The first shot of the "China Beach" pilot finds nurse Colleen McMurphy (Dana Delany) sitting on a beach alone with a book. Suddenly, the whir of a helicopter blade splits the silence, cutting through her carefully contrived tranquility. McMurphy's integrity and her loneliness are already established. Throughout the "China Beach" series, whether we see her caring for dying patients or getting into a fistfight with the camp prostitute, we know that where she would prefer to be is on the beach with her book.

"China Beach" landed on TV screens in 1988, just two years after Oliver Stone's film "Platoon" had established a realistic framework for dramatizing the Vietnam War. Although "China Beach" was canceled in 1991, it has been brought back to life on The History Channel. (Check historychannel.com for programming schedule.)

The television show added the soundtrack of the 1960s (songs by the Supremes, the Troggs, etc.) and gallows humor to the more familiar re-created war footage. The show was occasionally playful, such as when Pvt. Samuel Beckett, played by Michael Boatman, talks to his charges in the morgue. But it also was unsparing when it came to depicting death, whether it was its portrayal of Vietnamese fighters in mass graves or the death of a popular character.

In the first episode, McMurphy explains the role of the nurse when she's arguing with a doctor: "I'm the last one they see before they die; I'm the one who's holding their hand."

McMurphy constantly refers to herself as "one of the guys" and does a lot of drinking to cope with tragedy. But she also puts herself in harm's way. In one episode, she performs an intervention to save K.C. Koloski (played by Marg Helgenberger) from heroin addition.

The other characters have their own way of dealing with tragedy in a place where everybody has lost their moral compass. One is a hostess, a self-described "Doughnut Dolly" named Cherry White (Nan Woods). She is an innocent when she arrives, hoping to find her brother who is missing in action. By the end of the first year, she has been killed herself. Another visitor is Laurette Barber (Chloe Webb), a backup USO singer who comes to camp expecting to meet a lot of men and instead attends to those who are dying.

But the show doesn't leave out the men. Not only is there Beckett, but also Sgt. Evan "Dodger" Winslow (played by Jeff Kober), a soldier of few words save for some choice ones: "We're already dead," he says during the Tet Offensive. "We were dead when we got off the plane."

Then there's physician Dick Richard (played by Robert Picardo), a choleric surgeon and pragmatist who appeals to McMurphy to stay at the hospital (she is supposed to go home after the first episode). Eventually, she decides he is right and that the hospital is indeed her home.