HOME BEFORE MORNING
THE STORY OF AN ARMY NURSE IN VIETNAM
By Lynda Van Devanter
Presentation by Stacey Conley
WHAT IS THE BOOK ABOUT?
• The book is about a young woman who wants to help save the lives of
soldiers in Vietnam.
• Lynda Van Devanter had an idealistic heroic view that she would make a
difference – little did she know the difference would be in herself. Instead,
Lynda came back with demons of Vietnam that never left her
• Lynda would use writing as a therapeutic device to help her deal with the
demons. She had to relive her experiences in order to deal with her issues.
Thus, Home Before Morning became her story of life as a nurse in one of the
worst evacuation hospitals during the Vietnam War.
• Lynda wanted to expose the atrocities of war, how it affects those involved,
and their readjustment into civilian life.
SUMMARY
• The book is written from a first person perspective centering on the day-today lives of the doctors and nurses [in the 71st Evac Unit] who had to repair
the damages on soldiers caused by the fighting in Vietnam.
• It’s not a military account of the war but what life was like for the doctors
and nurses. What is was like to live through a Mass Causality and having to
decide who would live and who would die.
• The last section of the book, about 1/3 of the book, focuses on reorientation
into the “real world” for Lynda.
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How Vietnam never left her
How Lynda turned to drugs and alcohol to forget the war
How it took six years to finally admit she was having problems
Lynda turned to writing as a way to begin the healing process
SUMMARY – ADJUSTING BACK TO THE
“REAL WORLD” LIFE AFTER WAR
• Lynda describes how her nursing jobs were not the same and how unhappy she was
• Lynda was not looked upon as an equal in her jobs like she was in Vietnam
• In two years back from the war she had five different jobs, losing her last job
because the work reminded her so much of Vietnam. She was irritable; she didn’t
want to sleep because the nightmares came back, so she drank.
• Her last job was with burn victims who needed Dialysis. Each time the patient came
in with the smell of burning flesh it brought back new memories of Vietnam.
Memories she was forced to push deep down inside. Memories of charred dying
men who she couldn’t help.
• Finally, after losing another burn victim Lynda couldn’t handle life anymore – she
collapsed and forgot anything that happened for the last six years of her life – all she
did was sit and cry for days.
• Lynda became so depressed she starting sleeping all day and night. She was
almost in a catatonic stage. However, when she slept she had the same nightmares
over and over.
AUTHOR BACKGROUND
• Lynda Van Devanter grew up in a suburb of Washington DC
• She was from a devote Catholic Family with five girls
• Lynda grew up wanting to save the world
• She decided she wanted to be a nurse at a young age
• Worked her way through nursing school and decided to enlist in the military
when an Army Sergeant came to the hospital in 1968
• Lynda had an idealistic view of the war and she wanted to be a part of it.
• Lynda went through Medical Field Service School in Fort Sam, Texas
• She then attended intense training at William Beaumont Army Medical
Center in El Paso, Texas
AUTHOR BACKGROUND
• Lynda was assigned to the worst MASH type hospital –
• The 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku Province – this was an area of heavy
combat and the casualties were unending
• Was taught on the spot and expected to do more than be a nurse
• The book inspired the TV show China Beach
• Lynda became the founding executive director of the Women’s Project of
Vietnam Veteran’s of America
• She was the director from 1979-1985
• Lynda testified before Congress on behalf of the 7500 women who are
Vietnam Veterans – she fought to get them the same rights as men through
the Veterans Association
AUTHOR BACKGROUND
• In November 1994 Lynda became very ill for two years
• She was in and out of hospitals
• She was diagnosed with Auto-Immune Collagen-Vascular Disease, which
doctors concluded was the result of exposure to toxic chemicals
• The disease attacked most of her organs, tissues, joints, and bones (323)
• Lynda married for a second time in 1984 and gave birth to a baby girl in 1985
• However, Molly (baby-girl) was born with several heart and intestinal defects
and other problems which are possibly connected to Lynda’s chemical
exposure in Vietnam.
• Sadly, Lynda died from a result of her illness on November 15, 2002
SPECIFIC PASSAGES
• One thing I knew I’d never get used to was something I encountered later in the day
. . . My first serious burn case. The soldier, whose entire body had been charred
beyond recognition, had been at the 71st for three days. Almost his entire body,
except for his feet, had been seared by napalm, a jellied petroleum substance that
oozes down the skin and into the pores, carrying flames with it. By now, he was
covered with a sickly blue-green slime, called pseudomonas, a common bacterial
infection among severely burned patients. I could barely look at the kid while we
scraped away the infected dead tissue. Long after we finished with him, I was
unable to get the smell of pseudomonas and napalm out of my nose. It seemed to
be in my clothes, my hair, and even the pores of my skin. I would live with that smell
for the next year. (85)
• napalm is a mixture of plastic polystyrene, hydrocarbon benzene, and gasoline. This
mixture creates a jelly-like substance that, when ignited, sticks to practically anything
and burns up to ten minutes. The effects of napalm on the human body are
unbearably painful and almost always cause death among its victims.
SPECIFIC PASSAGES
• The neuro room was one of the places I usually tried to avoid. Leading to the
operating table was the larges trail of blood I had ever seen. Three intravenous lines
ran from bags of blood to his body, one in his jugular vein an done in each arm. The
lower portion of his jaw, teeth exposed, dangled from what was left of his face. His
tongue hung hideously to the side with the rest of the bloody meat exposed bone. I
held my breath to keep from getting sick. For a moment, I was glued to the spot. I
had already been through six months of combat casualties, plenty of them
gruesome; I thought I had gotten used to it all, but they kept getting worse. I didn’t
think I could handle this one. My sole job became pumping blood, while Mack
fought against the odds. During one of my circuits around the table, I accidentally
kicked his clothes to the side. A snapshot fell from the torn pocket of his fatigue shirt.
The picture was a young couple – him and his girlfriend . . . The thing that made the
picture special was how they were looking at each other. On the back of the
picture was written, “Gene and Katie, May 1968.” After hours of work, Mack realized
that it was futile. (168-70)
SPECIFIC PASSAGES
Perhaps I hadn’t expected anything at all when I returned to the States, I
would not have been disappointed. All we wanted was some transportation
to San Francisco International Airport so we could hop connecting flights to
get home. There was not any buses or taxis running to so I decided to hitch a
ride. But hitchhiking in the real world was no where near as easy – especially if
you were wearing a uniform. A few gave me the finger. Some slowed down
long enough to yell obscenities. One threw a carton of trash and another
nearly hit me with a can of soda. Finally, two guys stopped in a red and
yellow VW bus. The one on the passenger side opened the door. I ran to the
car dragging the duffel bag.
“Going anywhere near the airport?” I asked. “Sure am,” the guy said. I smiled
and lifted my duffel bag but the guy slammed the door shut.
“We’re going past the airport, sucker, but we don’t take Army pigs.” He spit on
me. I was stunned. I wasn’t angry, just confused. I wanted to know why. Why
would he spit on me? What had I done to him? (210-11)
SPECIFIC PASSAGES
After dinner, I set up the slide projector to show pictures of Vietnam. I wanted to share
with them the times when we worked through pushes and the times when we
laughed. The first slides were pictures of the compound. The Bastille and the banana
trees, the park, the pool … then the casualties came. I didn’t notice anything different
in the beginning, but when the slides got bloody, everyone became extremely
uncomfortable. I continued, flipping through more gory pictures of the OR.
“Lynda,” my mom said quietly, “isn’t there something a little less gruesome to show
us?” I didn’t understand. “It was an ugly year,” I said.
“I don’t think you really want to show those slides,” . . . “Maybe it would be wise to put
them away.”
The realization hurt me . . . I wanted to grab the people I loved by the shoulders and
say, “Listen to me! Look! This is what I’ve gone through! I’m one you! This is life! Please
let me talk about it!”
Vietnam would never be socially acceptable. Not here, not anywhere in the world.
“Vietnam sucks out your heart and soul until there ain’t nothing’ left.”
REVIEW
• This book was written with pure honesty.
• Van Devanter does not hold back nor does she care if people are offended
by what she has to say
• This book was a healing process for Devanter – a way to cope with her
demons.
• Because Devanter didn’t or couldn’t deal with her issues, she pushed them
into her psyche until another time.
• At night she would re-live the details of the death in the 71st Evac Unit and
she spares no detail
• This is a gut wrenching book about survival with gruesome details.
REVIEW
• For me this book gave me a sense of what life was like for nurses and women
in the Vietnam war. There was a true connection with the author and her
experience in Vietnam.
• I would recommend this book to people who enjoy reading about war and
people who are not feeble. There is much gore and death from a first hand
experience.
• This book brought attention to the thousands of men and women who were
suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder; who needed help. These men
and women needed to talk about their experience and not be forgotten by
their government and America.
• It also brought attention to the 7500 women who served during the war that
the government seemed to forget.
REVIEW
• The things I liked about the book:
The connection to the character
The connection to the war from a non military account
The reality Devanter brings to the truism of war
The fact Devanter became an advocate for all soldiers who were suffering like
her
• Devanter tells it like it is. She admits she was lost for years and felt like she didn’t
belong anywhere.
The least thing I like about this book is the reality of the American people and how
horrible we were to those coming back from Vietnam.
The pure honesty in the book makes this book amazing and one to read.
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PHOTOS
The Vietnam War Memorial for Women
Lynda and her family