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Officer, nurse, woman : the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War
- Author
- Vuic, Kara Dixon, 1977-
- Title
- Officer, nurse, woman : the Army Nurse Corps in the Vietnam War / Kara Dixon Vuic.
- Format
- Book
- Edition
- Pbk. ed.
- Published
- Baltimore : Johns Hopkins University Press, 2011.
- Description
- xii, 271 p., [16] p. of plates : ill. ; 23 cm.
- Uniform series
- War, society, culture.
- Notes
- Includes bibliographical references and index.
- Contents
-
- Introduction: "Lady, you're in the army now"
- "The bright adventure of army nursing" : meeting nursing demands for the Vietnam War
- "An officer and a gentleman" : gender and a changing army
- "A wonderful, horrible experience" : nursing education and practice
- "Helmets and hair curlers" : gender and wartime nursing
- "I'm afraid we're going to have to just change our ways" : wives, mothers, and pregnant nurses in the army
- "You mean we get women over here?" : gender and sexuality in the war zone
- "Not all women wore love beads in the sixties" : postwar depictions of Vietnam War nurses
- Conclusion: Officers, nurses, and women.
- Summary
- Drawing on more than 100 interviews, Vuic allows the nurses to tell their own captivating stories, from their reasons for joining the military to the physical and emotional demands of a horrific war and postwar debates about how to commemorate their service. Vuic also explores the gender issues that arose when a male-dominated army actively recruited and employed the services of 5,000 women nurses in the midst of a growing feminist movement and a changing nursing profession. Women drawn to the army's patriotic promise faced disturbing realities in the virtually all-male hospitals of South Vietnam. Men who joined the nurse corps ran headlong into the army's belief that women should nurse and men should fight.
- Subject headings
- United States. Army Nurse Corps--History--20th century.
- Medical subjects
- United States. Army Nurse Corps.
- Subject headings
- Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Medical care--United States. Military nursing--United States--History--20th century. Military nursing--Vietnam--History--20th century. Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Women--United States. Women and war.
- Medical subjects
- Military Nursing--history--United States. Gender Identity--United States. Vietnam Conflict--United States. Women--United States.
- ISBN
- 9781421404448 (pbk.) 1421404443 (pbk.)