My Southern Discomfort protagonist, Maria Esposito, served as an Army nurse in ‘nam. That lead me to include HOME BEFORE MORNING: The True Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Lynda Van Devanter in my research.
Van Devanter’s autobiography tells how she and her best friend went from nurse to Army nurse in a burst of idealism (if our boys were fighting for freedom, shouldn’t they help?), only to enter a harrowing world of desperate surgeries and triage, random enemy attacks and sudden death, which they survive with the help of love affairs, booze and pot (when the book came out in the early 1980s the portrayakl of medical staff working under the influence outraged some people). When “Van” returns after a year in ‘nam, she’s stuck with PTSD, an intensely anti-war stance (joining Vietnam Veterans Against the War), a vanished best friend (she never learns what happened to her) and a country that doesn’t quite grasp women can be veterans too. Very good in its own right, this was a major inspiration for the China Beach TV series.
AMERICAN DAUGHTER GONE TO WAR: On the Front Lines With an Army Nurse in Vietnam by Winnie Smith is also a well-executed memoir. It’s interesting to compare the personal lives of the two women which shows Vietnam nurses, like almost any group, aren’t a monolith. Smith has a much tidier life, with fewer affairs and no drugs stronger than booze and tobacco until after she returned home. She’s also much angrier than van Devanter, resenting rear-echelon officers and pampered USO stars while in the service, then the trivial problems of the patients she was dealing with in the states. Smith initially resented Van Devanter’s book too — all that whining, why couldn’t she suck it up like Smith had? — but came to realize the war had scarred her too.
After reading them I made a deliberate decision not to have Maria PTSDed from the war. Not everyone does and I don’t think I could write it well if I tried. As I’ve not written anything disrespectful of the people who do deal with PTSD, I think that should be okay.
