Officer, Nurse, Woman: Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War

Kara Dixon Vuic, an Assistant Professor of History at Bridgewater College discovered her interest for gender issues and the intersection of the second wave movement and the Vietnam War back in her undergrad days. It started with her senior theses, then a grad school dissertation and now a novel titled, Officer, Nurse, Woman: Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War. JMU had the pleasure Wednesday, April 28^th in Miller 1101 to get educated on the subject by Vuic herself.

So often we take a look the history of men, tonight we not only got to learn about women in the war, but we also got to take a look at how women were making a breakthrough during the second wave feminist movement, though many of these women refused to identify with it. 5,000 women were nurses in the Vietnam War that sparked a new idea of what being a nurse meant. No longer were these women were forced to wear white and identify as domestics. The United States had difficulty recruiting nurses being that this was during a feminist movement, so they changed the way they reached women. Ads started focusing on nursing as a profession based on skills and training rather than just woman’s work. Prior to this ads used propaganda as if women would meet a man to marry if they became a nurse, now they were reaching women by focusing on what they could do rather than just what they would “gain”. During the sixties women’s only options were being a teacher, secretary, or nurse. Many of these women had only six months between nursing school and going to Vietnam. Army nursing opened up new options from their limitations in the work force. This was a non-traditional way for women to join the workforce and do something besides just getting married and having babies. Another reason for joining was the guilt women felt for men having to deal with becoming soldiers and women didn’t.

Wartime nursing was very different from citizen nursing. In the U.S, women were subservient at their jobs whereas many women ran the hospitals they worked in, in Vietnam. One of the biggest achievements was Anna Mae Hay’s being the first woman promoted to a general officer rank. However, not only was she kissed rather than saluted by William Westmoreland who gave her the promotion, but she was ridiculed and criticized based on her hair, clothing, and domesticity, things that have nothing to do with her job as a general officer. I also asked about reports of rape of army nurse women, and not surprisingly there was only one reported because of the fear of shame, guilt, retaliation or a bad reputation. That one case was dealt with by putting the man and woman in a room and asking them to work it out. Unfortunately, this is still something military women and nurses face all the time. Most of the women Vuic interviewed said they felt more endangered by American men than the Vietnamese. The women were also asked to bring a party dress with them to Vietnam to go sit at the Generals office for good eye candy purposes. The women also said on breaks if you didn’t go to the officers room you were coined as a lesbian or having an affair with a doctor, but if you did go there was no room for peace and quiet because the women were constantly gawked at and asked out.

Basically we can see how that gender roles played into army nursing in the sixties and how the second wave movement affected the military. We have come a long way sense the sixties, but many of these issues are still dealt with today. Women might not be asked to wear party dresses, but rape rates are steadily increasing.

I was very honored to get this experience at JMU. It was something very different from my normal events, especially considering the history department hosted it, but I learned so much. We often forget how women got where they are today. We have to remind ourselves to give thanks to those who paved the way and struggled to change the gender restrictions, expectations, and limitations for us. So from all of us women, thanks ladies!

~Freida Frye~