Jane McCarthy, PhD, CRNA, FAAN, was recently recognized on the national level as a featured speaker at the 2022 Memorial Day event at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The event remembered the American armed forces lives that were lost in that war. McCarthy, a veteran of the U.S. Army Nurse Corps, gave a speech as part of the 2022 Memorial Day at the Wall Observance Program. The annual event was co-sponsored by the National Park Service and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
McCarthy joined the Army Nurse Corps in 1968. After graduating from Massachusetts Hospital School of Nursing in 1969, she was stationed at Walter Reed Army Medical Center in Washington, D.C. After ten months at Walter Reed, she was sent to the 95th Evacuation Hospital in DaNang, South Vietnam, where she served from 1970-71 in Pre-op and Receiving triaging and treating the wounded.
She said she didn’t expect the invitation to speak at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial but was honored to be recognized on the national level — and to recognize all those who served.
“My message is to know the high costs of war. I can convey that message,” she said.
McCarthy had previously given speeches about her experience at high schools and other Memorial Day events, so she wasn’t nervous about speaking at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, she said. However, she felt like she had a greater purpose to convey because she was speaking to veterans and so many others who had lost loved ones in Vietnam.
When she stood in front of the crowd gathered on Memorial Day, instead of beginning with a greeting to the crowd or a formal introduction, she decided to take a different approach.
“I just started reading the names of my friends that had lost their lives in Vietnam. I was doing it for them,” she said.
In her speech, McCarthy explained she wasn’t in favor of the war, but after seeing so many of her friends drafted into the military, she decided as a new 21-year-old nurse that her greatest purpose was to care for those who were drafted and sent to war.
“I took care of 18- and 19-year-olds that were shot up, frightened, alone, and afraid to die in a war that they did not understand, either,” she told the crowd gathered at the memorial. “How does a 22-year-old girl from a small town in Massachusetts tell a 19-year-old soldier he doesn’t have a leg or a foot anymore? And the head wounds — patients who were expected to die and weren’t candidates for surgery, I just held them. I held their hand until they died.”
She wanted her speech to focus on more than nurses — she wanted to speak about the corpsman, the doctors, medics, helicopter pilots, and all of those that were there to care for the wounded.
“I never knew a chopper pilot,” she said, “because their job was done when mine began.”
She also wanted to speak to the Gold Star mothers who gathered at the memorial each Memorial Day, those who lost their sons in the war. “I wanted them to know we were there for their sons, and they weren’t alone.”
During the speech McCarthy shared her experience of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) when she returned from the war that initially went undiagnosed. She was depressed, hypervigilant, and had trouble eating and sleeping. “In those days, there was no such thing as PTSD. You were just told to put one foot in front of the other, to go on with your life.” For McCarthy, that meant school, work, and family, but she did eventually get help for her PTSD, she said.
While serving in Vietnam, she made a five-year plan to go to college. She’d graduated from a diploma hospital program in nursing, and decided to use the GI Bill to get her Bachelor of Science in nursing, then go to anesthesia school. She was first introduced to nurse anesthetists during her time at Walter Reed before being stationed overseas.
Watching CRNAs at Walter Reed, she said, “I thought it would be an exciting thing to do, but I thought, ‘I can’t do it. That seems like pretty scary stuff.’ I realized after a few months in Vietnam that I could do it. My experience in Vietnam gave me the guts and courage to go on to anesthesia school.”
Following her return home, she attended Fairfax Hospital School of Nurse Anesthesia. She went on to attend the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, earning a PhD in Pulmonary Physiology. She retired in 2007 from the U.S. Public Health Service Commissioned Corps, where she worked as a regulatory scientist for the Food and Drug Administration. She currently teaches graduate nursing students at the University of North Florida.
McCarthy also supported the effort over the years to get a national memorial built for nurses who served in Vietnam. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial, honoring the nurses and women of the United States who served in the war, was dedicated in 1993 and is located on the National Mall in Washington D.C., a short distance from The Wall.
She closed her speech with a poem by Darrell Nichols, “Angels in Hell,” which is about women who served in the Vietnam War.
“Let us not forget the stories they tell, for they were our sisters who lived through hell,” she read from the poem.
Through the power of sharing her story, McCarthy ensured the people gathered that day at the memorial will not forget the high costs of war especially for those who made the ultimate sacrifice of giving their lives.