Jane McCarthy Interview, October 9, 2020

All right. This is an oral history conducted by Connor Mitchell out of Washington DC with Dr. Jane McCarthy. It is currently 12:05 p.m. On Friday, October 9th, 2022 have I have your permission to record and archive this?

Yes. Yes.

Right, wonderful. So essentially this interview is going to be recorded and archived and preserved to kind of add to the overarching story and I guess history. Of US Involvement in Vietnam throughout my studies of History. I've noticed that a lot of folks kind of get the US involvement in Vietnam just wrong and I hope to kind of Correct that while also like contributing to the future study of this and just kind of understanding. What the American experience in Vietnam was really like so I guess we're going to start in the beginning, before the war even was on anybody's radar, What was everyday life like?

I was in high school and I grew up in Cohasset, Massachusetts and my father was a veteran from World War 2 and from the Navy. And so I remember, I mean we grew up in what was called the veterans project. That sounds like (a little bad) but in Cohasset, the town had given this land to the veterans that came back from World War Two And so my father built a home there and that's where we grew up. So, I was in high school.

I wanted to go to nursing school when I was in high school, and I applied to several colleges and I got in but my parents thought it best that I go to Mass General Hospital School of Nursing, Massachusetts General Hospital School of Nursing. It wasn't a college, it was a hospital diploma program. I very much wanted to go to college. But as a girl in those days, you know, it was nursing or teaching and I had much greater aspirations. I wanted to go to medical school, and I did very well in school. I loved school. I loved math. I loved science. And so the war, you know, well during high school, it was it was on our radar probably as I was going through High School.

I guess throughout high school or any of your classmates, were they afraid of being drafted?

Afraid of being drafted? They knew they were all going to be drafted. In those days 18 years old, if you didn't have a plan to go to college you would be drafted. And I knew this, my brothers both went to the Maritime Academy Schools but my parents still had to go down to To the draft registrar person in Cohasset every six months to get a deferment for my brothers. And I had two older brothers. And as I said one was in Maine Maritime Academy the other was that the US Maritime Academy Kings Point and so my parents, I don't know if you'd say they were against the war but they they didn't want their sons to go to war. And we knew in high school, you know, you better get into college, the guys, or you were going to you were going to be drafted and so by the time I got to nursing school, I graduated in 69 from nursing school, but 66 from high school. And so in 66 it hadn't built up, but it was just starting to build up and when I was in nursing school. My first and second year many of my friends from Cohasset High School were being drafted and many were being killed in this small little town. We all knew each other. And there were actually eight from Cohasset that were killed in Vietnam. And so by the time I was in my second or third year of nursing school and going home to a funeral every six months for one of my friends. And I just thought I can't keep doing this and doing nothing and so in those days, 68-69, there were demonstrations right anti-vietnam War demonstrations. And I was thinking, I could either demonstrate against the war, which I wasn't in favor of the war, I could see nothing of much purpose really, I couldn't understand what we were doing over there. Or, but I watched my friends guys, boys, 18-19 years old being drafted and having to go over to Vietnam. And so in my second year of nursing school I had come home to like my third funeral I think in the last one was a really good friend and I remember standing on the hill at the cemetery and saying to another friend I've got to do something. I can't just keep doing this. So I went back to Boston and I found an army recruiter. And I said here I am I've got one more year of nursing school. Will you take me? And of course, he was very pleased the recruiter and so in my third year I raised my right hand knowing that for the next three years of my life, the Army would own me. But I felt that it was with purpose. I mean, what were my choices? I could demonstrate, I could finish nursing school, get a little apartment on Beacon Hill and work at Mass General Hospital, which seemed pretty purposeless to me, or I could go into the army and just and take care of these young young boys that had to go, that had to go, and could die and I felt like my sacrifices minimum compared to theirs because I had no intentions of being killed.

Wow, well when you eventually decided to go to the Army Recruiting office and you told yourself Yep, this is what I'm gonna do. You mentioned how your parents are trying to get deferments for your brother's. Were they pleased, for lack of a better word, about your choice?

I was 19 at the time and it was to me a bit ironic here boys 18 we're being drafted. They had to go by law. And I was 19 and the recruiter told me that my parents had to sign the permission slip for me to join the Army student Nurse Program to go into the army once I graduated. And so I knew when I brought these papers and when I have these papers I'd have to bring them home to my parents. So I didn't know if they would be willing to sign. But after dinner one night. I asked, I sort of played on my father, you know being a Navy veteran, you know, I feel like this is something that I really wanted to do that it will give me purpose and that was important. This will help them and so he was willing to sign to allow me to go. Into the army. I think they didn't want me to go because their intentions for me as a girl, they wanted me to come back from Boston live in Cohasset and work at the nursing home.

And I really did not want to do that. I really wanted to do something more with my life. And I think even then, as I made that decision to go in, it sounded all very altruistic and but there was also another motive there. I really really wanted to go to college and I knew I'd have the GI Bill once I got out and I'd be able to afford to go to college. I could figure my own way to go to college without without, you know, having depend on my parents for any money or anything. I was going to figure out a way to go to college.

I mean, I guess that's one way to do it.

It worked out very well actually.

So from nursing school and into the army, did you have to I guess refocus your nursing studies to accommodate the type of medicine you'd practice in the Army?

you should ask. So it's like did I get an orientation to war time nursing or something? And the answer to that is no, well one one thing happened. I mean, I got a little bit of help, not much though, but, so from nursing school, I graduated from nursing school and then I have to pass my exam, and then I could go to basic training, which I did, so I went down to basic in Texas for six weeks and there they give you uniforms, they teach out a salute, they teach you how to wear the uniform, they put you out in the field with the compass, Oh my goodness,

they teach you how to shoot a gun, which I refused, I refused to take any kind of weapons training. And then I guess it was some medicine lectures. I don't know we were doing tracheostomies on sheep or something, how applicable? I don't know. I suppose though, you know, the uniform, you sort of got an idea of the military life I suppose for six weeks and then right from there. Well, I went home and then I went I reported to duty to Walter Reed here in In DC. Which is where I had chosen to go, to Walter Reed and there they assigned me to the ICU recovery room. And wow, we were, I was taking care of wounded back from Vietnam three or four days post-injury. I worked all kinds of shifts. I was taking care of very sick people. Oh my goodness, you know amputees, head wounds. So that 10 months gave me my experience of what I brought with me to Vietnam. When I came up with orders to go to Vietnam, the anesthesiologist there had heard that I was on orders, and he took me in the back, what we called in the back, to the operating room and he taught me how to start an IV. He knew, he was back from Vietnam, and he knew that I needed to know how to start an IV. And sure enough if there was anything I did over in Vietnam, it was certainly starting IVs. Because essentially what we were doing was treating hypotensive shock, hypovolemic shock, you know, the soldiers would that come in and they would be bled out and you transfuse them filling up with fluids again.

So wow. So, when did you actually arrive in Vietnam?

let's see. 70, October, October, this month, October of 70 and right, right, right. So I was at Reed, they gave me orders, 30 days, so I went home, and then I left out of Washington again by myself, got on a plane to California, and got to the Air Force Base there, and they put me on a plane with a couple hundred GIs, guys, and I think I was in my dress uniform, summer dress uniform, and then flew for 26 hours landed in Saigon. And they put me up in this hut like that had concertina wire around it with a guard. And I wasn't sure if the guard was keeping the bad guys out or me in. I mean it was like, what am I doing? What am I doing? I don't remember if anybody else was there. I was there for three days and I reported to the chief nurse of Saigon, Chief nurse of Vietnam, who was in Saigon, and then she put me on order and ordered me to go up to the 95th evacuation Hospital which was in Da Nang. In I Corps, so it's the northern part of South Vietnam, close to the DMZ. And close to Laos. And so I got on a plane, a C-140 with another couple hundred GIs who they dropped a few of us off, it took us all day, as we went up north and reported to the 95th evacuation Hospital

Wow, so what were your first impressions of the Evac Hospital?

I don't know. I don't know, it was a tough adjustment. It wasn't what I thought, I thought we would all be best friends, you know, here we are in the middle of a war. Colonel Mahoney that was the chief nurse. She was very nice to me and she assigned me to the ICU Recovery Room thinking that was my experience at Walter Reed and that did not go well for me. The nurses, just I don't know, there's something called resentfulness or you know, I was the only one that had any experience of working in a recovery room, and they were not comfortable. So the chief nurse got wind of that. Anyway, within after a couple of weeks, she transferred me down to the what we call pre-op and receiving. The preoperative receiving area. Receiving meaning receiving the wounded from the helipad. And so there was, that's where I met my good friends Chrissy and Annie, and we had a team that worked very well and there were nurses that had been there like six months or a year. So I learned from them. I mean that's just how you learned and it took a couple of months for me, at least a month. I think to feel like comfortable. The wounded would come in and you just had a routine. You cut off their clothes, you put a blood pressure cuff on them, you started a chart, you tried to get their name out of them, and you started the IV's, you did a femoral stick, you've got a tube of blood, you just sent it over to the blood bank, they brought back some O Neg, you started pumping the blood in, you did the wounds, you called the OR, you called the surgeon, and you'd figure out what kind of a surgeon you needed. And the Radio Room people were right there, there was a wall up, but I could yell to them to tell them what to do. And then then I have to get the patient through x-ray. And then they'd go over to the pre-op area or directly up to the operating room. We would stabilize, at least get a blood pressure of 90 and try to stabilize, and then take them up. They could take them up to the OR and then the pre-op area was back up, if the OR got full then I would be over there in pre-op taking care of the others that were waiting to go up to the OR. So when I usually worked with in the daytime our shifts with 7 to 7. 7:00 a.m. 7:00 p.m. Or 7:00 p.m. To 7:00 a.m. In the daytime, there would be like our captain, head nurse, might be there, another Annie or Chrissy and I would be there, two of us. Well, three nurses and then two Corpsmen and a physician, an emergency room physician, who was a partially trained something. And they could be medicine, they could Dermatology, but that was our physician. And if we were lucky enough, we got a partially trained surgeon and I think they did 24 hour shifts and they had a sleeping room. But anyway, so that was my day shift and the wounded would come back but then at night 7:00 p.m. To 7:00 a.m. I was on alone. Just me and sometimes I'd be the hospital supervisor also, which means I had to go around and make Rounds around the whole Hospital. Because you didn't get a lot of wounded in at night. They didn't like to fly at night and I would be there (with) two Corpsman and a physician but they would all go somewhere to sleep. But you know nurses never sleep. I would be the one that would of course have to stay up. And the radio people might be sleeping, too, I don't know, but and I would have to listen for the Choppers if we did get some in but usually not. Then if something came in and we did get them in sometimes that the mass-cashes came in on the on the Chinook helicopter and they could bring 10 or 15 wounded at a time and they would come in like at midnight or something. And so that would be a busy time. Oh needless to say. But that's kind of what it was like when I did the night shift and I'd have those night ships. I hated nights when I came back home, I said I would never ever ever do nights again. I didn't care but you couldn't get a job. Oh.

one of my friends is in medical school, and he just did his night shift stuff. Everyone hates night shifts. So I understand.

very difficult. I used to say because you are going to have to sleep, you know, you go to sleep so you can go to the next night. So we used to call it sleeping uphill. Having to go back to my hooch and and sleep somehow and it was so hard to sleep. You know, it's hot.

Wow, so I guess you just mentioned this, but when the Chinook helicopters would come in at midnight, did they at least give you some warning that they were coming in or was it kind of just a surprise?

usually that's what's the radio people that I forget what with, but I think like right there in that receiving area. There were people that worked in this radio communications area and they were communicating with the choppers for the most part. So I think we would get a heads up. We would get a heads up. I don't know when that, I guess we did when the at night, the Chinook, I guess would somehow call those guys and hopefully they were answering. But I don't remember like a helicopter landing on the helipad and Oh, who are you? You know, I don't remember that and it was pretty organized. I mean, I didn't have to go out to the helicopter. I never had to go to the helicopter. I had Corpsmen and then we have these liaison people, Marines Navy, guys that were hanging around when the wounded came in, they would get their names and contact the unit and do all that kind of stuff. So they were also guys so they could take the gurneys out to the helicopter and bring the wounded into to me, to us, and then we would put them on the saw horses and start going to work with them. So I don't remember ever having to do that. I always had enough help to do that. II remember they would bring the KIA's in, meaning the dead bodies would come in, in the body bags and we had the only more ago we had a more beer. So I do remember having to go through the body bags and try to find some kind of ID and make a chart on these did as best I could.

that must have been tough.

after, I remember doing that after working nights, we got a, we must have gotten a mass-cash in. And somebody, and I said, okay. I'm exhausted. I'm not but I can do this, you know it's a kind of like how can you screw this up? I can do this, you know, and I remember being there with the body bags and doing the charting.

So what would the like whole charting process look like? I guess look like for both KIA or just wounded?

The wounded wasn't very sophisticated. All I remember is a folder, Brown folder, that had just probably just two sheets of paper there. And it was just you know, and you just write down a name, age, you try to get the Age out of him. And then you'd probably be writing Vital Signs, blood pressure, heart rate. We had no EKG machines. We had a blood pressure cuff, you slap a cuff on and then somebody might be taking the blood pressure and I'm up here by the head with the chart and they might yell out a blood pressure. So, I'd write down a blood pressure. And I don't remember if we even wrote down like, you know, right IV started right arm, but I think what we wrote down with wounds AK AM, BK AM, meaning above-the-knee amputation, below-the-knee amputation, bilateral amputation, head wound, level of Consciousness, were they alert, were they awake? And then and then we had another piece of paper that was for X-ray and there you just access what do we need x-rayed? If the wound is the leg, you know get the leg, if there's abdominal wounds, get an abdominal x-ray, is it a chest wound, get a chest x-ray, is it a head wound? So you'd write down on the paper that went over to X-ray and you'd put that in the chart. And other than that, you know you were lucky to get a name out of them and an age and most of them were 18 19 years old. And of course you didn't get any address or unit. The guys, the Liaisons might have been talking to him and getting the unit and then we had a logbook. I remember we had a logbook. And we logged every patient in there and I think that the Liaisons would do that because I don't remember writing in that book. And then if we got Vietnamese wounded and I had a Vietnamese nurse that worked there with me, Minh. And of course, she could talk to the Vietnamese patients and she would log them into that book. And that was the only way we were keeping track of who we were seeing and treating.

if a South Vietnamese Soldier came in, did that just make everything a little bit harder for you doing all the charting and triage?

Why?

I guess just because of the language barrier.

No, no. No.

wasn't really a lot of talking going on. I mean, what are you going to talk about? And I mean we but we would get in NVA and we had a, we had a, Oh golly. You know, I want to say we had a ward for the enemy. Okay, I'm blanking on the name, we had a ward anyways, so so they would come in to us if they were captured and the CIA would come in with them. Meaning, to interrogate them, so I could be working on this NVA wounded and the CIA guy who's in civilian clothes is interrogating him at the same time that I'm trying to start some IVs, get him stabilized. So that was an interesting experience. Of course the CIA interrogation was going on, of course, in Vietnamese, and I don't course I didn't (speak Vietnamese). I wouldn't have known anything anyway, because we knew very little about what the war was about. And I remember one time a wounded coming in, a GI. And this was later and I had been there a while, and and I asked him. Or maybe one of the surgeons asked him. Where were you injured? And he said is this when I tell the truth or tell what I'm supposed to tell? or say what I'm supposed to say? And so from that we knew that he had been in Laos.

Wow.

we would keep up with the news a little bit but not a lot, but I don't know how we heard the news. It isn't like we had TV. We have TVs, but you weren't watching TV. I had a little tiny [TV] that had the ARVN station, you know, but it wasn't regular TV. But we knew that we weren't supposed to be in Laos. And yet we were taking care of wounded from Laos.

So like did was there I guess some giant unspoken rule of just like, oh this guy was from Laos, we can't say that, and like did that whole I guess air of mystery just transfer into how you took care of him?

No, you know where they came from or what they were up to, what they were doing. I mean No, we didn't really get into that, that much. Because we didn't understand the war anyway, I mean most of us, all of us, just wanted it to be over. We just saw this waste of wounded that we saw every day. It was just such an awful awful waste and a horrible thing that was happening to both our guys and the Vietnamese people.

I went over there thinking I would find some answers as to why we were in this War. I really did. And, because I didn't understand, you know, you heard about the Domino Theory and you heard, I don't know. And then I get over there and I asked the Vietnamese people. I thought maybe they knew why we were fighting this war. And when I asked Minh and others it was she said, you know, I have friends and family up in North Vietnam. I want to go to North Vietnam and visit my family, and then another, and I'd ask them about democracy and they'd say, Democracy? I'm wondering where I'm going to get dinner, get my dinner tonight. So they couldn't get answers. So I asked the GI soldiers, you know, if they knew. They didn't know, they were there because Uncle Sam told them you had to be there. So I didn't find a lot of purpose, to it all. So it became quite cynical, perhaps. and we even, there was a, you know, a bunch of us. I made a lot of good friends with surgeons and nurses and we would get together, and especially when someone was leaving, and would have a get-together party and everything, at the end of the party, we would go get around in a circle and when sing You've Got a Friend. By James Taylor and then we would pound on the floor with our feet, (shouting) Peace Now, Peace Now. We were serious.

Wow, so I guess with the rest of the nurses and doctors at the hospital. What was your everyday interaction with the rest of the folks at the hospital?

of the interaction took place with the nurses and doctors that I worked with so we had you know, Chrissy and Annie there in pre-op and receiving and then Kathy would come down from the OR and Jerry Hood was a surgeon and another couple of surgeons, I knew the surgeons of course, and the neurosurgeons, and EMT, and we've known them all. I mean, you worked 12 hours. You finished up at seven, you already had dinner because you'd go for dinner to the mess hall at five. So you only had a couple of hours. We had an O Club, Officer's Club, and would change, I would change into civilian clothes because my chief nurse from Walter Reed told me she said make sure you get out of that uniform, and I think she was making the point of to feel human, to feel like a girl again, you know to to feel. Of course it

was, you know a unique situation where there were so few women and lots of men and so. That whole thing. But, it wasn't, it was, not that it was a problem, but I was aware. I remember writing to my mother and asking her to send me a bathing suit because the 95th Evac was in Da Nang which is right on the water and we actually had a place not too far away called China Beach. You probably heard of the show China Beach, and well that was a real place and that's where we went on our days off to China Beach. It was a beautiful beach with an officer's club and I could go in uniform and change into a bathing suit and go out on the beach. And, but, I asked her to send me a bathing suit, but I said make it be like a nun bathing suit, you know, I didn't want to be wearing a two-piece, whatever, bikini, or something, you know, I mean it was so there was that and and I think for me as a woman too, I figured as a girl, I figured out that I was a woman, I was an officer, and I was a nurse. Those three identities, and so they were even in conflict sometimes. Like I came over there to be a nurse. I didn't come over there to be an officer to boss people around. I didn't come over there even though I was an officer. I didn't come over there to be a girl, to do girl stuff. So when that girl thing, sometimes that identity people would notice. I don't know if I'm making any sense at all, but they treat me like a girl instead of a nurse.

I think I understand what you're getting at. It's I guess that whole idea is kind of like, worked it's way. I don't want to say, worked his way into popular culture, but I understand what you're getting at.

It's changed, its changed, but imagine what it is today. It was so much more so then. And I mean I felt it, I felt you know. Like the Donut Dollies that came over there. I had trouble with that. Coming over to be in a war. So the boys could see girls or something. I had difficulty with that.

really only imagine and wow. Well, I guess circling back to the topic of free time and I guess R&R because you mentioned the beach. What else I guess was there to do in your free time if you even had any?

right, right, right. I was thinking right about that. I can't remember, before Vietnam. Did I like right now? Of course and I think it's time. I don't know when it started, but I'm a regular exerciser, you know, I would be jogging or swimming, but I didn't have that, there was no way to have it, I didn't do that, have regular exercise, you know, as I said, really you only had a couple hours. I remember Chrissy and I'd be walking back to our hooches, we lived in a, we called it a hooch, but it was a Barracks well, but officers,

we had our own Hooch. I had my own room. It was about 10 x 12 with a door, you know, and and it had, it wasn't really a closet, but some shelves there. Anna and a cot with a thin mattress like this single Twin cot to sleep on, and a folding chair, but that was that was pretty good, you know, and then in the middle of the barracks was there were the showers in the bathroom, she had to walk out to get to the show, but at least we had showers we had water and so and then there was a picnic table out there and then there was the bunker, bunker so when there was a mass-alert, the siren would go off and, in my room, I had a flak jacket and a helmet so we were told to put that on. Go to the bunker. I didn't like going to the bunker because it was dark and cooler and there was snakes in there and and then you never know who you're going to end up with in there. I mean, they could be, God, I remember one time some Marine is in there with an M16 he starts shooting and I was like, oh my God, what am I doing? Because we were close to the Officer's Club. So what

would we do? I mean so you get changed to go over to the club, and you know with our friends, and then if we had a planned party we'd all go over there, but it all had to be over by 10:00 or 11:00 because you had to get up so early in the morning. I think Navy, sometimes would go over to Navy, if we had a vehicle. I didn't drive but somebody did, and they had movies over there. Sometimes we had a movie at our place that showed on the back of a building and the patient's could come and watch it and we would too. And then really, on a day off what pretty much all the time I go down we go down to China Beach now I couldn't drive and I had to be in uniform and I could stand at the at the at the hospital exit/entrance and ask somebody if they would take me to China Beach. So I couldn't get out there and just walk out anywhere. I had to be in a military vehicle. That was willing to take me to my destination, to China Beach, then I don't know how I got back, but I felt safe enough over there doing that. But I didn't, I made a promise to myself that I would not get in a helicopter just for the heck of it. I got in a helicopter when I was ordered to get into a helicopter, which I was a few times to go out to the Sanctuary, the hospital ship. The Navy hospital ship was stationed right there. You could see it from our hospital. So we made a couple of trips out there and then sometimes the generals wanted to have dinner with the nurses. So my chief nurse would order me to have dinner and they would have a Chinook, the military helicopter to pick me up and go have dinner with the generals. And that, I wasn't happy about, but I had to do it. Then we had R&R so I took a trip to Bangkok for a week, and I did a trip to Hong Kong for a week. But the everyday kind of stuff, you know, there just wasn't a lot a lot of time. But but you know, I mean, but at the same time I want to say that I just had made some very very close friends you can imagine.

I'm sure like all that I guess shared experience like really makes you close with somebody. And I guess one thing that just popped into my head was how, with this whole shared camaraderie, did that kind of keep you and keep everybody at the hospital like focused in the zone and I guess like sane?

Maybe that was it. Maybe that's. What we, how do I say, that we didn't, like. People back here probably knew what was, more, was going on with the war than we did. We just know to take care of the Wounded. We just stayed focused, as you said on what our job was. What was my job today, you get up in the morning, you get the uniform on, your walk over to the pre-op and receiving, you wait for the wounded, I mean you say good morning to Chrissy who's been on nights, Go ahead go get some sleep, and you wait for the wounded. And sometimes you know the OR nurse would come down or Tony or Jerry would come over or Dan, the docs would come by and say good morning and chat and then Harvey, he was our radiologist, would come over and and the corpsman, of course, but I don't remember like, a nurse back in the world, what we call back in the world, you'd have in-services. You'd have patient get togethers, you know, you'd have patient conferences and talk about patients. And that was one thing that struck me. In Vietnam, that after a couple of months of this or whatever, there were no patient conferences. There were no chatting, even Annie, Chrissy, and I, we would not talk about patients. And I did not bring one name home and I remember thinking that over there, this is strange, but I think that was a coping mechanism. We wouldn't go home, like when we finished up and went home, I remember sitting at the picnic bench one one night with with Chrissy and maybe Annie and for a couple hours with a bottle of Jack Daniels or something. And I remember looking back and thinking we never mentioned one patient. No, no, no, you know it was like I don't know. We must have probably talked about home or our families or something. But we wouldn't talk about patients.

I mean that makes sense really.

we talked about it when we came home, when we all. I ended up in Colorado eventually with Annie and Chrissy and Kathy and Dan and Tony and Jerry and and then we would talk. Oh, did we talk.

I'm sure that was helpful to say the least. But very, I don't want to say nostalgic because I feel like that's the wrong word.

No it was very unstructured group therapy. I mean, I think it was like over there coping mechanism was you don't talk about it. But, and I remember thinking over there, there's going to be a price to pay. I'm going to have to pay a price for this. And sure enough when I get home, I had a touch of that PTSD and I'm you know getting back and getting to Colorado with my friends. And it was like unstructured group therapy, but unbeknownst to us because remember back then there was no such thing as PTSD. It hadn't started, in by how do you treat it as you know, but we figured out I figured out if I can get back with my friends from Vietnam, just be with them. Maybe some healing can take place. And I was fortunate that I was able to do that a lot of Veterans were not able to do that. You were expected to come back to the world, and go on with your life. If you were really healthy you just put that behind you go on with your life.

So when you eventually arrived back home, I guess first of all, when did you arrive back?

I was supposed to stay for a year, and In August. Oh, I wanted to go, I wanted to go to college, you know, and I had applied while I was in Vietnam. I applied to Colorado University and Indiana University and I got accepted and so then I put papers in for a drop, the soldiers were getting School drops because the war was standing down this was 71. And so I said, okay I'm going to apply for school drop so I won't miss that fall semester. See if I can get out of here in August and be able to start right away. So, and I started this process I can February. Well, I never heard, I never heard, I never heard, so I went to the IT that was coming to the hospital and I told him I put my papers in and I haven't heard anything. So he said, okay, I'll look into it. So he got back to me and he said oh they lost your papers. And I said, oh I bet they fell out of the airplane on their way back to Washington DC, being facetious, and so then I was working nights and sitting there by myself and thinking I got to do something I got to do something. I want to go to school. I got myself accepted. I want to go to school. I don't want to miss a semester. What am I going to do? So I sat down and I wrote, a hand wrote a eight-page letter to Ted Kennedy. Senator Ted Kennedy, who is my senator from Massachusetts and I knew as an officer in the Army. This would limit my career days in the Army. You do not write a letter to your Senator when you're on active duty as an officer in the army. And I knew I didn't know if somebody would would read the letter before it even got out of country because they were censoring, they, you know, who knew it would even make it back to kids Kennedy. Well, I did it in six days later the chief nurse on Sunday, I was working days, she comes running down the hall the hallway there and said McCarthy go pack your bags. You're out of here. And that was my goodbye party from the 95th Evac and you know, I guess so I found a friend John Wroblewski who worked with me, and a surgeon, and I said, they want me out, I'm out of here. He said okay. I got a jeep, I knew that he had a jeep so he had my flak jacket and helmet, I packed my bags and he took me to the airport and Da Nang and I flew down to Cu Chi or Chu Lai. And reported there and said I'm supposed to go home. I didn't have any written orders, but I had some piece of paper. I don't know. So anyway, they got me home. I think I got home August 10th, and I went

home for about a week. Oh I interviewed in Indiana. I stopped in California. I processed out of the army. No sleep, 26 hours, walking around, getting out, the guy hands me money, says okay, bye-bye. That was, that was, very difficult. But I flew to Indiana, I went saw the dean there. Still not having had sleep, you know, then went home to Massachusetts for about a week. And then drove my new car that I had ordered in Vietnam. I had ordered, everybody else's ordering cameras and stereo equipment, I ordered an MGB Roadster, sports car from England and went to New York with my brother and picked up the car, and then I drove to Indiana and started school.

Wow, well, I guess when you started school, did you, like I know it was, the whole popular opinion is that when vets got back and tried to go to school their haircuts kind of gave them away. Was there any stigma for like nurses or doctors who were in Vietnam?

a Woman. In Indiana, I had a friend, a guy that I liked, that I was going with, seeing, before I went to Vietnam. That's why I ended up in Indianapolis. But I went to this, yeah, College. Indiana university, Purdue University at Indianapolis, IUPUI. And I had an English teacher there some old lady and she asked me what country I was from, I mean, because I still had this New England accent, Boston accent. I guess, you know and I'm thinking this is not going to go well, and I remember that the English comp teacher asking. I want you to write a paragraph everybody write a paragraph about what you did over the summer. Of course, they're all whatever, you know, and I and then she said I want you to read it and, oh my God, I remember I got up there to read it and I just started crying. It's very very difficult. And that's when I knew, I mean I couldn't, I was, but I, so yeah, it was Indiana wasn't acceptable. I mean it wasn't, I was very out of place in Indiana, but I kept going, you know, I passed all my classes and then I got a part-time job and I thought okay. What am I? I guess I'm an emergency-room nurse. So I got a PR job in a City Hospital there in Indianapolis. And and I realized that I was in no shape to be (there). I remember old lady came in and I had student working with me a student nurse and I said, okay go with her. She was in a bed. She had a broken hip I said go ahead with her over to x-ray. So the student comes back a little while later and she's crying, then I said, what are you crying about? And she said she died. And I thought, I hope I didn't say it, but I thought it, you're crying over that? And that's when I knew I was so numb and I was thinking like you're crying over that? I held a guy in my arms as he died 10 days ago. And so that was tough. You know, I knew I was having trouble. But I kept going in school I kept going and, but I was in touch with my friends in Colorado. And in December, I made a decision, and I was very depressed. I knew I was depressed. I wasn't eating, I wasn't sleeping, I lost a lot of weight, I was having nightmares, I'd sleep every other night, in the nights I slept I'd have nightmares about I was back in Vietnam. So I had, unbeknownst to me, classic PTSD, and so I got some help. I went to see a priest actually and he saw me a couple times a week and he helped me get to make that decision to go ahead out to Colorado to be with my friends in Colorado. So that's what I did and in January. In December I drove home for Christmas and then I just kept going driving back to Colorado. So it was tough coming home.

Wow. Thank you for sharing that. I can only really imagine. Darn, well, I know we're kind of running close on time, so I'll just wrap up with this one final question, which is, are there any questions I should have asked you?

No, no. No. No, do you think I did we miss anything? I don't know.

It's it's your story. I don't wanna be all, you know authoring it or anything. If you if there's anything that you felt like I missed, or something that you want to share that we just glossed over, anything.

I guess maybe, and I've heard this, you know, I talked about the GI Bill and anyway in Vietnam, having this Five-Year Plan, when I was in Vietnam, it's just I think amazing now looking back on it, but my plan was to get into college, finish up my college degree, and then become a nurse anesthetist, because at Walter Reed, I'd run into nurse anesthetists and then in Vietnam I did, but it also I realized in Vietnam that I could do this. I mean, this is amazing if I can do this what I did in Vietnam, I can be a nurse anesthetist, which before that it was like, oh my God, what they do is too scary, but Vietnam gave me the guts and the confidence and experience to say I can become a nurse anesthetist. So that made that five year plan three years getting my college degree and it makes sense to me to go and get that college degree first. I took courses like physiology and some chemistry that would enhance my anesthesia education. So I so I did that, I went to Colorado, you know, and I kept going in my school work. I finished up the degree there. And then while I was doing that I applied to Anesthesia school at Fairfax Hospital here in Washington, Virginia, and I went to Anesthesia school there. And then I practiced as a nurse anesthetist for several years and I had the GI Bill. So I was really able to do this without much of a strain at all. I mean and then I practiced for a few years and I wasn't, I wanted something more. So I applied to the Uniformed Services University. I was working back at Walter Reed has a civilian nurse anesthetist. So that was wonderful. And then I applied to the Uniformed Services University and I went there and got my PhD in physiology and that was all free, but all that, you know, military government education they paid for it. And I never felt, I felt like they owed me, you know, like I mean not in a resentful way, but this is, I don't have to feel bad about this at all. And I guess it showed me there is a path if you want something bad enough. There is a path. You can find a way to get there. And like your in your in your school work now, you know, you can, you can find a path. And just put the excuses aside and go on your path and put one foot in front of the other. It does work out. Yeah.

Yeah, I agree with that sentiment. Well, I'd like to just thank you on the record for your time and allowing me to record this. It means the world to me and I know if later down the line wants to research like Hospital work in Vietnam. They're going to be just over the moon that I did this. So you're not only helping little old me but you're also helping any number of future historians to come and I just really want to thank you. So I'll recording.