Nurses
I listened to the interview of Rhonda Marie Knox Prescott. She had a lot of similarities to the other two women I listened to and also the ones we heard in class. Prescott, like the others was interested in the medical field before she joined the Army. She became a captain in the Army Nurse Corps and spent her first year in the service in nursing school. I was surprised to yet again by this women’s bravery. Many people tried desperately to avoid service in Vietnam but this woman sent a request for service every chance she got.
I was surprised that they did so much brain surgery. Surgery in itself is risky but when you’re messing with the brain, I can imagine it has to get nerve racking. Her bravery extended further, as she wished to become a field nurse. This was where the casualties were the “freshest,” in her words.
November 29th, 2007 at 10:45 am
Becoming a field nurse takes a lot of courage because you are serving in the middle of the conflict and, like she said, the casualties were the ‘freshest’ and most disturbing. Although she didn’t serve in a combat position, I think she still felt the effects of war quite strong.
November 29th, 2007 at 9:51 pm
I was talking with professor Stanton (in the Historic Preservation department) about a series of interviews his students did this semester with veterans (seems like a perfect fit for your two classes to meet up). He talked about how much actual action Vietnam Nurses saw given the fact that it was one of the first wars where the did in fact do extensive surgery on wounded soldiers, even if there were only slim hopes of survival.
Seems like the nurses of the Vietnam War may have witnessed some of the most horrific scenes in the hospitals given the lack of any kind of triage. If this audio is available, I would love to get a link to it.
Are you listening to oral histories on the Library of Congress site? Professor Stanton’s class submitted their interviews to the Library of Congress along with a transcript. All of you are making the wealth of material available about this topic so much more freely available. Great stuff.