From 1955 to 1975, approximately 11,000 women were stationed in Vietnam, with roughly 90 percent working as nurses. Many of these women had just graduated nursing school when they were stationed. The average work week for a Vietnam War nurse included working 12-hour days for 6 days a week. With the Vietnam War being the first major conflict to use helicopters to transport wounded soldiers to hospitals, many nurses saw patients, that in any other war would have died on the battlefield before receiving treatment. Therefore, these nurses were forced to quickly decide which patients were first to receive treatment.
Most of these nurses were only 21 years old and had only been out of nursing school for 6 months, like Cheryl (Thurber) Feala. Cheryl attended Saint Elizabeth’s School of Nursing in Lincoln, Nebraska and volunteered to serve in the Army to pay for her final year of school. She served at the 27th Surgical Hospital on Chu Lai Air Base. Over 800 kilometers south of Chu Lai, another Nebraskan, Marie Daake Menke, served at 36th Evacuation Hospital in Vung Tau, Vietnam. While stationed at the 36th, Marie roomed with Diane Carlson Evans from Minnesota, who later founded and erected the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C.
Other nurses who served in the Army during the Vietnam conflict, but not in Vietnam, include Judy Knopp and Rose Weddell from Lincoln. While stationed overseas at Camp Zama, Japan, Judy treated the wounded transported by helicopter in from Vietnam. She shared how busy a day at the hospital was in 1968, the year of the Tet Offensive, “We’d have 30 to 40 evacs a day … 20 to 30 surgeries a day, just on my ward.” Meanwhile, Rose wanted to serve with the Army Nurse Corps, but never had the chance to step foot in Vietnam. Instead Rose served her country by recruiting more nurses for the frontline in San Francisco.