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"‘I never got a chance to be a girl,’ Kate O’Hare Palmer lamented, thirty-four years after her tour as an army nurse in Vietnam. Although proud of having served, she felt that the war she never understood had robbed her of her innocence and forced her to grow up too quickly. As depicted in a photograph taken late in her tour, long hours in the operating room exhausted her both physically and mentally. Her tired eyes and gaunt face reflected th e weariness she felt after treating countless patients, some dying, some maimed, all, like her, forever changed. Still, she learned to work harder and faster than she thought she could, to trust her nursing skills, and to live independently. She developed a way to balance the dangers and benefits of being a woman in the army and in the war. Only fourteen months long, her tour in Vietnam profoundly affected her life and her beliefs."

Such vivid personal accounts abound in historian Kara Dixon Vuic’s compelling look at the experiences of army nurses in the Vietnam War. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, Vuic allows the nurses to tell their own captivating stories, from their reasons for joining the military to the physical and emotional demands of a horrific war and postwar debates about how to commemorate their service.

Vuic also explores the gender issues that arose when a male-dominated army actively recruited and employed the services of 5,000 nurses in the midst of a growing feminist movement and a changing nursing profession. Women drawn to the army’s patriotic promise faced disturbing realities in the virtually all-male hospitals of South Vietnam. Men who joined the nurse corps ran headlong into the armys belief that women should nurse and men should fight.

Officer, Nurse, Woman brings to light the nearly forgotten contributions of brave nurses who risked their lives to bring medical care to soldiers during a terrible—and divisive—war.

• File Size: 3245 KB
• Print Length: 304 pages
• Publisher: Johns Hopkins University Press; 1 edition (December 15, 2009)
• Sold by: Amazon Digital Services, Inc.
• Language: English
• ASIN: B0037W676E
• Text-to-Speech: Enabled
• X-Ray:
  Not Enabled
• Lending: Not Enabled
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #876,671 Paid in Kindle Store (See Top 100 Paid in Kindle Store)

This is a truly remarkable and groundbreaking book, one that will be of interest to anyone with even a passing curiosity in either military, social, or womens history. Professor Vuics careful and thoroughly researched analysis promises to be the benchmark to which all studies of women and the Vietnam War will be compared to for many years to come.

There are a number of ways that make Professor Vuics such a very important work. For one, she has examined an issue that has been neglected for far too long. Over forty years after the Womens Movement of the 1960s, there remains far too little scholarship on the role of women during wartime. It is about time that a writer and scholar with Professor Vuics knowledge and expertise examine the role of gender during the nations longest war. As Diana Carlson Evans had asked the Senate in 1988, "Who decides who America will remember?"

Another factor that makes this book a must read is Professor Vuics unique approach to her topic. Drawing on more than 100 interviews, Professor Vuic gives the reader a personal account of how women impacted the war, and vice-versa. And the stories that she relates are incredibly moving and touching. Professor Vuics study gives the reader such a wide variety of vivid and memorable recollections concerning the role of women nurses in the Vietnam War. In a war that is often reduced to statistics, Professor Vuic has provided a very human face.

Professor Vuics fascinating text is also quite timely. It is indeed quite remarkable how, thirty-five years after the end of the war, the Vietnam War remains an essential part of the American psyche.