OK you have hounded me and i am going to DO IT!!!!

[Judy Hamilton]

each of you over the past several years have told me, over and over to write a book

I have offered several lame reasons..
and am fresh out of excuses

so sat down this afternoon and penned this piece
with aspirations to develop it into a book perhaps others would have an interest

Judy

Caution! NURSING is a HAZARDOUS Career


Has life offered you a defining moment? Such a moment occurred in a hospital room at Parkland Hospital located on the busy I -35 just NW of downtown Dallas. This massive medical complex, gained a permanent place in history when President John F. Kennedy was received and died shortly there after in their emergency room. Three years before this tragic historical event took place found me at this same hospital, as a high school senior at the bedside of my hemophiliac friend. Taking one quick look around his room, I muttered to myself, “Oh God! Were the nurses who slipped me into his room to leave me alone with him, he would surely die!” This one liner was a prayer plea, to not to be left alone with someone in need of emergent definitive care, and it became a moment suspended in time as I left my friend's hospital room, and I vowed to follow a medical career as a Register Nurse. I have been nursing for 40 years and readily confess to being molded by mankind. I have no regrets.

My nursing career began with working in a dedicated Children’s Hospital, with little children following my every step. As I did my duties they flocked around me like a litter of newly weaned puppies. I learned early on that people in the guise of patients would come into my life and leave indelible footprints on my heart. The first patient who stepped on my heart was a teacher to this nurse newbie nurse. He taught me how to deal with death. He was fourteen.
As our country was in a time of great turmoil I parted with the little ones to care for combat wounded Americans, men in their late teens and early twenties.
Military nurses, corpsmen and doctors tell us they do not recall the names of those lives that touched theirs and left footprints on their hearts. Perhaps it is better this way. However when I made visits to a black granite WALL gracing the lawn on the National Mall in Washington DC; in response to near overwhelming grief of lives lost, I found my fingers tips instinctively running over the rough engraved names on the cold smooth stone, as would a person carefully listening in Braille. Was I trying to hear again the last heart beats of the thousands who gave their lives in Vietnam the years I served our country as a Military nurse? Would that we could have saved more of you, I cried almost apologetically. My vision was blinded by tears as I mumbled a prayer,” if you can just but tell me your names. You must know that each one of you trampled, on my heart with your mangled combat boots and I have never been the same.”

In the autumn of a rewarding nursing career I have made a choice to explore the endless skyways, redwood forests, and golden valleys of this land Woody Guthrie sings is made for you and me. Returning to lovely Monterey County, California it was at FT Ord Army Hospital where I took a hard fall for my GI patient’s. It was a mutual love as they were each one quite concerned knowing their naïve girl soldier-nurse would soon be serving in the same war of which their night dreams would not let them forget. The teenage patients in my care were men. They survived the horrors of combat.

Exploring again the lovely coast of Big Sur, I find myself tripping over the memories these men emptied into my life. In the Army Hospitals, most of the night shifts were relegated to lowly second Lieutenants. I qualified. The lights on the ward, with two long rows of beds with feet facing each other in bland dormitory fashion, were either on or off. In the late night hours I found an ever so slight opening into the windows of the souls of our wounded warriors. The key to opening their scarred hearts was as simple as a listening ear. Several of the guys would wait up for me just to talk. In the quietness of the dim lit ward, my soldier-patients failed to notice my tear stained face. Listening is hard work.

Listen carefully between the lines as I share the joys and turmoil of a young nurse. Since the era of JFK and LBJ have we not each one slept a bit? I consider the tenor of our nation is as uncertain, if not more so, today as was coming of age in the turbulent 60's. Do you have questions for which there seems to be no ready answers? I also asked hard questions of my generation, and of my country. Some of my questions will never enjoy a satisfactory resolution. Was I asking the wrong questions? Join me on this journey and come to your own conclusions

Judy here

This is an intro...and not totally sure I can walk this path

However perhaps there are answers to hard questions and if God drops into my spirit the words to convey "What was life like in the sixties. when some of our best men left mom and apple pie and moved to Canada, when not wearing a bra was fashionable, and burning the flag was rampant and deaths on colleges campuses at the hand of the National Guard. And even just as deadly was the blow national morale endured with the death to morals and American integrity with such groups as the virulent, violent Black Panthers, Symbionese Liberation Army (SLA). and the SDS. How did our commitment for America survive? Did it survive? Was God to blame? Did He listen to my prayers?? And is He listening today??

My head is running away with me. So will hit pause

Judy

[Hans Deventer]

Judy,

You have the gift of writing and you have a topic that more than equals the gift. Seems like you're on to something. I'd say, go on!

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

Good start, Judy.

[Brad Mercer]

Go for it, Judy. I don't read every long post, even when it's on a subject of interest. The internet seems to have reduced my attention span. But I was still reading with great interest when your post ended. That's very readable. It'll do you a world of good to write it, even if no one else reads it. (I say that from my own experience of co-authoring two short, unpublished books.)

And if it does get published, it'll do a lot of people some good.

Brad

[Mike Wooldridge]

Judy,
What an amazing life you've lived. The intro. grabbed me by the heart. Now, Chapter 1...

[Marilyn Lawson]

WOW!!

Please fill in all the details.
I have listened to everything you have witten and I am in awe.
Please keep writting so that all can understand where you came from and where you are going.
It allows people to ralise that with faith - we can make it to.

Thank you!!!

Marilyn

[Ann Smith]

Judy,

That was great! go for it! I have a good friend I can recommend who might be a good consultant, if you need one to help get started publishing. She is on several nursing journals editing boards.
Ann

[Judy Hamilton]

Thanks for the comments friends..you know that writing a book,even if it is historical fiction (which always carries a story of truth) and not using a ghost writer is opening my soul to the whims of the world

also just writing is inherently introspective..therein lay the difficulty, allowing or revisiting paces of where my heart has lived and things that have touched my life
Judy

[Judy Hamilton]

This will be not only my story..sharing how Vietnam affected other nurses who served. One of my classmates served as a Navy nurse..and was changed..for a spell, as with myself, however initially not into the strong Christian which she is today

when one travels a different road and life around you in the form of current events is tragic..you change, and learn ways of coping, to protect that vistage of your heart which has not been destroyed

read about Scherlie..( i contacted her last night) she was my classmate..we were not in contact after graduation, and we each parted ways, in the days of snail mail, and only ten years later learned we both chose to serve as military nurses

From: "Scherlie Devine" <skreelie44@gmail.com>
To: "Judy Crausbay/Hamilton" <judycrosby@hotmail.com> (PDT)

good morning Judy

I really want to put this off...wait until I have time to think about
it, and a time when I have nothing else to do. But I know that if I
use those excuses, this will never happen. I suspect that I will
probably be sending you frequent updates as the time goes by...I know
that not everything will pop to the surface easily after so many
years. Use whatever you want; pick my brain whenever the need strikes
you. My very first reaction at 0730 on a sunny Monday is
"Oh God, Judy! I don't know if I can do this."
There are stories to be told...stories most people do not want to
hear...stories that will chill the very hearts of those brave enough
to read them. God only knows what it will do to those brave enough to
even voice them.

To this day, stories of the turbulent 60s make my stomach churn. Years
ago, when there was a run of movies about Viet Nam...Full Metal
Jacket, Apocalypse Now, etc...You know the genre...my son told me
about a movie he had seen (cannot for the life of me recall the
name) He could not understand why I did not want to go
see it, also. He was about 17...so close to the age of so many of the
young men who gave the full measure. He argued with me about going to
see it. Frustrated at his innocence and naiveté, I asked him one
simple (at least to me) question: "Why ever would you want me to go
see something that I had lived through, and do not feel I could
survive a second time?" It was not a fair question to ask him; he had
no real idea of what it was like to sit at the bedside of a stricken
marine (who was my age), and weep with him as he struggled to make
sense of what had happened to him. He had no idea of the fear we all
experienced when waiting for the next issue of Navy Times to read the
names of the casualties...how many of our corpsmen, former patients,
docs, would we see listed there? And there were so many...one, in
particular, I dated. His death came on my birthday in 1967. It took me
nearly 30 years to make the pilgrimage to The Wall to finally say
good-bye. But I digress. Poor Patrick had no idea of the total picture
of the political climate of the 60s and 70s...all he knew was what he
read in books, and it was not nearly enough.
Did I watch the evening news? Not much. After a day on the wards,beds full with mangled Marines, dealing with
the results of Vietnam, the last thing I wanted to see was more death
on the television. Most of my news was from Navy Times, which further
narrowed my scope. The Daily American or the Stars and Stripes saw me
through the stationed in Italy phase of my life.
Once I married and began my family, I felt stronger, and more able to
view the evening news...yet still watched the faces of those young
men, looking for familiar ones. I never stopped doing that until the
was over. The news coverage was extraordinary. Never before had a
war been brought to our very living rooms. The savagery of it all was
so nearly unbearable...I think that is what caused all the uproar in
our country...until Vietnam, the pain of war was felt by individual
families and friends; now it was seen and felt by everyone who turned
on the evening news. I did not see how we could ever recover....and
I'm not sure we have. Yet we have short memories, and we have allowed
this travesty in Iraq to continue. But I don't feel strong enough this
morning to go there.

No, Judy, I did not know at the time you were in Vietnam. We were not in contact,
and I had not yet grown up enough to realize that you were my sister.
Looking back, I wish it had been different, but I was a very selfish
young woman in that regard, and I am sorry.

I joined the Navy because my brother was a Marine, and was on his way to VN. I wanted to take his place
however the Navy still sent my brother,when i was stationed in Italy. I love America, and it broke my heart
to see the outbreaks of violence...of Americans hurting other
Americans. When Kent State happened, my heart split in two. It was at
that point that I realized that I had become an anti-war person. I
hated what the war had done to us. It took me not too many years to
blame the politicos. I, who was an ardent Republican, became a liberal
Democrat. I remain in that political definition to this day.

Jane Fonda was never really on my political screen. I did not
understand the angst and anger she provoked. We are a free country
with the right of free speech. God knows there were people marching on
our streets that said the same things she did. I know...she gave
comfort to the enemy, and they did take advantage of it, but in the
great scheme of things, I think she was only really a focus for anger.
I think we gave her a lot more credit than she deserved. She was
stupid, but there is no law against stupidity.

oh yes, I did wear a
bracelet with a POW name on it until he came home, and prayed daily
for their safety and for their families.

a defining moment came in my life and involved the choice to die. I was on the code blue team at
our hospital, and was called to the ER to start an IV on a 13-year old
boy who had chosen to hang himself. As I watched the team strip his
clothes off, I looked at this half-formed boy-man, and could not
understand how a 13-year old could feel so much pain that he was
unable to continue his life. Who missed the signals? Did anyone really
care for him? I went home and hugged all of my children, and prayed
for the knowledge and insight to help them, and prayed to God to keep
them safe. I think it was at this point that I really began to look at
my religion and my relationship with God. My journey to where I am
today has been long and fraught with many errors. But today I am
comfortable in my skin and know that I have the promise of eternal
life in Jesus.

Interrogate me all you want. :-)

Yes, Judy, many of the special contacts with the marines and sailors
came in the dark...in the night when fears and memories rise so
quickly to the surface. The tears that were shed watered the
friendships that were formed; however the short time they lasted. I
cannot recall most of their names, but I recall their faces, and their
stories. They each share a place in my heart.

Well, it is now 0900, and I have to get moving on my day. I suspect
that I will be flashing back for quite a while. But you know, after
all this discussion, the pain I expected has not surfaced.

Love you, kid...keep me posted on what is happening.
Scherlie

Scherlie...we really have traveled roads not taken in regards to the paths our lives and in comparing our lives with those of the remainder of our sisters in our class. I felt you heart with your reply and appreciate your intimate sharing. Especially when it tears your heart out to glimpse the past and the colossal events in the 60's and 70's that molded us and make us persons we are today. This book, should it survive birthing pains and become a reality wants to include the heart of my Navy nurse classmate and sister in my heart.

It took many years for you and I to realize in our hears that we are both to each other sister material...aging improves more than a bottle of wine.

Will you allow yourself to please send me snippets of your heart and thoughts??

I will not pen words of yours without your OK

Thank you for sharing off the cuff what is at the top of your thoughts...

I am having to dig deeper into places I have buried for some years, and Iraq seems to be the shovel

knowing nurses in the Military are hurting and for sure our men and women returning from Iraq have more than physical wounds to bear

you are loved. And this is not just a salutation

Judy

[Paul Whitaker]

Go for it! Love your honest creativity.

Somebody else said:

Memories are enhanced with imagination. Anxious to hear the book is 'really' on the way.

paul

[Judy Hamilton]

Go for it! Love your honest creativity.

Somebody else said:

Memories are enhanced with imagination. Anxious to hear the book is 'really' on the way.

paul

Thanks Paul...my dreams last night were not bad.
this has resurrected dreams of my sister Donna. She died in a auto accident when I was at BNC/SNU ...I was 19 she was 21 and also a student at BNC

the dream last night was warm
i was trying to explian to her one of the scenes ..receiving causalities

as side note..doubt if I would have become a Military nurse
had my sister not been taken from me in death.as she could not have joined me, (and tho we were 18 months apart, we were nearly joined at the hip, were that close) and I loved her so much, I would have been lost without her in a foreign country

my how I changed after her untimely death and realized i had to do life without my best friend

Judy

[Ian Gentles]

Great news Judy i for one will be buying a copy, can hardly wait.

[Jim Franklin]

From someone who was told by his graduate professors that writing papers was my forte, I heartily join the others in high approval of your proposed project of writing a book of yours and others experiences as a combat nurse and nursing career. Your writing flows very well and creates pictures in the mind. You will provide a wealth for the recruiters and those who choose to join as military nurses. It should become required reading for all nursing students.

[Gina Stevenson]

'Lookin' forward to that book, Miss Judy! ;)

[Doris Grant]

I love it, I love it, I love it, since I am one of the ones who kept tormenting you to write a book. Oh my, I can say i knew you when.......

Doris

[Judy Hamilton]

i am just home from viewing the movie of Jane Austin,
"Beautiful Jane" and feel my book needs the restraints removed
I am seriously toying with penning it as a novel and allow the reader to
decipher if any, or parts of, all, or none at all are true
nonfiction is just too constrictive and when penned as I want, could be
painfully transparent

a novel, if i can develop the plot and characters would weave
almost the same story, just be a bit more relaxed and intriguing
and I am not bound to own the scenario (s)

I have read some trash novels and have read b-o-r--i-n-g nonfiction
autobiographies, "Tom Brokaw" is one such boring book.
Surprising, as this man has certainly lived an varied and interesting life.

I can do this as well as some I have read

I will keep searching till i find my nitch

Judy

[Gina Stevenson]

'Sounds good to me. Tell you what ... we'll send you the "novel approach" [pun intended] to a very serious subject this friend researched in depth. Adding that "story line" to the "real facts" put faces on those facts ....

i am just home from viewing the movie of Jane Austin,
"Beautiful Jane" and feel my book needs the restraints removed
I am seriously toying with penning it as a novel and allow the reader to
decipher if any, or parts of, all, or none at all are true
nonfiction is just too constrictive and when penned as I want, could be
painfully transparent

a novel, if i can develop the plot and characters would weave
almost the same story, just be a bit more relaxed and intriguing
and I am not bound to own the scenario (s)

I have read some trash novels and have read b-o-r--i-n-g nonfiction
autobiographies, "Tom Brokaw" is one such boring book.
Surprising, as this man has certainly lived an varied and interesting life.

I can do this as well as some I have read

I will keep searching till i find my nitch

Judy

[Ann Smith]

If I wasn't a nurse, I might jump on the bandwagon for a novel. However, since I am a nurse, I would love to see your story as you started it. Either way, it will be great.
Ann

[William Hunter]

Judy, I suspect your journey in writing will cause some tender moments, and some of terror as you recall many of the experiences of your journey. I would encourage you to move ahead with your idea. Too many of our vets pass on and the library in their hearts and memories passes with them. Our world needs to know history from those who lived it and not just the sterile writing of those who only do research but have not lived what they write.

I think the difference between your experience and mine was that I serveed in a unit with the guys I worked on and the ones we lost. I KNOW the names over parts of 3 panels of the Wall. It is a deep heart-moving experience everytime I go to the Wall or a traveling Wall. The local Legion asked me to have a space where families and VN vets could come and receive counseling what we had the moving Wall here. I agreed only if I had time alone at the Wall before the crowds were allowed to come in. I needed to do some of my own grieving before I could help others.

Over the course of 3 days I was able to assist many dozens of vets, and then family members whose relative had their name on the Wall. The sense of unity and immediate acceptance and understanding was as moving as anything I sensed once I had a time alone. And it was interesting reading the articles in various area newspapers that had interviewed me. As I said, those who write without having been there offer such sterile fare. I would encourage you to write and do some healthy grieving in the process to get through it. God can use your effort to help others understand the heart of a deeply caring person who has put everything on the line.

[Judy Hamilton]

If I wasn't a nurse, I might jump on the bandwagon for a novel. However, since I am a nurse, I would love to see your story as you started it. Either way, it will be great.
Ann

Hello Ann,

Writers block consumes me when resurrecting these memories, so I am hoping that distancing myself just a wee bit might help, and penning the book as a novel offers this avenue.
All is not lost concerning the sincerity of my story.Men who were my patients and those nurses, doctors, corpsmen and two flyboy squadrons who were comrades in combat with me, will be drawn from a pool memories of this is the way it was, for me. Doing a novel does not hold me to a time line and factual research

I have read fiction and non fiction from nurses in Vietnam, one was repulsive to me, another was extremely depressing, with focus on the tragedy of it all.
I hope I can bring the reader into a world of women amongst men, bandaging their devastating wounds and touching their damaged hearts. Then sending them back to the field to face the demons that boasted could take their lives, for sure change their souls.
And in the mix of sharing our days and nights, I hope to allow the reader a glimpse of moments of holding-your belly-laughter, necessary as an outlet, a way of facing today and the next day. We lived "one day at a time," (wondering now if that slogan was coined by Alcoholic Autonomous prior to Vietnam.) Sad,true and probably necessary, we did not deal with yesterday when living in this Asian combat zone. Many who served in Vietnam, and whose lives Vietnam touched have never dealt with yesterday.

Thanks for your sincere interest.

Judy

[Anne and Dwayne Hood]

Judy, I can imagine what it must do to you emotionally, to reminence over the things you plan to write.
Once, I wanted our daughter Robyn, to write an article for me to send to a magazine. I was writing down bits and pieces myself, and it was really too much emotionally to relive some things. But, you have a way of "Popping" up from whatever has happened to you. So, depending on God's guidance, YOU CAN DO IT!

[Judy Hamilton]

Ok I have a title to my book.and here is the opening intro that will correlate this title to the story line of the book

"Mama Wore Combat Boots"

“Mom talk to me about Vietnam”. Whoa! My 13 year old son dropped this one liner in a leisure discussion of banning the “Chicken-Wing” a wrestling move mother’s, this one in particular consider barbaric. “This old suitcase in the attic is all about you and Vietnam, and there is a cool hat with all these emblems on it. I just want to know what happened and why have you never talked to me about what happened?”

Fair question, however I have no ready answer. I left in-coming wounded in an Army Hospital, hopped on a “Freedom Bird” in 1969 locking memories of a year surviving combat nursing in a sea of men deep in the recesses of my soul. I defer to the lines of a poem

A curious boy asks an old soldier
Sitting in front of the grocery store,
“How did you lose your leg?”
And the old soldier is struck with silence,
Or his mind flies away
Because he cannot concentrate it on Gettysburg.
It comes back jocosely
And he says, “A bear bit it off.”
And the boy wonders, while the old soldier
Dumbly, feebly lives over
The flashes of guns, the thunder of cannon,
The shrieks of the slain,
And himself lying on the ground,
And the hospital surgeons, the knives,
And the long days in bed.
But if he could describe it all
He would be an artist.
But if he were an artist there would be deeper wounds
Which he could not describe.

This book is a feeble attempt of an artist. Some of the wounds, physical and emotional, I can describe. A few are so deep they defy description.The poem I quoted speaks of the loss of a leg in combat. While I did not lose an arm or a leg, I did leave some of myself in Vietnam, perhaps as valuable as a lost limb, something that can never be recovered.
an apt example is my classmate Scherlie who served in the Navy



One of my classmates served as a Navy nurse..

when one travels a different road and life around you in the form of current events is tragic..you change, and learn ways of coping, to protect a vistage of your heart which has not been destroyed.
read about Scherlie..( i contacted her last night) she was my classmate graduated same nursing school class
From: "Scherlie Devine" <skreelie44@gmail.com>
To: "Judy Crausbay/Hamilton" <judycrosby@hotmail.com> (PDT)

good morning Judy

I really want to put this off...wait until I have time to think about
it, and a time when I have nothing else to do. But I know that if I
use those excuses, this will never happen. I suspect that I will
probably be sending you frequent updates as the time goes by...I know
that not everything will pop to the surface easily after so many
years. Use whatever you want; pick my brain whenever the need strikes
you.

My very first reaction at 0730 on a sunny Monday is
"Oh God, Judy! I don't know if I can do this."
There are stories to be told...stories most people do not want to
hear...stories that will chill the very hearts of those brave enough
to read them. God only knows what it will do to those brave enough to
even voice them.

To this day, stories of the turbulent 60s make my stomach churn. Years
ago, when there was a run of movies about Viet Nam...Full Metal
Jacket, Apocalypse Now, etc...

You know the genre...my son Patrick told me
about a movie he had seen (cannot for the life of me recall the
name) He could not understand why I did not want to go
see it, also. He was about 17...so close to the age of so many of the
young men who gave the full measure. He argued with me about going to
see it. Frustrated at his innocence and naiveté, I asked him one
simple (at least to me) question: "Why ever would you want me to go
see something that I had lived through, and do not feel I could
survive a second time?" It was not a fair question to ask him; he had
no real idea of what it was like to sit at the bedside of a stricken
marine (who was my age), and weep with him as he struggled to make
sense of what had happened to him. He had no idea of the fear we all
experienced when waiting for the next issue of Navy Times to read the
names of the casualties...how many of our corpsmen, former patients,
docs, would we see listed there? And there were so many...one, in
particular, I dated. His death came on my birthday in 1967. It took me
nearly 30 years to make the pilgrimage to The Wall to finally say
good-bye. But I digress. Poor Patrick had no idea of the total picture
of the political climate of the 60s and 70s...all he knew was what he
read in books, and it was not nearly enough.
Did I watch the evening news? Not much. After a day on the wards,beds full with mangled Marines, dealing with
the results of Vietnam, the last thing I wanted to see was more death
on the television. Most of my news was from Navy Times, which further
narrowed my scope. The Daily American or the Stars and Stripes saw me
through the stationed in Italy phase of my life.
Once I married and began my family, I felt stronger, and more able to
view the evening news...yet still watched the faces of those young
men, looking for familiar ones. I never stopped doing that until the war
was over. The news coverage was extraordinary. Never before had a
war been brought to our very living rooms. The savagery of it all was
so nearly unbearable...I think that is what caused all the uproar in
our country...until Vietnam, the pain of war was felt by individual
families and friends; now it was seen and felt by everyone who turned
on the evening news. I did not see how we could ever recover....and
I'm not sure we have. Yet we have short memories, and we have allowed
this travesty in Iraq to continue. But I don't feel strong enough this
morning to go there.

I joined the Navy because my brother was a Marine, and was on his way to VN. I wanted to take his place
however the Navy still sent my brother,when i was stationed in Italy. I love America, and it broke my heart
to see the outbreaks of violence...of Americans hurting other
Americans. When Kent State happened, my heart split in two. It was at
that point that I realized that I had become an anti-war person. I
hated what the war had done to us. It took me not too many years to
blame the politicos. I, who was an ardent Republican, became a liberal
Democrat. I remain in that political definition to this day.

Interrogate me all you want. :-)

Yes, Judy, many of the special contacts with the marines and sailors
came in the dark...in the night when fears and memories rise so
quickly to the surface. The tears that were shed watered the
friendships that were formed; however the short time they lasted. I
cannot recall most of their names, but I recall their faces, and their
stories. They each share a place in my heart.

Well, it is now 0900, and I have to get moving on my day. I suspect
that I will be flashing back for quite a while. But you know, after
all this discussion, the pain I expected has not surfaced.

Love you, kid...keep me posted on what is happening.
Scherlie

Scherlie...we really have traveled roads not taken in regards to the paths our lives and in comparing our lives with those of the remainder of our sisters in our class. I felt you heart with your reply and appreciate your intimate sharing. Especially when it tears your heart out to glimpse the past and the colossal events in the 60's and 70's that molded us and make us persons we are today. This book, should it survive birthing pains and become a reality wants to include the heart of my Navy nurse classmate and sister in my heart.

It took many years for you and I to realize in our hearts that we are both to each other sister material...aging improves more than a bottle of wine.

Will you allow yourself to please send me snippets of your heart and thoughts??

I will not pen words of yours without your OK

Thank you for sharing off the cuff what is at the top of your thoughts...
this book will drive me to dig deep into places I have buried for some years,
and Iraq seems to be the shovel
knowing nurses in the Military are hurting and for sure our men and women returning from Iraq have more than physical wounds to bear

you are loved. And this is not just a salutation

Judy

Nazetters thank you for being a sounding board and sharing and encouraging. William, without speaking I understand your thoughts

Judy

[Gina Stevenson]

Momma Wore Combat Boots ... :fav18

[Judy Hamilton]

Tried to edit the piece I posted last night and not successful
so will copy paste the edited chapter


this is the chapter about our doctors

Had I not first hand knowledge of daily life in a combat zone I would believe near every moment would be packed with tragedy or terror. Not so. If I may, I want to share with you a few days when a patch of blue broke through the darkness around us and brightened the corners of our lives. Our hospital boasted of really great doctors. Many of these men, left lucrative private practices in their careers; put their shoulder to the task and grimly accepted the interruption of their lives. They worked long hours with little time to spare between influxes of in-coming wounded causalities straight from the field brought to the door of our Receiving and Emergency by a gunship or “Dust-Off” helicopter. Being on call for a “push” of incoming wounded, our overworked physicians took opportunity of the “DOC Not on Call” and when allowed were known for the ability to unwind with their choice of poison. Alcohol flowed freely; a bottle of fine wine accompanied even a poorly grilled hamburger prepared by the Vietnamese proprietor of our Officers Club. One such occasion found the doctor not on call totally sot! In an effort to make the most the moment, he was carried to an operative suite where his limber body was hoisted onto the orthopedic frame. (An apparatus on which a patient needing a body cast would be placed.) With all of us working furiously fast, before he roused, in less time than I need to type this story we had our blissfully inebriated physician wrapped in a plaster cast from his waist to his tippy toes. The finishing touch was the bright idea to place the bar between his legs. Naturally this piece was also nicely secured with plaster, thus preventing any attempts to ambulate. Pleased with our work of art, we covered him with a blanket, made him comfy with a pillow under his head and slipped off to our respective quarters, so come morning to not be accused of being participants of this escapade. As the story goes, I recall, our physician friend slept like a baby, only waking when finding he was not able to answer nature’s call and use the restroom. I am not able to recant the rest of the story as denial of acquiescence to such unmilitary like conduct on my part has succeeded in lost memories of how this escapade eventually played itself out.
Please know that doctors who served in Vietnam were a special breed of professionals. As aforementioned, many were well beyond draft age and yet were conscripted into military service. I smiled at the manner they responded to Uncle Sam’s intrusion into their lives when we were at Fort Sam Houston going through required medical Army Boot Camp. These professional men who would never consider appearing at their respective hospitals in dress less than impeccable, showed displeasure of the intrusion of the military into their lives by wearing bright colored mismatched socks with their class A Army greens.

Our doctors were the best. They were highly trained professionals who adjusted and honed their skills and expertise to save the lives of American sons sent to war. Many times, too many times, arms and legs of our precious casualties of war were not salvaged, and even worse, lives were not saved. Each one of us took the loss each battle fatigued warriors to heart, especially the physicians, who were bound to the Hippocratic Oath and were wired to do everything possible to preserve life. Tragically everything possible was simply not enough.
The 91st Evacuation Hospital where I served the majority of my time in Vietnam boasted of an Obstetrician. This was the Army. Go figure! He was a meticulous clinician and with a bit of training from the surgeons, this Board Certified Obstetrician-Gynecologist physician developed the skills of an excellent general surgeon. He was also very handy to deliver the baby of the occasional pregnant wounded Vietnamese civilian. (We treated a variety of patients; to include Vietnamese Army and civilians.) I was the nurse who summoned him to attend to the hemorrhaging Vietnamese woman who attempted to abort her pregnancy with a coat hanger.


There are today more than 58,200 names engraved on the Vietnam Wall. Over fourteen thousand of those are the names of soldiers, seamen and airmen who died during 1968-69; the year I served in-country. These sterile statistics interpret as a massive number of causalities received that fateful year on the decks of two hospital ships, many Army Hospitals, Aid Stations and numerous Forward Field stations (serving the 3rd and 1st Marine Divisions) scattered through out the mountains, jungles and rice fields of Vietnam. Nurses, corpsmen, physicians and dentists, were a busy well oiled medical team working a minimum of six twelve hour shifts every week. Just as significant team members were our clerks, lab and x-ray technicians and those assigned the grim task of graves registration.

Marty, and I were friends during his years in medical school in Oklahoma. Upon completing his Internship he served the Marines as a Navy Field doctor the same time frame I was working in Army Hospitals. For a brief time I was at a surgical hospital that was within shouting distance of my friend; however our paths did not cross. This gentle physician could today benefit from an expert doctor, as his immune system is ravaged with devastating effects of the chemical defoliant, Agent Orange. We recently reconnected and he spoke of the trauma when working in the field with malfunctioning equipment and bare basic supplies. “It is strange that I do not remember the hundreds of lives that I saved while on triage on the DMZ for six months, I only remember the losses. Our minds are strange,” Marty related. Our minds are indeed strange entities as this trauma continues to dog him during nights of restless sleep.

Army medics served six months of the year in Vietnam in the field attached to a specific units. They were "DOC" to soldiers in the field as these men, trained to render bare basic care (morphine, a tourniquet and a field dressing) to their wounded comrades, were the first line of treatment for combat casualties. If the medic survived, they served the remainder of their tour as a ward medic in an Army Hospital. “If” is the operative word in the previous clause as the attrition rate of field medics was extremely high.

Fire fights and battles the Infantry and Marines in the dense jungles and the open rice patties of Vietnam encountered, parallel. I have not kept in touch with medics in the Army hospitals which I served, so to give you a glimpse of the struggle and tension that confronted the field medic I quote William, a veteran friend. He served and survived the horrors of Vietnam as a Marine field corpsman.

The VC and NVA set explosives in C-Ration cans attached to trip wires. When the trip wire was pulled out of the can the result was a severally wounded person--or a dead one. And there were the pungi stakes, young bamboo whittled to a sharp point and mounted on a rack. The concealed rack was attached to a trip wire. When the wire was "tripped" the rack would swing forward and the deadly spears impaled into their back, chest and head. Most of the wounds I treated from booby traps were; traumatic amputations,multitudes of shrapnel holes, some very large burns, eyes blinded from shrapnel, or a flash burn and multiple punctures from the pungi sticks. It was common to have to put a body in body bag due to these deadly "booby trap" wounds.

All the while the fire-fight continued to rage all around uswhile we were treating the wounded and the combat corpsman or medic was up doing his job trying to save the lives of those downed with these ghastly wounds.We often worked while wounded ourselves.
I have held guys while they screamed and died because there was nothing left from the bottom of the flak jacket down. Those screams still visit me in the night.



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Critiques are welcomed...
pride is low priority as I have need of suggestions


Thanks

Judy

PS as you have probably gathered by now. I have decided this book will not be a novel as this genre of literature bears the possibility of coming across as frivolous. While Vietnam was not everyday morose, it certainly not frivolous to this girl soldier.