Home Before Morning

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam

Author	Lynda Van Devanter
Country	USA
Language	English
Genre	Memoir
Published	1983
Publisher	University of Massachusetts Press
ISBN	1-55849-298-4

Home Before Morning: The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam is a memoir written by Lynda Van Devanter in 1983. The book, published by University of Massachusetts Press, explores Devanter's experience as a nurse during the Vietnam War.

Background

Lynda Van Devanter was born on May 27th, 1947 in Washington, D.C. and grew up in suburban Washington with four sisters. She spent her childhood and young adult life in a patriotic and Catholic household. She obtained a diploma in Nursing at Mercy Hospital School of Nursing in 1968. Near the end of nursing school, she attended a presentation about serving in Vietnam as a nurse. She decided to serve for one year abroad in Vietnam in the name of protecting democracy. She remarks in her memoir Home Before Morning that, “if our boys were being blown apart, then somebody better be over there putting them back together again. I started to think that maybe that somebody should be me”. After graduating from basic training at a Texas army base in 1969, Van Devanter traveled to serve in Vietnam. She served for a year in a combat heavy province called Pleiku at the 71st Evacuation Hospital. She returned from service in June of 1970 and eventually found and joined the organization Vietnam Veterans of America where she received support from others struggling to re-integrate into American society. She pursued a diploma in psychology where she studied Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD), a mental health condition common to veterans that arises after exposure to traumatic events. Like many veterans, she had also experienced the depression, flashbacks, night sweats, and angry outbursts described by the presentation of PTSD. She reasoned that others were likely experiencing similar effects from war exposure. In 1980, Van Devanter founded the Vietnam Veterans of America Women’s Project to offer a space for women veterans to come together and support one another. Lynda Van Devanter died of systemic vascular disease at home in Hernon, Virginia on November 15th 2002.

Summary

The novel contrasts the carefree “all American girl” who is ready to take on the world in service to her country with the Vietnam War veteran who struggles to re-integrate into an America that seems to have continued on without her. The first few chapters accompany Van Devanter in her journey to choosing nursing as a career and attending a clinically intensive program called Mercy Hospital School of Nursing. With great pride, she and her best friend enrolled in the US army to use their nursing skills in service of their country. Over her year-long service in Vietnam, Van Devanter’s perception of the war shifted from a noble fight in the name of democracy and freedom to a senseless massacre of young soldiers and an invasion into the lives of Vietnamese natives. Van Devanter was stationed at the 71st Evacuation Hospital (71st Evac) in Pleiku, Vietnam, “an area of heavy combat and the casualties were supposedly unending”. She utilizes the letters exchanged with her family back home to tangibly capture the emotional toll of the war throughout her year long tour in Vietnam. The majority of the memoir investigates Van Devanter’s experience as a healthcare professional at one of the highest casualty bases in the Vietnam War, detailing the carnage of war and the surgical work required to treat the injured soldiers. The final chapters close with a difficult transition back into American life marked by personal and professional barriers to living the normal life she had once dreamed about as a child.

Themes

The traditional military view of nurses understood their role as affectionate caregivers who exemplify stereotypical feminine roles. Through her book, Van Devanter revealed another narrative about nurses and women who served in Vietnam, one that presented them as imperfect yet resilient, heroic, and courageous. Home Before Morning argues that only a select few return from war triumphant and victorious while the vast majority either return broken and scarred or do not return at all.

Van Devanter dedicated her memoir to “all of the unknown women who served forgotten in their wars”.

Reception

At the time of release, Van Devanter’s book prompted debate among Americans about how the role of nurses in Vietnam should be perceived by the American public. Some Americans related to Van Devanter’s memoir, especially those that had served as nurses alongside her in Vietnam. Some veteran nurses and women felt encouraged to speak up about their own experiences during the war, acting to help spread a narrative of war that extended beyond soldiers and battle. An anonymous supporter of the memoir said that “she [Lynda Van Devanter] helped me see that others had experienced what I did and were hurting like I was. Her story and mine are the same and people need to hear this because war is hell”. The positive reception of the book caught the attention of Sally Field’s production company Fogwood Films under the umbrella of Columbia Pictures who planned to portray the memoir in a feature film. With the risk of Home Before Morning becoming a blockbuster film and further shaping Americans' view of women in military service, critics became increasingly vocal against the book’s portrayal of nurses.

Critics said that the book negatively represented nurses and other health care professionals who served in the Vietnam war and any other wars prior. Other veteran nurses criticized the book by expressing how their own experience was vastly different than that of Van Devanter and that Van Devanter exaggerated the presence of vices and the extent of casualties. One chief nurse named Catherine Betz offered her harsh critique in an interview, saying that “Van DeVanter’s crazy, absolutely. She dreamed up this stuff”. The US military and American veterans now struggled to define the image of military women and nurses, and Home Before Morning was to blame. Of all the critics, a nurse anesthetist named Patricia L. Walsh who served at a civilian hospital of the United States Agency for International Development in Da Nang was the loudest and most persistent.

Walsh created a small organization called Nurses Against Misrepresentation (NAM) to both deny negative portrayals of nurses in Vietnam and to prevent the motion picture adaptation of Home Before Morning from release. In an interview for the New York Times in 1985, Mrs. Walsh said that “We (NAM) didn't challenge her until the announcement was made that Sally Field was going to make it into a big picture” , suggesting that NAM was not against Van Devanter’s telling of her personal experience, but rather against Van Devanter’s personal experience becoming the experience of all nurses who served in Vietnam. Walsh was concerned that Van Devanter’s descriptions of anti-war ideals, affairs, and drug and alcohol use would taint the image of nursing. Additionally, NAM claimed that Van Devanter’s descriptions of endless casualties and long hours were unrealistic. They were worried that American families who had lost their loved one in the war would feel like their relative died because of exhausted and intoxicated health care staff. This risk would be magnified if the movie portrayed scenes of health care professionals rushing from a party to provide medical care after drinking alcohol and smoking marijiuana. NAM further argued that it would propagate the stereotype of the “drug-crazed, freaked out Viet Nam vet”. A nurse named Marra Peche that had served with Van Devanter at the 71st Evac Hospital spoke to defend the memoir, saying that it told the truth. She says, “I know surgeons who would work stoned. It’s not the fact that there was drinking on duty but that we were on duty 24 hours a day”. In protest of the book becoming a movie, Walsh encouraged NAM to send as many letters of protest as possible to Columbia Pictures to prevent filming. In 1987, Columbia Pictures ended up dropping the film for “script problems”. It cannot be absolutely proven, but the cancelation of the film was likely influenced by NAM’s persistent criticism.

In 1988, Home Before Morning was adapted into a television show called China Beach, which roughly follows Van Devanter’s experience at an evacuation hospital during the Vietnam war. The show follows the general outline of the book beginning with a desire to serve her country and ending with a difficult return back to the USA. The show was cancelled in 1991 before it could fully explore the main character’s struggles with PTSD.