Nurses In Vietnam War Essay

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The stereotype of nurses in Vietnam War is a young woman in a white uniform with a small cap that matched. However, according to West there were both male and female nurses serving in the Vietnam War (West 1). Women nurses still outnumbered the male nurses. Most of these young women were already married at the time of enlisting into the army and choose to leave their loving families to serve for the greater good. They desperately missed home, wishing to be back in the arms of their loved ones and in the comfort of their own beds at night where they could get a full night’s sleep. Vietnam was a foreign big lonely place for many of these new nurses. The sites that they saw on a daily basis made them long for a loving embrace. According to Carol Lynn Mithers despite being married, these women started to look for this loving embrace in other methods than just a letter back home (Mithers p 77). Not only was there loneliness, but there was also the hardship of staying positive for the wounded soldiers. According to Diana Dawn Poole, “One of my rules was that nurses were not allowed to cry. The wounded and dying men in our care need our strength, I told them. We couldn’t indulge in the luxury of …show more content…

For instance, according to Mithers many of the women started smoking, drinking heavily and having affairs to wash away their loneliness of being overseas (Mithers 77). These women thought it would make them feel better about enduring this horrible nightmare that they were living if they were being held by someone that was just as lonely. Not worrying if it was right or wrong at the moment, but just wanting to feel loved in the moment of the war. Even if that meant feeling pain once those love affairs were over. Who could honestly blame them for wanting to feel loved when all they saw was death and carnage while working in these