Gus (with “love beads”), Duane, Mike, and Bob (corpsman in the background) at Dave’s send-off
NURSES
The army nurses were female and male. Both were exceptionally qualified and dedicated. There were fewer men; true army professionals and usually ordered to serve in Vietnam.
The women, referred to as round eyes, were mostly first lieutenants who all had volunteered to be there. They mostly were just out of nursing school and in their very early twenties as were the wounded and ill for which they cared. They also were true professionals who essentially acted as “house staff”, i.e., surgical residents in training. When they called with their evaluations of a patient’s status, we listened carefully and followed their suggestions. One such patient had been shot through and through the right chest by an AK-47. Stateside, draining the blood and air with a chest tube was usually sufficient treatment for the typical low velocity gun shot wound, i.e., GSW. That experience dictated my initial approach. In the ICU, the blood and air continued to drain, and I was notified. Without hesitation, accepting the nurse’s judgment, I asked to have the OR set up for surgery and quickly reviewed the anatomy of a lung’s major blood vessels as I mentally prepared myself to accept the responsibility of removing the damaged upper lobe of the right lung of this eighteen-year-old kid.
AK-47 round through the right lung (white area); normal lungs are black on x-ray. The young patient with open wound
All went well, and from that time on, all high-velocity wounds of the chest went straight to the operating room.
Of note, eight women nurses did not return home from Vietnam and are on the “Wall”, officially called the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC. A riveting bronze statue near the “Wall” and the grunt’s statue also honors all in-country nurses. Fifty-nine non-military women died in Vietnam. They were volunteers, Red Cross, and aid workers.
There are also twenty-one docs on the “Wall.”
Some of the nurses were married to army chopper pilots, and they lived as couples in the nurse’s hooch area. The aviators would leave in the morning, engage in combat and return home, in the evening. There were some wild tales in the Officer’s Club after-hours.
Patti at work and at her wedding
Patti, one of the OR supervising nurses met, dated, and married John, a scout pilot. A day before their wedding, his commanding officer, who was to walk Patti down the aisle, died in our OR from his combat wounds. The wedding was not postponed.
When Patti was dating John, she spent her free time at Camp Eagle where he was stationed. In February 1971, while waiting for his return from a mission, she joined in a running Kool-Aid squirt gun fight among the pilots and crewmen. In January 2014, Lt. John Smith contacted our 85th Evac group pursuing information about his brother who was killed with others returning from a rescue mission when his chopper went down near the 85th Evac. His brother had surely taken part in the Kool-Aid episode. As Patti said in her email to Lieutenant Smith, “I remember how much fun we had that day and the beautiful smiles and laughter. It was hard to think that they were all gone now.”
Read To Have and to Holdby John-Michael Hendrix, Patti’s husband.
MEDIVAC
Our call sign was Plasma Hotel. As the medivac Huey approached, they would hide the M60 machine gun and send a transmission reflecting the number and seriousness of their precious cargo. The enemy used the Red Cross for target practice. No chopper was safe when within range of the enemy. The official interpretation of the Geneva Conventions was that the medivac Hueys could not be armed. Nonsense! They carried an M60 machine gun swung from bungee cords for protection, but once over friendly terrain, the weapon was detached.
The initial transmission was the number of KIA, i.e., killed in action. The dead were taken straight to and stacked, one on top of the other, in the KIA open-sided shack. One of Marilyn’s first priorities as the new ED supervisor was to enclose the KIA shack. We, however, always checked for signs of life since a few were not actually dead and perhaps could be saved. A gauge of the seriousness of the injuries aboard the Huey was reflected on how close the pilot landed to the ED doors.
Usually, the injured soldiers arrived in groups. Mass causalities involved many patients. Triagewas performed in order to begin organizing efficient use of resources, personnel, operating rooms, blood, meds, etc.
Please refer to Appendix Five and meet my friend Bob Nevins, founder and director of Saratoga WarHorse, who as an Eagle “Dust Off” pilot with the 326th Medical Battalion of the 101st Airborne Division heroically rescued the wounded and deposited them at the 85th Evac’s doorstep during my tenure at the hospital.
Marilyn
Ambulance, bunker for patients’ ammo, and KIA Shack
KIAsneeded no care.
Expectantswere so damaged, so close to death, and required an inordinate amount of resources ultimately endangering the chances of survival of others. Therefore, they were placed behind a screen, given morphine, and allowed to die with dignity as a nurse held their hand and promised them they would be OK. One expectant, I still recall, was a dying dehydrated, unintelligibly moaning boy whose skull on one side was missing and displayed slithering maggots nibbling on his devitalized brain tissue.
The salvageablewere brought to the OR after resuscitation was initiated in the ED or laterally evacuated to other hospitals, as the 95th Evac in Da Nang, which had medical specialists we did not.
The last triage groupwere those whose injuries did not require immediate definitive care. They were operated upon when the ORs cleared of current patients with life-threatening injuries.
All quiet in the ED
ED
As related previously, day or night, there was never a shortage of dedicated helping hands in the ED. Our pharmacist, Wes was a constant. Marilyn and Sergeant Ken ran a tight ED ship. The airway and chest integrity were always checked. Oxygen was given. Blankets were used for warmth. Multiple intravenous, i.e., IV routes, were established by cut down, incising the skin to find a vein and using large caliber IV tubing to administer blood and fluids as rapidly as possible. A needle was passed blindly through the skin of the chest wall under the collarbone into the subclavian vein i.e., a large vein that carries blood from the arm into the chest.
Multiple fragment wounds (MFW) of the legs, abdomen, and chest; subclavian catheter inserted on the right
A catheter followed this puncture through the needle to also administer blood and fluids and to check on the patient’s blood volume and heart function (on patient’s right side). A tube was placed in the urinary bladder to measure urine production, a gauge of the effectiveness of the patient’s restored circulation.
The ever-present corpsmen shepherded the wounded in the ED and scrubbed in at surgery to assist in operating and in organizing the instruments.