University of Wollongong Research Online University of Wollongong Thesis Collection 1954-2016 University of Wollongong Thesis Collections 2014 ‘It was Florence Nightingale by torch’: military nursing traditions and Australian nurses in Vietnam Janice Margaret Twomey University of Wollongong Follow this and additional works at: https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses University of Wollongong Copyright Warning You may print or download ONE copy of this document for the purpose of your own research or study. The University does not authorise you to copy, communicate or otherwise make available electronically to any other person any copyright material contained on this site. You are reminded of the following: This work is copyright. Apart from any use permitted under the Copyright Act 1968, no part of this work may be reproduced by any process, nor may any other exclusive right be exercised, without the permission of the author. 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Recommended Citation Twomey, Janice Margaret, ‘It was Florence Nightingale by torch’: military nursing traditions and Australian nurses in Vietnam, Doctor of Philosophy thesis, School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, 2014. https://ro.uow.edu.au/theses/4248 Research Online is the open access institutional repository for the University of Wollongong. For further information contact the UOW Library: [email protected] ‘It was Florence Nightingale by torch’: Military Nursing Traditions and Australian Nurses in Vietnam Janice Margaret Twomey, BA (Hons) Dip Ed, MA Supervisor: Associate Professor John McQuilton Co-supervisor: Associate Professor Dianna Kelly This thesis is presented as required for the conferral of the degree: Doctor of Philosophy The University of Wollongong School of Humanities and Social Enquiry Faculty of Law, Humanities and the Arts September 2014. i ii CERTIFICATION I, Janice Margaret Twomey, declare that this thesis, submitted in fulfilment of the requirements for the award of Doctor of Philosophy, in the School of Humanities and Social Inquiry, University of Wollongong, is wholly my own work unless otherwise referenced or acknowledged. The document has not been submitted for qualification at any other academic institution. Janice M. Twomey 8 September 2014. iii iv ABSTRACT This thesis examines the experiences of two groups of nurses who served in the Vietnam War, the members of Royal Australian Army Nursing Corps (RAANC) and the women who volunteered as members of the civilian aid surgical teams who served in Vietnam under the humanitarian aid clauses of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organisation (SEATO). The oral testimonies of 31 members of both RAANC and the civilian aid teams provided the evidence used for this thesis. The thesis argues that both groups of women, irrespective of their mode of deployment worked within a tradition of Australian nursing: the military nursing tradition, first established by the Boer War nurses, and developed further by Australian nurses in subsequent world wars. The military nursing histories and the development of that tradition provide the context for the study of the testimonies of the 31 nurses. The study notes that traditions have a malleable quality that allows for adaptation and change and reflect the conditions in which the nurses found themselves and the common elements that link the experiences over different wars. The presence of civilian aid nurses in Vietnam raises a question concerning a nursing tradition that historians have identified within Australian military nursing, which the thesis explores further. This was the first time a large group of Australian civilian nurses (210) had served in an overseas region of conflict, but the histories, except one, and the Australian government saw only the nurses in the armed forces as part of the military structure, and the civilian aid nurses distinct from that structure administered by the Australian Defence Forces (ADF). This thesis argues that the attitudes, working conditions and experiences of both groups of nurses, particularly the civilian aid nurses, reflected the experiences of nurses in past wars in perpetuating a military nursing tradition. This suggests that the attitudes and responses to nursing in a war zone may not simply be a nursing tradition associated with the military, but is more a general response of nurses to their work in areas of conflict, sometimes with little regards for age, race, or enemy affiliation. v vi TABLE OF CONTENTS Abstract v Maps and Illustrations viii Abbreviations x Acknowledgments xi Preface 1 Introduction 10 Chapter 1: The Background History 18 Chapter 2: Literature Review and Primary Sources 41 Chapter 3: Methodology 65 Chapter 4: Military Nursing in Australia 83 Chapter 5: The Nurses in Vietnam 115 Chapter 6: The RAANC Nurses Remember 138 Chapter 7: The Civilian Aid Nurses Remember 159 Chapter 8: Personal Post War Lives 206 Chapter 9: Professional Post War Lives 243 Conclusion 269 Appendix A: Interview Questions 276 Appendix B: Glossary 278 Appendix C: Agent Orange 280 Bibliography 281 vii MAPS AND ILLUSTRATIONS Figure 1.1: Vietnam at the time of the Vietnam War, showing the divisions of the South into four separate corps or military divisions. (O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 64) 21 Figure 1.2: Location of Australian civilian surgical teams in South Vietnam. (McKay and Stewart, With Healing Hands, p. iv) 23 Figure 4.1: Enteric ward, No. 2 British Stationary Hospital, East London, Cape Colony. (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p. 17) 93 Figure 4.2: An operating theatre of the First Casualty Clearing Station. Surgeons and nurses made do with what they had. (Rees, The Other Anzacs, pp. 270 -2) 94 Figure 4.3: Nurses fighting the elements at 2/5th AGH, Morotai Island, 1945. (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p. 170) 96 Figure 4.4: German bombing of a Red Cross Hospital at Etaples. The raid killed several patients and Canadian nurses. (Rees, The Other Anzacs, pp. 270-2) 100 Figure 4.5: Nurses from 2/5th AGH on Crete. (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p. 125) 101 Figure 4.6: Picnic at Spinney Wood, Ismailia. Australian officers and nurses enjoy time away from the wards and the battlefields. (Rees, The Other Anzacs, pp. 78-79) 112 Figure 5.1: First Australian Field Hospital in 1970 with the helipad for Dust-Off helicopters in the foreground. (O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 190) 120 Figure 5.2: The triage area of the Australian army hospital, where patients were speedily assessed before treatment. (McHugh, Minefields and Miniskirts, pp. 10-11) 121 Figure 5.3: American army personnel providing the Bien Hoa hospital with drinkable water in 1966. (Mackay and Stewart, With Healings Hands, p. 126) 130 Figure 6.1: The RAANC nurses’ living quarters in 1967 at 1ALSG, Vung Tau. (Biedermann, No Tears on My Pillow, pp. 98-9) 143 Figure 6.2: Table showing hospital admissions for disease and injury among Australian soldiers in South Vietnam, July 1965 to July 1972. (Ekins and Stewart, War Wounds, p. 122) 149 Figure 6.3: Christmas 1967: Mot, a seriously ill Vietnamese orphan was nursed back to health by members of RAANC and befriended by the staff. (Biedermann, No Tears on My Pillow, pp. 98-9) 154 Figure 6.4: Di Lawrence at the bedside of a Vietcong prisoner of war patient in the intensive care unit. (Biedermann, No Tears on My Pillow, pp. 98-9) 155 viii Figure 7.1: An aerial view of Bien Hoa hospital in 1966 (with key). (Courtesy of Norma von Clinch) 167 Figure 7.2: A Montagnard patient being treated by surgeon Guy Hutchinson at Bien Hoa Hospital in 1966. (McKay and Stewart, With Healing Hands, pp. 126-7) 171 Figure 7.3: The human cost of war. Children injured in a bus explosion in the foyer of Bien Hoa Hospital 1966. (McKay an Stewart, With Healing Hands, pp. 126-7) 173 Figure 7.4: Patient care in all Vietnamese hospitals was usually provided by relatives. Here an elderly relative feeds a child in Bien Hoa Hospital in 1966. (McKay and Stewart, With Healing Hands, pp. 126-7) 192 Figure 7.5: Conditions in many Vietnamese orphanages were appalling. (McHugh, Minefields and Miniskirts, pp. 178-179) 195 Figure 7.6: A young girl showing the results of surgery on a cleft lip and palate, performed by Australian surgeons at Le Loi Hospital in late 1966 or early 1967. (McKay and Stewart, With Healing Hands, pp. 126-7) 199 Figure 8.1: Corporal Nunn uses a swing-fog machine to spray insecticide to kill malaria-carrying mosquitoes in Hoa Long. (O’Keefe, Medicine at War, p. 148) 212 Figure 8.2: Crowds throng Sydney’s streets for the Welcome Home March held to honour Australia’s Vietnam veterans. (Greg Pemberton, Vietnam Remembered, p. 193) 228 Figure 8.3: Surviving nurses from the 2/10th AGH, 2/13th AGH and the 2/4th CCS wearing their old uniforms, in Singapore in 1945, after their return from Sumatra. (Bassett, Guns and Brooches, p. 150) 238 Figure 9.1: Members of the coronation contingent with members of the QAIMNS at Millbank, England, May 1937. (Bassett,