All the work by Luke Davis (Thats what you get for not putting in your name)

From 1964 to 1972, 210 Australia women travelled to Vietnam to aid civlians and soliders as nurses.

Nursing during the vietnam war were the perfect opportunity for women to be involved in the war.

The ANC or the Army Nurse Corps began thier working April 1956, when three army nurses arrives in Saigon in Vietnam. These nurses were part of the Untied States Army Medical Training Team and the MAAG in Saigon. The Army sent them to train in the southern Vietnam.

The expansion of the war in the Republic of Vietnam placed greater burdens on the Army Nurse Corps. Over 11 years from March, 1962  to March,1973 more than 5,000 Army nurses served in America’s longest war. The buildup in Vietnam taxed the Corps. Army nurses had to provide full peacetime nursing services in the continental United States and Europe yet simultaneously meet the far different requirements of combat forces fighting in Southeast Asia. In January, 1965 the Army had 113 hospital beds and 15 nurses in Vietnam. The buildup of medical units was completed in 1968 and included 11 Reserve and National Guard medical units. By December 1968, 900 nurses in Vietnam worked in 23 Army hospitals, and one convalescent center with a total of 5,283 beds.

Married couples were willing to separate to service the countries needs. Some women were pregnant and stayed on as long as possible. 

Nurses became felxible and dedicated to the service, nursing consumed their lives they cared that much some may say their sacrifice was close to the soldiers.

Army nurses became involve because they felt it was their patriotic duty others were in search of an adventure. One nurse veteran remarked: “We aren’t angels, We are simply members of the nursing profession who have seen the need in Vietnam and are here to do our part.”

Another said: “I wanted to be an army nurse and combat is where the soldier is. That’s where I wanted to be.” And a third: “My reason for going was that there were American troops there that needed help. They needed the things that I could give them in my nursing profession.”

Many nurses felt guilty when thier husbands or men in thier lives wen to war they felt as though they were not contributing to the war efforts and thier men. So nursing was definately a good option for women to show their nationlism in a positive way.

U.S. Army Centre of Military History, 2001

 Edited by Luke Davis and Andrew Lee (mostly Luke Davis)