Marsha Four

Philadelphia, Pennsylvania - United States Army

I was an Army Nurse in Vietnam 1969-70, part of the 18th Surgical Hospital in Quang Tri close to the DMZ.  I went over right after nurses training.  I didn’t have any experience.  I think for some of us, we wondered if we were even in the right profession.  I didn’t know anything about emergency room nursing.  I had no idea what war nursing was about.  I had no idea what it looked like to be mutilated in that kind of action.

We were all kids.  I was just twenty-two years old.  I'm a mother of three boys.  I had my boys living in my house when they were twenty-two.  They couldn't even make their own beds.