The Healer's War by Elizabeth Ann Scarborough Read Free Book Online Page B

inside than the clatter of stainless and restaurant pottery died to an occasional clink and the muted conversations stopped altogether. I felt like the Fastest Gun in the West entering a saloon just before High Noon, but I pretended not to notice. Since coming to Nam, I had gotten used to stopping traffic. Literally. I had always considered myself attractive in a sort of wholesome, moon-faced way. I had nice hazel eyes and brown hair carefully kept reddish, and a figure that ten pounds less made "stacked"
    and ten pounds more made "fat." But none of it mattered, because the attention was nothing personal. It was not my sheer breathtaking gorgeousness or incredible charisma that was causing apnea among the male diners. The standard female reproductory equipment and round eyes were all that was required to be the Liz Taylor of China Beach.

    I just stood there kind of dazed from the sun and sleepy and tried to decide what to do. The very idea of all those men just made me tired right now.

    One reason I hadn't minded coming to Nam so much at first was that I had already talked to a lot of bewildered boys my age who didn't want to go but saw no other choice. It seemed unfair that they had to serve, just because they were men of the right age. Like discrimination. I thought, if this war was for the benefit of the U.S., why were men the only ones who had to go? The North Vietnamese, or at least the VC, had women troops, and so did the Israelis. Of course, two days after I was in country it was pretty clear that no American, male or female, should have had to be there. If I had to enlist again, nothing short of the invasion of Kansas City would have gotten me into uniform. Furthermore, I knew that many of the men who had been gung ho before they got to Nam agreed with me. Even the South Vietnamese stayed out of the military if they could, and it was their damned war.

    Nevertheless, there I was, and my idealistic notions of brotherand-sisterhood failed to prevent me from being an exotic novelty item in the war zone, no matter how much I wanted, or was able, to contribute. Most of the guys most of the time were okay, even downright gallant. But there were those like Mitch who decided that we nurses were just working twelve-hour shifts, continually suffering from Iick of sleep and incipient heatstroke, as a sort of hobby. What we were really in Nam for, of course, was to get laid. By them.

    Nurses, Red Cross workers, entertainers-we were all nymphos if not actually whores, according to the predominant mode of wistful thinking.
    Even fairly nice men swore to us nurses that all doughnut dollies were making big money as prostitutes, and apparently the same men told the same story about us when they were talking to the Red Cross workers. I remember having a conversation with one of the Red Cross girls at Marble Mountain. "Funny, you don't seem as-ah-you know she said at one point, when we had been talking about what we were doing in Nam. "I know," I said. "You don't look like a hooker to me either."

    Thewhole thing made me want to smack somebody, but unfortunately, most of the people I could smack here would outrank me.

    But basically, as long as the guys kept their cruder notions to themselves, I could handle it, and even enjoy the attention. What really got to me was the ones who made Mitch look like Mr. Suave. On Carole's birthday, one of her boyfriends had brought four of us girls to the club to celebrate. Drunken marine officers had converged upon us to woo us with obscenities and innuendos delivered with typical Corps couth, which vies with that of convicted multiple rapist-murderers for gentility. "No, thank you,"

    "I'm not interested...... Please go away or I'll tell my boyfriend, King Kong...... I'm engaged," and "I'm married" did not deter them.
    Neither, at first, did "Get your goddamn hands off me," and "Fuck off and die," until voiced with sufficient volume to attract the interest of other officers, who wandered over to