The Vietnam War was a transformative period for American society, including the young nurses who found themselves on the front lines of care.
Among these nurses were several graduates of the Massachusetts General Hospital (MGH) School of Nursing, whose commitment to serve brought them to the heart of the war effort.
From evacuation hospitals in South Vietnam to critical care units back in the United States, their experiences reflect a story of courage, adaptability, and dedication.
As part of the MGH Nurses’ Alumni Association’s oral history project, four nurses who served during the Vietnam War were interviewed and then later participated in a panel presentation focusing on their personal and professional stories of service.
Their stories are a testament to the strength, resilience, courage and adaptability of nurses who faced unimaginable challenges.
These nurses saved countless lives, comforted countless soldiers facing death, often in conditions that would have seemed unimaginable to their civilian counterparts.
Their legacy continues to inspire, reminding us of the vital role nurses play in times of conflict, and the enduring impact of their courage and care.
Map of MGH Nurse Deployments in Vietnam
Answering the Call
Sheila Long, a 1965 graduate of the MGH School of Nursing, answered the call to serve in 1966 and was stationed at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon.
Just two years later, Barbara Goral, class of 1967, was assigned to the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Củ Chi, deeper in the South Vietnamese interior.
Jane McCarthy, a 1969 MGH graduate, began her service at Walter Reed before transferring to the 95th Evacuation Hospital in Da Nang, South Vietnam.
While these women faced the intense realities of a war zone, their fellow alumna Roberta “Bobbie” Nemeskal was assigned stateside, working in military hospitals from 1969 to 1970 at Walter Reed Army Hospital in Washington, DC, and McAfee Army Hospital at White Sands, New Mexico.
Why Join the Army Nurse Corps?
These nursing students chose to join the Army Nurse Corps while still in nursing school. Their average age was between twenty and twenty-one years old.
Sheila Long sought an adventure that would provide both professional fulfillment and life experience. She heard about the Army Nurse Corps through "idle conversation," and noted that war was "never mentioned in the recruitment process." The program offered to pay for her senior year in nursing school, which was a significant incentive.
Jane McCarthy recounted going home every six months to attend the funerals of high school friends or neighbors [who were killed in the war] and thinking, “I have to do something, I’m going to be a nurse.” Although McCarthy was not in favor of the war at all, she felt that providing care to injured soldiers was "the right and moral thing to do."
Barbara Goral had a similar epiphany while watching the Vietnam War unfold on her television screen. “I sat up and said, ‘I’m joining the Army.’” She added, “The wounds were horrific. And the need for medical care was just so great I said, I have something to offer. I really felt that I had the best training in the world [at MGH] and that I could do anything. I had that confidence—absolutely.”
Roberta Nemeskal sought to be of service and enlisted. Her husband was stationed in Vietnam while she served in military hospitals in the U.S.
Life on the Front Lines
Sheila Long's first impression of war came from working in neurosurgery at Letterman General Hospital, where she encountered severely wounded soldiers from Vietnam. She recalls, "I thought, ‘This is what war looks like.’” She volunteered to go to Vietnam and asked to work in a Mash-type unit.
The realities of war hit as soon as they set foot in Vietnam. Long recalls the moment of arrival: "The dreadful heat. And the smell. And at the time, you could hear mortar rounds going off but especially the heat and the sweat. It was a jungle, tropical, hot, hot, dreadful, hot.”
For Long, the adjustment was not just to the environment but also in the immediacy of the work. Asked how long it took before she was on duty, she simply replied, “Oh, two days.”
Barbara Goral’s experience at the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Củ Chi, Vietnam, was no less intense. The hospital was located near the infamous Củ Chi tunnels, a network used by the Viet Cong to infiltrate South Vietnam. Every day, nurses treated soldiers who had fought mere yards from the enemy.
The demands placed on nurses were unrelenting. Goral worked 12-14 hour shifts with no days off for months.
“There were continuous enemy activities and horrific injuries,” she recounted. “The conditions were challenging, both in terms of the workload and the limited resources we had at our disposal. When mortar rounds might hit the hospital, we had to put the patients on the floor for protection.”
In addition to providing acute, emergent care, these nurses had many other trying moments, such as telling young soldiers that they were unable to save their limb(s) or sitting with dying patients holding their hands.
Field Expediency: Innovation in Crisis
The shortages of supplies and equipment forced creative ingenuity. Sheila Long remembers how rocks were used as weights for manual traction for a double amputee in lieu of proper medical equipment.
“Field expediency” became a necessary skill, and nurses learned to improvise under dire circumstances. This ingenuity was crucial to providing care amidst constant shortages and unpredictable conditions.
In some cases, this meant trading or bartering for supplies, while in others, it involved creatively repurposing available items.
Published accounts of similar experiences, such as Peggy Adams’ description in "Field Expediency: 85th Evacuation," illustrate how, when the hospital ran out of orthopedic instruments, a nurse famously sterilized a claw hammer and chisel borrowed from a nearby Navy ship.
Gentamicin was the antibiotic used to treat pseudomonas infections. “It was so precious we had to keep it locked in our narcotics box."
Many soldiers got blood transfusions. "We would make decisions about how many transfusions to give the soldiers," recalls Barbara Goral. "We would just take them out of the refrigerator, hang them up. Nobody was typed and crossmatched. So if they had a reaction, we would give them some IV Benadryl."
The Psychological Toll
While the physical challenges of war were immense, the psychological impact on nurses was profound. The emotional detachment experienced by nurses became a coping mechanism, as many had witnessed the deaths of young soldiers firsthand, leading them to suppress their feelings in order to continue their work.
Sheila Long described the coping mechanisms nurses used. “It’s not thought through. It’s put into a little spot in your memory bank which you can open from time to time.” The trauma was often compartmentalized, left unspoken except among fellow veterans. As Long noted, “You just kept it to yourself... Talked only with our buddies.”
Jane McCarthy reported that while in Vietnam, “There was lots of camaraderie and support among the staff." They would talk about their experiences in general terms. “We never talked about specific patients because we might break down and not be able to put ourselves back together again.'"
McCarthy's account of dealing with trauma once back in the States reveals the emotional numbness many nurses developed.
“Unbeknownst to me, I had classic post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD)," McCarthy said. "But in those days, there was no such thing as PTSD; they hadn't come up with that diagnosis. And when it was finally identified and described, it was for the soldiers. Nurses don't have PTSD. Why would nurses? It's soldiers."
"I had become numb because of the wounds, because of the atrocities I had witnessed and taken care of," McCarthy said. "And there were other classic symptoms of PTSD. I had trouble sleeping, I slept every other night. And the nights I slept, I had nightmares that I was back in Vietnam again. I was hyper vigilant—any loud noise or something, I'd be down on the floor."
Despite the overwhelming challenges, many nurses found a deep sense of purpose in their work. As reported by F.T. Norton in the Reno Gazette Journal article "Army Nurse Remembers Vietnam," Sheila Long reflected, “I think of the good that we did… and I couldn’t be prouder."
For Long and many others, the war fundamentally changed their lives and their approach to nursing. “It changed the whole course of my life as far as attitude, ethics, work environment."
Returning Home: The Struggles of Reentry
Returning to civilian life proved difficult for many nurses. Sheila Long found that she had become, “Intolerant of incompetence. If you don’t do it right, somebody gets hurt.”
Jane McCarthy’s struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were compounded by a lack of understanding or acknowledgment from those around her. The emotional toll of her time in Vietnam lingered, and she found it difficult to reintegrate into a world that seemed oblivious to the war. “In the airport when going home, I saw everyone sitting around and wondered, ‘Don’t they know there’s a war going on?’”
Bobbie Nemeskal said that when she went to work at a non-military hospital, she thought she would be thanked for her service, “But no one wanted to talk about Vietnam.”
In fact, all four nurses reported that no one seemed to care about their military service during the war.
Sheila Long, like many veterans, found solace in returning to familiar surroundings. She went back to Letterman Army Hospital, caring for wounded soldiers stateside where she felt like she belonged. Yet her time in Vietnam left a lasting mark. “I can hear a helicopter before anybody. The sound reminds me...they’re bringing in the casualties.”
For some nurses, Vietnam became a defining part of their identities. Jane McCarthy, who later reconnected with fellow Vietnam veterans in Colorado, found healing in shared memories. “We just talked and talked and talked about Vietnam. It was safe to talk about our experiences once we were out of Vietnam.”
The Legacy of Vietnam
The nurses who served in Vietnam carried their experiences with them long after the war ended.
For Sheila Long, Jane McCarthy, Barbara Goral, Bobbie Nemeskal, and others, their service was a source of pride.
“I think of the lives that came home because of the nurses that were there,” Long said. “In my career, I have never given so much and received so much in return.”
Their stories are a testament to the strength, resilience, courage and adaptability of nurses who faced unimaginable challenges. These nurses saved countless lives, comforted countless soldiers facing death, often in conditions that would have seemed unimaginable to their civilian counterparts.
Their legacy continues to inspire, reminding us of the vital role nurses play in times of conflict, and the enduring impact of their courage and care.
Reflections on their MGH Nursing School education
All of the nurses expressed how the education they received at the MGH School of Nursing prepared them to care for the wounded in a war zone.
“Kudos to Mass General," said Sheila Long. "The training. One thing I had already learned was to emphasize, organize and prioritize [and] they were right. I am forever grateful that I had the MGH education that provided me the force to take on whatever it took to carry on.”
“What impresses me most is how amazing a group of women that we turned out to be! MGH certainly had something to do with that," said Barbara Goral. "I never realized how 'famous' MGH was and how admired and possibly envied the nurses who trained there were."
“It wasn’t until really I left Mass General that I realized what an education I got here, what an experience I got there," said Jane McCarthy. " I guess when we’re exposed to those experiences, we don’t really know, but we carry them with us”
"I never could have done the things that I did in my life without the education from the School of Nursing," said Bobbie Nemeskal. "It was a tough place to be, but you had to be pretty tough to go to MGH. And when you got out, you knew you were pretty good”.
Authorship:
Andrew Glyman, Intern, Mass General Research Institute
Christine Rich, MS, RN, MGH Nurses’ Alumni Association
Susan Fisher, RN, MGH Nurses’ Alumni Association
Mary Larkin, MS, RN, MGH Nurses’ Alumni Association
Nicoletta Valenzano, MPH, Senior Communications Specialist, Mass General Brigham
Brian Burns, Director of Research Communications, Mass General Brigham
Works Cited:
Goral, Barbara, MGH School of Nursing 1967. Oral History Transcript. Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association, 2015.
Long, Sheila, MGH School of Nursing 1965. Oral History Transcript. Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association, 2014.
McCarthy, Jane. "My Reflections on Serving as an Army Nurse in Vietnam." AANA Journal, 8 Apr. 2020, pp. 1-14.
McCarthy, Jane, MGH School of Nursing 1969. Oral History Transcript. Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association, 2014.
Nemeskal, Roberta “Bobbie” , MGH School of Nursing 1969. Oral History Transcript. Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association, 2015.
"Panel Presentation with Graduate Nurses." Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association Panel Presentation, September 2015.
Norton, F.T. "Army Nurse Remembers Vietnam." Reno Gazette Journal, [Day] [Month] [Year].
Sarnecky, Mary T. "Field Expediency: The 85th Evacuation Hospital." Journal of Military Medicine, 1985.
Acknowledgement Section:
Massachusetts General Hospital Nurses’ Alumni Association Archival Collections. Special thanks to the graduates who shared their stories. We would be interested in hearing from other nurses who served. Please contact Andrew Glyman at AGLYMAN@mgh.harvard.edu
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