Women in the Vietnam War: Nurses, Journalists, and Spies

The official records would later show that approximately 11,000 American women served in Vietnam, but this number tells only part of the story. Military nurses comprised the largest group, with over 5,000 Army nurses, nearly 1,000 Navy nurses, and several hundred Air Force nurses providing medical care that saved thousands of lives. These women joined a medical system unprepared for the intensity and volume of casualties that characterized combat in Southeast Asia, where helicopter evacuation brought critically wounded soldiers to field hospitals within minutes of being injured.

Captain Linda Martinez arrived at the 3rd Surgical Hospital in Dong Tam in early 1967, fresh from nursing school and unprepared for the reality of treating multiple gunshot wounds, traumatic amputations, and severe burns on young men barely older than herself. Her letters home described the shock of seeing soldiers her own age arrive with injuries that challenged every medical technique she had learned. The operating rooms ran continuously during major operations, with nurses working eighteen-hour shifts while mortar rounds occasionally landed close enough to shake the surgical lights.