We Were There by Yvonne Latty

Author:Yvonne Latty
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2012-11-15T00:00:00+00:00

I knew the Tet Offensive was going to happen. There were terrible disadvantages of being a black woman in the war, but advantages, too. The black troops seek you. The troops had intercepted communications about the Tet Offensive and they told me it was coming. The first round came in, a rocket at two A.M., and I heard it from a distance. It was a horrible sound and I said, “Good God, we’re being hit.” And as I said it, the hospital got hit and then there was a steady barrage for an hour. At the time there were only two nurses that were combat-trained and I was in surgical intensive care. We used radiophones then, and I got called. The director of nursing was screaming, “Captain Allen, Captain Allen. You have to go to work.” I said, “Will someone walk me to my unit? It’s like three A.M. and the rockets are still coming in.” After a silence, she said, “We don’t have anybody. You have to walk by yourself. Don’t forget your flak jacket, steel pot,* and be careful.” When I hung up I thought, If I could walk across that field I could do anything.

When I came out, the hospital was on fire, and then I saw the unit for surgical intensive care. I opened the door and this poor nurse, she was about twenty-two and she was so frightened. Some of the guys had fallen out of the bed and wounds had broken up, stomachs were open. They were bleeding. It was bedlam. I walked in there knowing I was in charge and I had to make that work, and I did. I was good.

For the next two months we were attacked a lot. I had nurses sleeping under the GIs’ beds. When we got hit we would get the wounded on the floor, get them out of the line of fire. They’d have casts on their arms and legs. They’d have IVs in the neck. They’d be blind with drainage tubes and a catheter and you had to get them out of their beds and onto cots on a cement floor.

The minute they hit the cold cement they had to pee and that meant someone had to help them with that. I made sure they had blankets on the floor, which lessened the chance of them peeing. Guys who were really badly injured, I would put them down on the floor when I came on. They weren’t whiners. They could be hurting and bleeding and let me tell you something, they didn’t whine. One time we could hear the Vietcong, hear the guns clicking; they were that close. I was under the bed with a kid who was blind and couldn’t walk. He was a kid, about nineteen. He was patting me on the leg, telling me, “Don’t worry, Captain, I’ll protect you.” I said, “Don’t you worry, baby. That’s all right.”

That was every day, every day—shit. War is war. It ain’t what these people think it is.

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