June Naughton - Vietnam

Nurses' training and joining the CMF

I grew up in the Mackay area. My parents had a sugar farm so, you know, my basic background is from the farm. I went to the local country schools for primary school, secondary school. I went to boarding school in Charters Towers. After that, I was a little too young to start nursing, so I worked as an optical assistant for a few years before I started nursing at 17 ...

It was always something I wanted to do since I was about three or four years old. It had always been my ambition growing up to be a nurse. Not any of the family were qualified nurses, so it just came out of the blue, a little, yeah … I did my nursing training at the Mackay Base Hospital and at that stage that was a four years' training. After that I did a year midwifery in Tasmania and then another year, theatre operation and management in Perth.

I had joined the CMF, as it was then, in Mackay after I came home from doing my midwifery. I think mainly the motivation there was, was my mentor, tutor sister who was in fact in the CMF. So, there's not enough happening in Mackay, so I was quite happy to join the CMF with her. Again, there had been no army service in my family at all, so that was another sort of direction out of the blue.

And when I went to Perth for my theatre training, I transferred to the nursing unit in Perth and it was at this time that Vietnam sort of started to bubble and I joined the regular army from there with basically that intention. I was posted to SAS for six months or so in the RAP there and then came across to Ingleburn and worked there for a couple of years before my posting to Vietnam came out … at that stage at 2 MIL, we were receiving the guys back from Vietnam and most of those boys, after they came back from, after they were medevacked from Vietnam, needed some sort of secondary surgery.

So we were at least a day or two sort of redoing their redressing their wounds and settling back into Australia before they went home. So I was, I had some awareness of the type of injuries that was happening in Vietnam but honestly, I mean, I don't think anything really prepares you for that, you know, it's just so different to any road trauma or anything else that you might see in civilian street.

Desire to go to Vietnam

I went as a replacement. In fact, the lass that I replaced was a friend of mine from Western Australia. She also was a trained theatre nurse but, unfortunately, she developed hepatitis and had to be evacuated, so I was her replacement and, you know, that was about, what, December 1969 … I personally was very happy about it, really.

I did want to go and I have to say that my mother was dead against it, and that caused a fair amount of distress in the family at the time but, you know, I was in the army, in the regular army, and I was determined to go because of my theatre training … knowing that, you know, I could probably do something worthwhile and interesting that I felt I wanted to do.

1st Australian Field Hospital (Vung Tau)

I was quite impressed by the place. Some of the operating theatre technicians who were in the theatre when I arrived at 1 Aust Field Hospital, I had worked at 2 MIL and of course I had worked with Michael at 2 MIL as well, so it wasn't completely strange personally, socially or whatever.

I was quite impressed with the little operating theatre set up that we had at 1 Aust Field Hospital, but there were lots of little improvements that needed to be made and that were made and, in fact, at the time that I arrived, they were doing, the carpenters were doing some minor modifications to the operating theatre as far as change rooms and scrub up areas and things like that was concerned and that was, in a sense, keeping a lot of people who should not have been wandering through a sterile area, anxious to know what was going on inside, but, you know, had no business to be there.

So, it was creating some sort of isolated and sterile environment which is exactly what we had to have, of course, for an operating theatre and at the same time, they were also building an intensive care ward on the side of the theatre, which prior to that, the seriously ill patients were nursed in one of the main wards as well.

So, I more or less walked into a separate intensive care unit, a separate isolated theatre group, and, you know, quite apart from the surgical and medical wards … It was muddy and, of course, you know, I mean, it's understandable that, you know, people were anxious to know what was going on inside and the unfortunate thing was, at that stage, they were allowed to come inside with their dirty, muddy boots and all that sort of things. We would have even mud coming into the foyer of the operating theatre which was really horrifying.

Theatre and hospital staff

I worked 8 to 5 as necessary and as necessary meant 24 hours a day, basically, and we had two operating rooms. One room had two operating tables in it so that we could have three operations going at the same time. Basically we had two surgeons, two anaesthetists and then a couple of junior army doctors or doctors with other specialties who could take up the third theatre role.

Some days we would have nothing on and we were just doing preparation for the next day or the next day or the next day. So, you know, there's all the sterile instrument trays, the sterile linen bundles, the drug trays to set out and have ready for the anaesthetists and for the resuscitation. There is a lot of work to do behind the scenes to make a triage and an operating theatre function as it had to.

Mostly, in the actual operating team itself, as far as the nursing side of it was concerned, I had about 12 theatre techs on rotation of different ranks, sergeants, two corporals, and the rest is private soldiers. Some were national service boys. Two of the boys I remember were, their number came up when they were doing medicine.

So they were med students and that doesn't mean much, except that they maybe knew a bit of physiology or whatever, but they wouldn't have done anything about hospital functioning at that stage. So, we basically had to teach the boys what to do, that is, I'm talking about the theatre part of it rather than the, I mean, they'd already done their basic training and their corps training.

There was a job description in the military that was an operating theatre tech, ODT. They had funny, they had numbers, the classifications for these jobs, you know, there was a medic classification, the theatre tech classification was an EC5 or something 5, I think it was and it was more or less a prescribed course that we put the soldiers through at 1 MIL and 2 MIL in their training for them to become theatre techs and be able to work in the theatre.

So, we had the regular soldiers in that category plus the other national service boys and then some medics that were interested in that sort of work that we actually trained on the spot at the hospital. So, basically, as far as the operation of the staffing of the operating rooms itself, we would have the surgeon and an assistant.

We would have what we called a scrub nurse or an instrument nurse who was sterile, handed the instruments up to the surgeon, and I would allow the technicians to do those sort of roles, which allowed me to be able to be the scout or the circulating person so I could be available to, more or less, keep an eye on all three areas at the same time and respond to triage if anything came in on the helicopters. That's just the sort of day-to-day activity. It became quite a different scene, of course, when we had dust offs.

Triage

Triage, you would hear, that word used quite a lot now. Yeah. At that stage it was sort of a French word meaning sorting or, you know, allocation of priority is and we had a big triage hall with three stretchers, three trolleys on either side and that would come straight from the passage to the dust off where the casualties were carried in. And on those six bays would be the main resuscitation areas and that area would become quite crowded really, with your surgeon, and the anaesthetists looking after the most serious patient and then a patient who perhaps just had a minor laceration would be put on Bay 6 and they would be allocated sort of 1 to 6 in that sort of need of care.

But, you know, in that little area, we would have the X-ray happening, pathology happening, taking blood and blood tests, the Q Store happening, taking the soldier's weapon and clothing and possessions, personal possessions that he may have had on him. We'd had the admin people doing the paperwork and helping us record the vital signs and whatever on a whiteboard near the things so that we were all aware of, what treatment they were, the patient was being given that the theatre techs would be there helping with the resuscitation until they were needed inside in the operating rooms.

We even had a, well when I say, we had the padres in as well to sort of allow the padres to get closer, to be able to talk to the patients or particularly the very ill ones. I remember teaching a couple of them how to hold the oxygen, oxygen for the patient so that they could also perform a medical resuscitation role as well as talk to the patient and about his spiritual needs or whatever at the time …

With the dust off, we would all be needed in triage for the resuscitation and reception, reception and resuscitation of casualties and as the casualties were resuscitated and the doctors decided what surgery needed to be done, that patient would then, one of the operating theatre team would go in and set the theatre up and get things ready, and that patient would go in and the surgical team would follow. So, basically ours was reception, resuscitation, and operation and then preparation for it all over again.

Comrades and patients

I could divide the soldiers in two categories the ones I worked with and the ones I worked on. Basically, the ones I worked with were well, they were basically my best friends in in Vietnam. They were the people that I relied on because we did such a lot of training, you know, on a normal day where we'd finish work at 5:00 in the afternoon, we'd have dinner and the guys would come back to the area where we had, we would talk to them about operative procedures and teach them various things, the surgeons were very helpful in that regard, too, and often gave lectures to the boys down there in the area just to upgrade their training and, you know, make them more confident at what they were doing.

As far as the patients were concerned, we didn't, well, once a patient is anesthetized, of course, once the operation starts, you lose contact with the patient because he's anesthetised. Yes, we, I felt very much for the men in triage. I mean, most of those kids had probably never been near a hospital before, certainly not in hospital and suddenly they're thrown into this area where everybody is, "Hey, just put your arm here. I'm just putting a blood pressure cuff around here, just a pinprick" … and, you know, "in your hand for the drip to be set up".

And, you know, there was just so much happening all at once that, well, I often wonder really what they must have been thinking at that very moment, you know, because, and you would expect, I guess, and what you see, particularly on television with MASH and things like that, there's so much noise and stuff going on at that time but our place was always strangely silent, you know, everybody got about their business without making too much noise about it and you could only hear some sort of quietly asking for this or asking for that or asking, "Have you got any pain now?" you know. There was really very little noise in that area that was just so extremely busy and with so many different types of people.

The importance of touching and talking

I showed the padres what to do so someone could be there actually touching the patient and talking to the patient and by that, I mean, talking at his head so he could see what was doing. And they were quietly talking to each other. And when the padre wasn't doing that, that was my role in between.

So, yes, that importance of touch and talking quietly and directly to that boy, not, you know, you're not talking to the rest of the group, you're just communicating with that soldier who has been injured. Yes. It is very important.

An isolated role

My role was pretty isolated if compared to the rest of the nurses. I was the only nurse in the theatre most of the time. In busy periods other girls came in. One would come in to help out but basically I was the only nurse in theatre most of the time, which meant my hours on duty was in a different place, didn't coincide with the rest of the nursing team.

Often my hours off duty didn't coincide with the rest of the team either because I'd be called back or something like that would happen. So, in many ways, I didn't have lots and lots to do with the other nurses … the patient would leave me anesthetized or just waking up from anaesthetic and go back to the ward, I wouldn't see them again unless I particularly called into the ward on my way to see how they were doing, but my nursing role for that soldier was basically finished at that stage.

Down time

In the evenings, as I said, I would often come back to the operating area to train the theatre takes, and my memory has it that that was the way that I spent most of my time in the evenings. I didn't spend a lot of time in the Mess. I can remember one occasion we were having a bit of a party and I'd probably had one or two wines and, of course, as always happens, the siren goes and you're called back and, you know, I made a decision that I wouldn't party anymore while I was in Vietnam and that didn't worry me one little bit. But, you know, I was conscious that I had to be alert most of the time.

There was a few of the nurses that I knew very well that were my close friends and probably they're the ones, but there's not a lot of time left by the time you finish all those things, get yourself organized, write your letters home and those sorts of things. Really, writing letters home is quite a demanding thing in that sort of situation because you can never really write the things that you've been doing and the things that you feel and whatever.

It's all a bit of a make-up … I think most of us sort of became fairly avid readers. I can't remember what craft I was doing, but I surely would have had something because it's one of my main things that I do now but, you know, it was pretty easy to just while away the time, really.

Debriefing with work colleagues

I think the very busiest period, although early 1970, February 1970 and then most of 1970 was very busy, it tended to quiet down towards the end of 1970, towards the end of my time there but basically, it was just work and socialize within the theatre group itself, you know, within the, as I said to you, the theatre technicians more or less became my best friends in that situation because they were the ones that I not only worked with day by day, but also spent time with in the evening trying to talk them and I guess in many ways counselling them.

We did never breakup from a dust off without all collecting together and the boys would have their beer, they kept a bottle of scotch up in the ceiling for me but we would, we would always collect together and talk about the day's procedure and the proceedings and what we had done and what was wrong with each patient and how they might recover and all that sort of thing.

So there was always this sort of post operative counselling if you like. It was more just talking about it, discussing it. Counsel is probably a term thrown in to understand more how the direction of the conversations would go.

Arrival at 2nd Military Hospital (Sydney)

Michael was the CO at 2 MIL when my posting, when I came to 2 MIL from the West and I didn't know, I had never been to Sydney before, as I said to you earlier, I was very much a country girl. The people from Perth had organized my flight, etcetera, across to Sydney. The plane landed in Sydney, I got off, went to the Ansett or TAA lounge and I couldn't find anybody in uniform which I was told would be there, whatever, my driver.

Anyway, after a little while I phoned the Matron at 2 MIL and, again, bearing in that time we didn't have mobile phones, we had to go through the public phone box system and, anyway, she eventually, I think it might have been Michael on this end as CO said to a matron, "What's wrong? Shouldn't that sister be here by now?"

And they found out that I was still at the airport waiting for someone to come pick me up. Anyway, the driver eventually picked me up. We got out to 2 MIL and the matron, was in the matrons office, you know, talking to her as initial interview and Michael, as the CO came in and, "Oh, you finally arrived. Oh good".

And he had this sort of a cheeky grin on his face which almost made me angry. Anyway, that was the very first meeting, I suppose and I mean after that, I was just working in the theatre at 2 MIL for the next couple of years before my posting to Vietnam came up and, of course, in the meantime, Michael had had been posted to Vietnam again when I was field hospital but we didn't really know each other in that time at all.

I mean, he was the boss and I was the theatre nurse and other than polite conversation at Mess functions and when he did his hospital rounds and things like that, there was no communication.

Denis Gibbons' photographic record of 1AFH (Vung Tau)

I think they're an excellent record, I really do. Some of the photos of, they were photos of people who were actually working there, you know, even to one of my corporals with his bucket mop mopping the floor or should I say leaning on the mop, but anyway, and of some of the boys from Q store actually pushing a trolley full of clean linen.

Some of the boys from transport with the hood of the jeep up and doing things in the engine, of patients being checked into admin at A&D or checked in or out and you know, the photos that he actually took of the hospital were of people doing their job at the hospital, you know, the X-ray technician taking his x-rays, the pathology people doing things, the doctors looking at an x-ray up on a screen and you can almost see them thinking, "Now what's going on there?", you know, it's those sort of professional type photos that Denis took that have been very, very valuable, I feel.

Shaun must have given permission, Denis first, I suppose, Shaun later, given permission for his photos to be used quite often. I know of several books now, and also an opera, that Denis's photographs were actually used as backdrops or as illustrations in these post-Vietnam records. So, yes, I think his photos were excellent and they really have proved a great record of what the hospital, if we're narrowing it down just to us, what the hospital did in Vietnam.

The Field Hospital Association

We have a fairly established Field Hospital Association which has kept a lot of us together and I must say that the Association was initially put together by one of the theatre techs, and I think it was probably his way of sorting out where he fitted in things, coping with, perhaps his stress after Vietnam and keeping people in touch and involved with the same group that he had been working with over there, but I've been the Queensland rep for that organisation now for about four years or so and every couple of years, of course, we have a reunion and a bit of a get together and things … Anzac Day is very important and as the Queensland rep here, I usually I always organize a little get together after the parade for our Field Hospital group.