bravely served her country in World War II and whose exploits
were told in a series of popular books published in the 1940s and
1950s. ² She was an inspiration, the female equivalent of John
Wayne or Audie Murphy.

Going to war also was part of the adult American experience.
There were war movies at Saturday matinees, large Memorial
Day parades down Main Street, and a president who was a war
hero. An army nurse who grew up in North Dakota remembered
this patriotic atmosphere and had volunteered to go to Vietnam to
show people, "A little town girl can serve her country and be a
hero."

There were strong feelings of loyalty to country among the
nurses. They had a sense of pride and a sense of duty. These
women knew they could not be drafted like their brothers and
high school friends, but they felt an equal responsibility to serve.
"How could I say, 'Oh no, not me,' when men my age were
going?" recalled another army nurse, "I really felt, 'How come
not me?" The result of this enthusiasm was an excess of nurses
volunteering for Vietnam duty. In 1965, for example, navy lead-
ers planned to commission the first hospital ship for service in the
waters off Vietnam. Twenty-nine nurses were to be part of the
first crew. Navy administrators quickly had a list of 400 nurses
who requested duty on the ship, out of a total of 1,874 active duty
nurses in the entire navy. ³

Early in their lives, young girls learned the responsibilities of
caring for others. While boys were outdoors playing baseball,
girls were indoors playing house. Girls learned to view them-
selves in relation to others, as mothers, sisters, and friends -- not
as individuals.

As they grew up, nursing became a logical career choice. The
task of caring for others is the core of the profession. And the
war was an opportunity to care for others who really needed
it -- men their own age who were far from home, orphaned chil-
dren, and wounded civilians. This was the profession at its most
basic. No big medical bureaucracy, no stringent rules, just an
opportunity to fulfill the basic, traditional female roles; to care
and to feel needed. One nurse summed up the thoughts of others
when she said, "Politics had nothing to do with it. I was very
naive. But, if our men were fighting and dying, someone ought to
be there taking care of them. We had to be there as nurses."

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