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Vietnam |
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By
Chris Schreiber The unpopularity of the Vietnam War, marked by protests and demonstrations at home, did little to disrupt the escalating involvement of nurses who volunteered to serve "in country." The first nurse volunteered for duty in Vietnam in 1963. Ten years later, about 8,000 nurses had enlisted for duty in Vietnam. The number of nurses who served in Vietnam proved once again that women could be relied upon to enlist. As in previous wars, almost all the nurses in the Army and Navy Nurse Corps-supplemented after World War II by an Air Force Nurse Corps-were women. With the conflict in Vietnam, nurses crept closer to the front lines than ever before. Vietnam provided a new and more dangerous experience for nurses because combat zones were poorly defined and hospitals were often at risk. Despite their proximity to combat areas, military nurses continued to receive little specialized training. "One
of the few patients I remember was a young GI who got hit by a land
mine and had a traumatic above-the-knee amputation of his right leg,"
writes 2nd Lt. Anna Marie Rutallie, an Army Nurse Corps nurse, on her
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