Our Vietnam Nurses by Annabelle Brayley

Author:Annabelle Brayley
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781760141608
Publisher: Penguin Random House Australia
Published: 2016-03-27T16:00:00+00:00

Nearly two decades after they returned, out of the blue, Von had a nightmare that a man was holding a very big gun to her chest, screaming at her in Vietnamese. She woke gasping for breath, pulse racing, clammy with sweat and fear, unable to grasp all the edges of the dream. Her thumping heart echoed in her ears, in time with the pounding of the gun barrel jabbing into her chest, and yet she was still unable to remember all the details of that shocking night. The nightmare images continued to shatter her sleep, but she told no one until an RSL friend urged all of the civilian nurses he knew to seek psychiatric assessment. Frame by frame, the doctor helped Von draw every last memory of the incident out of her head; in the process he diagnosed her post-traumatic stress disorder. When the dreams stopped, Von realised the value of talking about her particular demons.

Maureen, on the other hand, spoke of her experiences right from the start. She talked to her family and friends and, not long after her return, her parents asked her to do a slide presentation in Mallacoota, where they had resettled. A large crowd turned up and listened to her stories late into the night.

Just a few years ago, Maureen got talking to a fellow on a train who turned out to be a Vietnam veteran. After he learnt she’d also been in Vietnam, he asked her if she’d come to his local RSL and talk to his wife about her experiences, as he’d had difficulty describing his. Maureen went, taking Von and some other nurses with her. In the weeks that followed, the numbers in the group grew as the wives found the nurses easy to relate to and began to understand what their husbands were unable to articulate. The benefit went both ways. Von and Maureen both believe it was talking about their experiences that helped them most.

Looking back, both women feel genuine satisfaction that they were able to help the Vietnamese so constructively. Between 1966 and 1972, thanks to the contribution of all the civilian nurses who worked there, conditions improved at Bien Hoa. A new hospital was built and more reliable supply chains for the necessary resources were eventually established. All of the visiting nurses were passionate about teaching their Vietnamese counterparts skills that they could utilise long after the teams had left, and Von and Maureen agree that one of the things that gratified them most was the development of a proper nurse-training program that is still going, all these years later, ensuring continuity of the kind of care they provided during the war.

As Maureen enters her seventy-second and Von her eighty-seventh year, although both have serious health concerns, they say they are very pleased to be able to sleep peacefully without nightmares. And when they go out they feel free to sit anywhere, no longer compelled to sit with their backs to the wall.

Civilian nurse Maureen Spicer crouching

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