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

Being from the Vietnam generation I was mesmerized by Lynda's account of her experiences in Vietnam. I could not put this book down. The raw emotion and authenticity gripped me like nothing before. I did not serve, in fact was a war protestor, but always identified with the victims of the war, on both sides. This book gave me a new understanding from a woman's perspective the damage inflicted on the "unwounded" vets. It is amazing that people could function in a normal world after such an experience.this should be required reading for anyone going to war and for the people sending soldiers I to conflict.

First book with paper pages I have bought and read in a long-long time. It took me longer to read than most books I have ever read. Her stories reminded me of so many stories I heard from so many of the veterans that passed through my office. Well worth the time it took to read.

I originally read this book over 20 years ago. I was working as a nurse, during the Viet Nam war and it made a huge impact on me....... it helped shape my future aspirations. This is a non-fiction memoir by Lynda Van Devanter, a combat nurse serving in Viet Nam. It follows her from her idealistic enlistment, the trauma of the war, the country's reception on coming home and then her grappling with long term PTSD. If you have read "The Women" by Kristen Hannah, this is the original story. Ms. Hannah's main character IS Lynda VanDevanter. I would encourage anyone that liked that novel, to go to the source.

That's the question Lynda Van Devanter asks over and over in the course of this memoir, the centerpiece of which is her year (June 1969 to June 1970) as a surgical nurse in Vietnam, principally at the 71st Evacuation Hospital, Pleiku. She went to Vietnam a relatively carefree, healthy twenty-two-year-old. She returned damaged on the inside, both psychologically and physically. She died in 2002 at age fifty-five from an autoimmune, collagen-vascular disorder caused by exposure to toxic chemicals in Vietnam. Yet one more casualty of America's adventure in Vietnam. And for what? Outside the personal realm of family and friends, Van Devanter had three notable accomplishments in her life about which she could be proud. The first consists of her work as an extremely dedicated nurse, both in Vietnam (where in addition to American soldiers her patients also included Vietnamese soldiers and citizens) and back home in the U.S. over a two-decade nursing career. For some of those patients she was the person most responsible for saving their life. Her second notable achievement was as National Women's Director of the Vietnam Veterans of America, where she was instrumental in raising recognition of the contributions of women Vietnam veterans and in securing benefits for them. Third, there is HOME BEFORE MORNING, which deserves a place in any collection of Vietnam memoirs, especially because it is from a relatively unknown and unappreciated perspective. Van Devanter went to war as a gung-ho believer in the United States and its war in Vietnam. Disillusionment came gradually, but it had enveloped her midway through her year in-country. It was due largely to repeated encounters with devastating, gruesome wounds, some of which are horrifically detailed in the book. The hardest to deal with were the crispy critters - those charred by napalm, surely one of humankind's most insidious inventions. One can easily understand a surgeon muttering, after operating non-stop amidst blood and moans and screams for forty-eight hours, "I'd like to have Richard Nixon here for one week." Compounding the surreal hellishness of Van Devanter's year in Nam was the bureaucratic ineptitude, stupidity, and callousness so pervasive in the U.S. military. HOME BEFORE MORNING was first published in 1983, qualifying it, to quote another reviewer, as "the grandmother of female Viet Nam accounts". This 2001 edition from the University of Massachusetts Press includes an eight-page afterword by Van Devanter, written shortly before she died. The book is very easy to read, although the writing is somewhat slick and conventional, often using rather stock formulations (e.g., "I'd be lying if I said there aren't still difficult times"). Much of the dialogue obviously was reconstructed or re-imagined, and there are internal indications that some of the events themselves may to some extent have been fabricated. I see that several other reviews or the comments to them claim that some of the incidents in the book are either exaggerated or happened to someone else. Still, I tend to believe that on the whole HOME BEFORE MORNING is a realistic portrayal of a surgical nurse in a field hospital in Vietnam, and as such it is worth reading.

Lynda Van Devanter's memoir, HOME BEFORE MORNING (2001 reprint of 1983 edition), is a simply gut-wrenching look at what happened to a "good Catholic girl" from Virginia who volunteered as an Army nurse in Vietnam. Because even her actual tour there, filled as it was with the blood, mud and guts of a frontline evac hospital OR, pales in comparison to the chronic problems of her life when she got back home in 1970. In addition to the indifference and hostility she encountered from the civilian population, she experienced all the difficulties we now recognize to be associated with PTSD. Unable to hold a job, beset with night terrors and flashbacks, her personal affairs and relationships in disarray, she tried to self-medicate with alcohol and drugs until she finally hit bottom and was able to get counseling. Van Devanter holds nothing back as she tells of her bar-hopping and lonely, desperate one-night stands, constantly hoping "maybe this one." She finally does find a good man and marries, and also becomes deeply involved with the Vietnam Veterans Association Women's Project. Sadly, her marriage ends in divorce. But in the 2001 Afterword we learn she did remarry, although her health deteriorated, her immune system compromised, probably from her exposure to the Agent Orange defoliant in Vietnam. Lynda Van Devanter died in 2002. She was 55. I read HOME BEFORE MORNING because it was referenced as a resource by Kristin Hannah in her monster best-selling novel, THE WOMEN, a book which I could not warm up to. And now, after reading Van Devanter's book, I can see where Hannah lifted whole sections, changed some names, added some schmaltzy romance and highly unlikely reunions for her legions of women fans, and voila! another bestseller. Yeah,I know. Fiction and memoirs, apples and oranges. But if you prefer the REAL story, read HOME BEFORE MORNING. It's a revealing and tragically honest portrayal of of one innocent young woman's coming of age under the most brutal conditions imaginable. RIP, Lynda, and a belated thank you for your sacrifices. Very highly recommended. - Tim Bazzett, author of the Cold War memoir, SOLDIER BOY: AT PLAY IN THE ASA

Linda's writing is amazing! I laughed, I cried, and thoughts and fears bubbled up that I hadn't experienced in years! I was a combat medic with the 1/327th of the 101st Abn Division from March 1967 thu March 1968 in the highlands and near the DMZ, I patched them up as best I could then medevaced them to hospitals such as the 71st where Linda worked. Reading this book was hard in the beginning as the writing is so vivid that it forced me to remember things and folks that I've always tried to forget, but was never successful. This is a great book! Thank you Linda for your efforts in bringing awareness to female veterans and for helping the VVA in their early years. The current VVA is but a shell compared to when you worked there tirelessly! Last man standing sucks! Everyone should read this book! Maybe then we could answer the question, Why?

An exquisitely written true story of a Vietnam war nurse at the 71st evac hospital in pleiku, This book is a must read for everyone. This book will bring tears to your heart As you read and eloquently described life of a young woman fresh from nursing school who enlisted in the army and served a year. Just as importantly it describes her civilian life, the struggles she endured from both physical and emotional trauma after being exposed to so much horrific carnage as well as Agent Orange in Vietnam.

In writing this review, I must mention that Lynda Van Devanter passed away last year at the age of 55. After a difficult life, haunted by the horrors of war and a tendency towards drinking problems, doubtless caused by Post Traumatic Stress Disorder, it seems that Ms. Van Devanter's terminal condition may have been a reaction to the chemical agents and defoliants used in Nam. Home Before Morning gives the reader some idea of the mind-numbing daily grind of caring for wounded and dying soldiers - translation = 18 and 19 year old kids, that the ANC nurses and at times Red Cross SRAO Donut Dollies faced in Vietnam. Though some of her former colleagues criticized the book as being sensationalist and a vehicle for her subsequent anti-war stance, (one former ANC officer claimed that it portrayed the nurses as "bed-hopping, foul mouthed tramps"), other Nam Nurses have described the book as 'mild' and an understatement of the horror, madness and heartbreak that was daily life in Vietnam. What we can be sure of is that the 10,000 ANC Nurses and Red Cross SRAO staff who served in Vietnam were true blue American heroes, and should have been recognized as Vets from Day One. Anybody who reads Lynda's book and "Battle Dressing" by Dusty (ANC nurse Dana Shuster) will come away with a sense of reverence for these wonderful women. While Communist-inspired mindless morons back in the USA were calling the returning soldiers "baby killers" and "murderers", thousands of women of integrity were risking their own lives to provide a level of combat medical care in which the survival rate was a totally unheard of 82%. Fittingly, Lynda dedicated her book to the memory of 1/L Sharon Ann Lane, the first woman to be killed by direct enemy action in Nam (312th Evac at Chu Lai), "...and all of the unknown women who served, forgotten in their wars". If you know of a woman who served in Vietnam, please do or say something to show that you appreciate her courage and sacrifice. Even if it is just to say the one thing that the returning troops and Nam Nurses never heard. Welcome home.

Worth reading. It’s an easy read and a very thought provoking story

Excellent story

I was mesmerized by this book when it first came out and read it overnight. As an emergency room nurse in a treacherous location for horrific accidents, I found myself identifying with her absorbing decriptions what she dealt with and tried to survive. It is one of a handful of books that have reread and now that kindle has published it I can read it again without disturbing my hardcopy. It's about a nurse facing the Vietnam war and you need to read it.

It was a book, I read it.

Enjoyed reading the perspective of someone who lived the experience. It makes a person feel for what our military and their families knowingly and unknowingly give up and how it changed them.