Women in Vietnam - Research Paper Example

Women in Vietnam The Vietnam war is one of the most remembered and acclaimed events in world history. The war was a battle that lasted well over 20 years from the end of 1955 to 1975. The war was not like the other previous wars such as the world war because it had less tension. This reason makes historians refer to the war as a cold war. The war took place in Cambodia and involved attacks and raids on rival groups. The rival groups in this case were the Americans and the people of South Vietnam. The war had search and destroy operations that served to show the amount of power that each group had over the other. The United States had its theory on the war as it saw it as a way of preventing the spread of communism to the west, as it preferred using the capitalism policy. The war thus had an important figure to the fighters as each tried supporting their policies. In the war, there were women that served to assist the actual fighters who were mostly men (Gunusky 37). Women were very influential in the development of the war. This is because they were there to offer their support which if lacking, the fighters on each side could not have fought as effectively as they did. The women were the soldier’s wives, sisters and even mothers taken up by the military at that time to act as soldiers of war. They got training for all the missions that were to take place and thus were very skilled out in the field. The women had different roles in the war. There were those who were very talented in the field and had the rare opportunity to serve in the war as actual soldiers along their male counterparts. The women showed unending efforts and desire to help their sides win. For the women that were not strong or rather skilled enough to go out to the field and face the rivals in a live manner, they were delegated different aspects of work according to their intrinsic skills. One of the most identified roles that the women were given was the work of clinical attendants or rather they were given the job description of nurses (Tunner 76). The nurses had the strict and strenuous jobs of assisting wounded soldiers at the time when attacks took place. According to the communities that lived in the Vietnam region, they believed the work of nursing to be a talent that runs in the family and hence most of the nurses that were taken in had to carry along other family members to assist in their works. Since the nurses were to take their activities to places where the war was directly taking place, they had to training on basic weaponry use in case of attack. Some of the nurses did not completely finish their nursing as they were taken in to a 10-day training camp at Ft. Sam Houston (Caylor 65). With this training, they could be part-time nurses but could also work the grounds in case there was a short of army officers to carry out an ambush due to factors such as death or general incapability. Before the war had become serious, the nurses were given a bulk of injured patients and instructed to cure them within a given time span. This was influential, as it would help them prepare both psychologically and physically for the type of work that they would be doing in the fields. When the war would get harder and the enemy groups getting close, there would be many casualties and thus the need of competence on the side of the nurses to help cure soldiers fast. Upon healing, the soldiers were required back on the field to continue with the war so as not to lender their side shorthanded due to lack of soldiers. The nurses also had basic training of how to use a compass and a radio alert. This was important because not every time could the soldiers manage to bring back the wounded soldiers to the camp base. With the compass and the radio, the soldiers in the field could make radio alerts to the nurses. The radios had different signals through which they had an open line of communication. They would ask for assistance and give the required directives and bearings (Neel 37). The women on the other hand with the basic training of compass use could follow the directives and carry the basic medical requirements needed for fast aid and set off towards the place they were required. As mentioned, to go to the field, the women nurses had to bear basic training. Some of the army officers had the power to choose the people to go out to war as nurses and take them through training. The training of being a nurse came much after the basic survival training process in the field. This training involved activities such as marching and weapon handling. Many young girls applied for these positions in an effort to get a break from the monotony experienced in their houses that was cooking and washing (Neel 84). The nurses in the field went through a very hard time in their efforts to treat the casualties. This is due to the lack of proper medical working artillery. In those earlier days, the medical equipments were very poor and could not heal or cure the patients in quick form unlike the contemporary days. However, the nurse tried their best to ensure that all their soldiers were on their feet working hard. Another problem that the women nurses faced was the type of medicinal allocation that they were carrying out. This is because the available medical equipments were for training people in bulk just like their general training. The nurses had other severe problems in the carrying out of their practice. This is due to the type of weaponry used by the soldiers at the time. Not only did the soldiers use guns and other usual assault equipments but also used chemicals in an effort to make the rivals suffer a lot. One of the most common bombs that the soldiers used was the acidic bomb. This kind of bomb was made of phosphorus and Napalm. This kind of bomb that upon inflicting on the skin of the soldiers could cut deep. The phosphorus burns the skin as deep as the bone. The nurses thus had a very difficult time trying to recover such patients and many are times that patients died in their hands (Neel 113). Emotional problems were the most witnessed on the side of the nurses as compared to the physical problems witnessed by the actual soldiers. This is due to the fact that the women were witnessed to bear a kind and gentle heart that was easily touched on the sight of injured and hurt people. Some of the nurses were very resistant to treat the soldiers because they feared the extent at which the injuries went. In such situation or rather at the sight of the coward side of a nurse, there was the following of various instructions that included going through the harsh orientation process all over again. The orientation process for the nurses was one of the most feared parts of the job description due to what they went through. There is the recalling of one nurse remembering some scissors thrown to her and receiving orders that she should be more competent and stop gazing around while the patient in question was bleeding out. The nurses had a difficult time as they were exposed to numerous diseases some of which were airborne thus making them weak and sick too. This was very detrimental to the winning of the war because the soldiers would continue dying with no one in particular to assist get back to war. The nurses also came across the treatment of diseases that they had not come across before in their line of work. An example of the disease is tuberculosis and many of the soldiers died from it as the nurses were yet to come up with the cure to the disease. Nurses of the Vietnam wear went through more misery that the nurses of the previous wars (Gurney 31). This is due to the advent of technology that had them face much more serious injuries from weapons of high technology. Due to the inability of the nurses to handle the high influx of wounded soldiers, the United States started shipping in more of their nurses to help calm the situation. However, the nurses that were shipped in did not have any training on the battlefront and if they had, they did not have over 6 months training in place and hence suffered a great deal. Many of the soldiers due to stress and other associated factors, some of the soldiers began abusing drugs and it was not long before a group of them became drug addicts. This was very detrimental to their fighting skills as they became weaker and weaker and hence some nurses got the specific job of becoming psychiatrists (Gurney 57). The organization of nurses that covered all the nurses’ issues around the Vietnam War was referred to as the Army Nurse Cops that was started around April of 1956. The organization trained some of the illiterate nurses on the way to perfect their skills out in the field. The nurses were in attachment form the mother organization in the United States referred to as Military Assistance Advisory Group. The organization started well but as the war became tougher and tougher, so did their field of operation. There were around 5000 nurses deployed to serve in the specific areas. On the issue of nurse leadership, this responsibility was taken by the most experienced category of nurses. Colonel Anna Maehays and Mildread Clerk were the heads of the Army Nurse Cops. The first position ever taken by a female in the war was that of a nurse consultant. This was a position that was inside the office of the chief surgeon. The position was temporary though later in 1966, the position was influential and thus was made a permanent one. The main duty of the chief nurse was to assist the surgeon when there was a large influx of sick people. She was also in charge of overseeing all nurse activities. The standard operation procedures had to run through her for cross checking. There was a category of nurses that was very contentious was that of married couples. In the Vietnam War, different nurses had different squads of fighters. This was influential for the optimal performance of work. However, one of the rules that run the war was that married couples could not get same fighting squad. This is because when an injured officer could make his way to the camp with a serious condition, the attention of the respective wife could be deterred. The nurse could pay more attention to the husband that would deter her from making legit decisions (Caylor 73). In situations where this could not be changed, the only way to deal with such situations was by asking the army soldiers and the wives to separate for a temporary period to assist each of them make decisions that were not only beneficial to the family but to the whole fighting group. Some nurses despite the constant warnings given, could not follow instructions. This is one of the reasons leading to some of them falling pregnant while in the job. Such women were put into the next flight back to the United States. Despite all the conditions experienced in the Vietnam, some of the most talented women nurses though pregnant could not be let go and thus had to bear their children in Vietnam. This was important, as no skills were willing to be wasted. Despite the fact that there were women soldiers in the war, nurses were also very important in the defeat of the rival. One of their characteristics that they had to get when joining the Association of Nurses was basic fighting skills. This skills did not just waste but at some time they came to be very effective (Quinn 341). There were several times that the nurses could be ambushed at their basis of operations and their security guards beaten up by the rivals. The rivals did this in an effort to get the women nurses and rape them. However, due to basic training, not many nurses were taken away. They could use their training tactics to an advantage over the tired and worn out soldiers putting them down instantaneously. The women nurses were also able to defend their injured casualties as they continued healing. The army colonel also asked for the assistance of the nurses to watch some of the specific places that the soldiers of the rival group were passing through. They could go dressed up in their nurse uniforms and pretend to be of the same team as their rivals. This was some form of spying that done for their soldiers. Through this, they could be able to attain valuable information that they passed on to their soldiers in a coded form (Davis 64). Most of the fighters from the opposite group could also go to them in need of help and for the grant of their last wish before death, could pass all the relevant information to the nurses in an effort to get the required medication. This was one of the tactics the used to retrieve information from the soldiers. This was important also, as the nurses were able to acquire some of the medical equipments that they did not have from the rival teams and thus the improvement of their working facilities was in order. This tactic was the best used by the nurses and was quite appealing. Some of the women who cared a lot went out of their nursing profession and carried weapons and food at times that they found many casualties making their way to the health centers. Their instincts told them that their men out there were running out of resources and could thus use some refilling and aid. The nurses carried weapons and took them to the soldiers out there. Also for the regain of energy, the nurses could persevere the hard conditions and manage to prepare some meals for the soldiers (Murphy 43). Some of the survival tactics involved enabled the women to learn more medicinal procedures and could get medicinal herbs from which they drew juice and put into the meals that they either they gave the military women to take to the men or even in worse conditions took the meals to them directly. Another tactic that the nurses used was to cooperate with the few female fighters in the field to help lure the other rival fighters. Many of the nurses could dress up as innocent women and could make their way to the path of the enemies. Through this, they would pretend to show affection to those soldiers and bring them back to the camp basis and medical centers having made them think that they would get some sort of romantic reward. However, upon arrival at the basis, the women would change character and act harsh to a point where they could inject the soldiers with some form of medicine that could make them fall asleep or weak (Davis 189). By around 1973, there was the deployment of around 7500 women to Vietnam from the United States. Many of the women whether fighters or nurses were considered to have some form of male gene due to their efforts of staying alive in the war prone areas. The nurses had to be strong in their jobs so as not to make any mistakes or more precisely misdiagnose. This was very important because the grounds that the fighters went through were prone to many animals and insects, which had their venom or rather, bit the fighters. This could have been just any insects which if wrongly diagnosed may have made the soldiers’ health even worse. At the end of the Vietnam War, there was conclusion after calculation that nine military nurses had died during the war. Though regretful, the number was few as compared to the prior expected figure at the beginning of the war (Buckley 61). This was a major concept that showed that despite the harsh conditions experienced in the forests and the dangers of the tropics, women could manage to keep up and assist their soldiers when needed. All women nurses are accounted for to date except for one Dr. Eleanor Ardel Vietti who was taken in as a captive in the year 1962. The role of women in the Vietnam War cannot be overestimated. They made vast efforts to ensure that the rival groups did not succeed. Prior to the war, the notion that had got to everybody was that women’s roles in the community were mere just fetching water, cooking for their families and taking care of the children. The war, however, changed the notion and there was a noticed increase of respect in women after the war. Work Cited Buckley, Frances. “National Nurses Week: Celebrating Nurses of the Vietnam War” The Vietnam Center and Archive. Web. 14th March http://www.vietnam.ttu.edu/exhibits/nurses/ Caylor, Jennie. End of Tour Report, United States Army in Vietnam. London: Oxford University Press. 2008. Print. Davis, Marion. History- Vietnam 71st Evacuation Hospital. New York: Palgrave Publishers. 2006. Print. Gunusky, Delores. History of the United States Army Nurses. New York: McGraw Hill Publishers. 2008. Print. Gurney, Cindy. An Overview of Nursing in the Vietnam. New York: Cengage Learning. 2009. Print. Jackson, Daniel. “The Women of the Army Nurse Cops During the Vietnam War”. Web. 14th March http://www.vietnamwomensmemorial.org/pdf/iwest.pdf Molly, Carson. “Women: The Unknown Soldiers: The Vietnam Conflict”. Web. 14th March http://www.deanza.edu/faculty/swensson/bestresearch_womensoldiers.html Murphy, Lillian. The Women of War: Vietnam. New York: McGraw Hill Publishers. 2010. Print. Neel, Spurgeon. Medical Support of the United States in the United States. Washington: Department of Defense Publisher. 2007. Print. Norman, Elizabeth. The Story of the Nurses who Served in the Vietnam. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2010. Print. Perry, Janet. “Vietnam Southeast Asia”. Web. 14th March http://userpages.aug.com/captbarb/femvetsnam.html Piemonte, Robert, and Cindy Gurney. Highlights in the History of the Army Nurse Corps: Washington, D.C: United States Army Center of Military History. 2007. Print. Quinn, Mary. Women at War. New York: Cengage Learning. 2009. Print. Taylor, Sandler. “Vietnamese Women at War”. 2003. Web. 14th March http://www.kansaspress.ku.edu/tayvie.html Tunner, Sarah. “Women in Vietnam”. 2009. Web. 14th March http://www.tourofdutyinfo.com/Notebook/Essay3-women.htm Read More