and blood as the men did, they saw the same horrors of war, and they even suffered the same cruel treatment as men did when they returned to the United States. But this stuff didn't matter to the women, they were just focused on saving as many lives as they could. Since there were many medical facilities and there were more than enough helicopters, just about all the soldiers were ten minutes away or less from medical help. This made saving the lives of the soldiers a lot easier. This also meant that more of the wounded soldiers would survive that they didn't in other wars. But many of the fresh, just out of college nurses were not prepared to see the horrors that they saw in Vietnam. One nurse, Ruth Sidisin, said that not even earthquake victims could compare to what she saw in just a single day in Vietnam. She saw stomach wounds, amputations, head injuries, burns, but the worst part wasn't this, it was the infections and other complications that the soldiers had on top of their wounds. And most of the soldiers had diseases when they came to the hospitals such as Dengue Fever, Hepatitis, Malaria, and the Bubonic Plague which were diseases that a person got once in a blue moon. But caring for the wounded was the easy part for the nurses. The hard part was working the thirty hour shifts during emergenicies or extreme events, such as the Tet Offensive before having exhaustion overtake their bodies. Note that a normal shift for a nurse in the Vietnam War was 12 hours.==

media type="youtube" key="dKSmCQyrOAM" height="344" width="425" =Hospitals Being a Big Target= ==In a guerrilla war during the Vietnam War, hospitals were always a very susceptible target. If a hospital was hit the nurses gave their patients the best protection they knew how and could give to them. Once a hospital was hit, the nurses gave their patients helmets to wear, they would place them under their beds if they could be moved and if they couldn't be moved, they would put a mattress on top of them to protect them. If and when the electricity would go out in the hospital the nurses would run the back up generators to keep respirators and important lifesaving equipment running in order to the patients alive and comfortable. They also would walk around with flashlights checking on the patients to make sure they were ok. The biggest job for the nurses when the hospital was hit was trying to calm the soldiers, who yelled out for a weapon to fight back during these attacks. During a guerrilla war, the attacks on the hospitals killed patients, doctors, nurses, and medics. Anyone who was in the building at the time of any attack could possibly be killed or seriously injured. Army Lieutenant Sharon Lane, who was 25 years old at the time, was about to awaken her patients in the hospital on June 8th,1969 at 5:55 am, when the hospital was attacked by the Viet Cong. When a rocket exploded near Sharon she was instantly killed. Army Lieutenant Sharon Lane was the first woman to ever die as a result of an enemy attack.==

=Air Force and Naval Nurse= ==Air Force and Naval nurses also played a very key role in the Vietnam War just like combat nurses did. Air Force nurses had two very important jobs in the war. Their first job was they had to stabilize patients for their flight or treat them during their flights to Japan, the Philippines, or the United States for their specialized medical care. Their second job was they had to keep an eye on all of the patients during the whole flight becaus the changing air pressure could make the oxygen in the bloodstream expand which could lead to new wounds rupturing. They also had to keep all their equipment in place and functioning during all the plane's take-offs and landings. Naval nurses served aboard hospital ships. They were expected to be on duty for thirty days at a time. But there were many times that naval nurses would work for more than one hundred days because there were so many injured sailors to care for. I believe that the naval nurses had the hardest job because they had to give medications to patients when the ship would be tossed in a typoon and had to hold down all of the equipment when a big wave or storm came. Although nurses work was herendous and demanding, they all said that their time in Vietnam was the most challenging and satisfying year of their career.==