I must have driven past the black marble stone a thousand times, but barely noticed. “Nurses Memorial” it says, with the insignias of the 3 branches of the military above. Recently, I stopped to read the inscription on the memorial more closely:
Where The Warrior Went…Stalwart And Brave
His Nurses Arrived On The Second Wave
To Care For The Wounded, The Crippled, The Blind,
To Help Ease The Hurts Of Body And Mind.
Where The Soldier Was And Where He Is Still
His Nurses Stood By…And They Always Will!
Phone calls to the town hall quickly led me to no less than an Army nursing legend, Colonel Mary Quinn. One night, soon after, I sat at her kitchen table, pouring over pictures, newsletters, and books about Army nursing history and the Memorial. Mary, who joined the Army during the Korean War “to help,” served for 26 years in the Army Nurse Corps, in both Korea, and Vietnam. Now a youthful 79, thoughtful and articulate, her oral histories taken bythe likes of Brigadier General Clara Adams Ender, Mary says, simply, about the Memorial: “They were good to us–putting this up.” She was quick to deflect any credit for the memorial, but the veterans I spoke with thought differently. “There she was, helping us with a memorial, but we said, ‘what about the nurses?’ They had been left out. There was nothing to honor them,” said Paul Shinney, President of the Vietnam Memorial Foundation. His group had secured the land from the town and began erecting monuments—to the local soldiers who had died, to those who became sick because of Agent Orange, and to those who were prisoners of war. He said that as they watched Mary generously donate to the project and support them each step of the way, they were reminded of the quiet, steadfast courage and all the contributions of the military nurses. “It was just who she was that reminded us of how much respect we had for the nurses in Vietnam.” They did not know, at the time, that this would be the first military nurses' memorial in the country.
If the words on the stone in this Vietnam Memorial Park, a small triangle of land on the South Shore of Boston, seem a little dated, it is easily forgiven. Now, of course, we take for granted that some of the warriors are women; many of the nurses are men. Now, we might think in more active terms than “standing by,” but the sense of respect and devotion that the words convey are surely as timeless as they were when Retired Colonel Maude Smith, of San Francisco, first read her long poem, entitled, “Where the Soldier Was,” from which the words were excerpted, at the Retired Army Nurse Corps Association convention in 1982. The poem mentions Argonne, Pearl Harbor, the Philippines, Bizerte, and Germany, as well as Cam Ranh Bay.
The day before the dedication of the military nurses' memorial in November 1987, a drunk driver veered off the road, struck the memorial, and knocked it off its pedestal. That evening, the Vietnam veterans came and worked for hours, in the pouring rain, to right the memorial for the ceremony the next day. They meticulously maintain the park, and nothing is more carefully tended than the weeping cherry tree that they planted just behind the nurses' memorial stone. The tree was chosen to represent the weeping of nurses who had seen so much.
Mary, who was Chief Nurse at the 71st Evacuation Hospital Pleiku, South Vietnam, served during the Tet Offensive when the hospital compound was struck 8 times by rocket fire. Before that, she served in Korea, in a MASH unit. At the time, soldiers were carried on the outside of the helicopter, in metal capsules. “They'd be so cold,” she said, recalling one incoming helicopter vividly. “There was a soldier on either side. I can still see them,” she said. “One was muscular, blonde, blue eyed, like a football star at some high school. The other was a small statured Chinese soldier, a prisoner. They were both dead.” Her thoughts, she said, immediately turned to both of their mothers, on different sides of the globe, each of whom would suffer the same unspeakable agony.
What struck me most during our visit was Mary, shaking her head, still marveling, and still trying to comprehend after all the years: “The soldiers would always say they were so honored that we were there, but it was we who were honored to take care of them.” One of the publications Mary showed me was the Army Nurse Corps Association's newsletter, The Connection. Inside one issue was the photograph that appears on this issue's cover. Placing it there seemed a perfect way to remind readers of their colleagues who live and work in harm's way. Nickey McCasland, RN, Editor of The Connection at the Army Nurse Corp Association, who helped to secure the picture, described the all-volunteer association, headquartered in San Antonio. When I asked him how emergency nurses here in the States could send holiday greetings and keep in touch with military nurses in places like Iraq and Afghanistan, he offered to route E-mails sent to him to individual emergency Army nurses overseas. In fact, he has now set up a special mailbox for just that purpose: Deployed_ANCs@e_anca.org. (If readers know of a direct contact for Air Force and Navy nurses, please let us know).
Recently, the mother of a military emergency nurse in Iraq told me, with pride, about all that her son is doing—resuscitating injured Iraqis as well as Americans, and ensuring a stable country in which it is safe, for example, for girls, formerly forbidden, to once again attend school.
As I think about memorials that honor military nurses who have served so bravely in the past, it seems to me that they can also inspire us to honor our colleagues for all their efforts in the present.—glenehan@comcast.net
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