It was an interesting story. I've read more than one account of nurses in combat areas and one thing they all said is that it was the high point of their entire nursing careers.
Generally they didn't get into the $hit. Instead they cleaned the aftermath as best they could. They learned to listen to the world around them. One helicopter making a delivery was routine. They hoped and prayed it was a single Whiskey (wounded) with a small wound.
What scared the hell out of them was when there was a number of choppers incoming. That meant that 'Their boys' had gotten chewed up. They jumped out of their racks praying as the put on their steel pots and went to work. Most of then didn't need to be told what to do.
I read where they had a large influx of casualties and a doctor told them to open an 'overflow ward'. A nurse replied, "It's already open. Julie and Tom went straight to it when they heard the 4th chopper."
What was interesting is that they adored the medics that were there assisting them.
It's one of those rare situations where you can take the homeliest woman in town, put her in a rumpled set of jungle fatigues, deprive her of sleep for a couple of day and when some torn up GI sees her starting an IV on him she becomes the most beautiful woman in the world.
About 9000 nurses served in Vietnam, most of them were recruited straight out of nursing school. What a way to start a career in medicine!
After they returned home they generally kept their service quiet as the war was unpopular and they went their own ways. Some returned to the area of expertise they were trained in only to find they were bored so they headed off to the ER where their skills proved very useful.
A couple reported getting into hot water with the hospitals for performing procedures they had routinely performed in Vietnam but were not permitted to perform stateside for liability reasons.
Some took their GI bill and went back to school and became PAs and MDs.
Most of them returned and simply found work and quietly made lives for themselves.
Any nurse that serves in a combat area has a LOT to be proud of.
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One of my favorite WW2 stories was the school sweethearts the got separated because her parents move. They lost touch.
A few years later a nurse was evacuating a wounded GI from one of the Pacific islands and she found him wounded on the airplane they were evacuating him on.
"You're not going to get away from me this time," she said.
Shortly after they were married and stayed married until death.
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