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Gus Kappler MD FACS
a book bubble about
Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally
Biographies & Memoirs
Author Insight
#5) Nurses
We fully trained thirty-something doctors were Majors and supposedly the masters of our universe. However, the young nurses in the ICU/Recovery Room and on the Medical Wards ran the show. The great majority were in their early twenties, recently graduated from nursing school, and had volunteered for Vietnam. They received six months of Army medical training before deployment. They were the same age as the wounded. These women witnessed the gruesome physical wounds, emotional shock of realizing that arms or legs were forever missing, and the acceptance by some that death was imminent. They quickly surmised the expertise of the physicians. When deemed competent, a nurse anointed the candidate with a chain of "love beads." Nurses were the expert conduit of information regarding a patient's medical and surgical welfare. When we were criticized or informed, we listened and responded. Rank and titles did not apply. Physicians, nurses, and corpsmen were on a first-name basis. There was mutual respect. We recognized the contributions of all involved were of equal importance. A few nurses were married to chopper pilots and lived with them on the 85th compound. The men would leave in the morning to go to work (killing the enemy) and return in the evening for dinner and a night at the Officer's Club. That was crazy!
Book Excerpt
Welcome Home From Vietnam, Finally
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.
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