Looking to expand her horizons beyond her home state of New York, Colonel Martha Bell joined the Army Student Nurse Program in 1967–though she didn’t imagine that it would eventually take her as far away as Vietnam. Arriving in country, she treated primarily Vietnamese patients rather than American GIs, first at the 12th Evacuation Hospital in Cu Chi, and then later at the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon. In her interview for the Veteran’s History Project, she discusses the “bonds like glue” that she developed with her fellow nurses, the disillusionment she felt upon seeing the politics of war played out in Saigon, and the lessons in empathy and ingenuity that her Vietnam service taught her.
We honor you, Martha Bell.
