“Don’t Mean Nothing”
“It was a strange place to send our youth, not to learn a new culture or enjoy the beaches, but to kill and be killed, to be maimed and to patch up the maimed. What I’m saying is, to us as a country, Viet Nam truly didn’t mean nothing.”
I am not usually one to enjoy books about war. The occasional tame WWII movie is intriguing, but beyond that, written works about conflict were always too graphic to pick up.
I was hesitant in approaching “Don’t Mean Nothing,” a collection of not-entirely-true short stories from Susan O’Neill’s experiences as a nurse in the Vietnam War. I was quickly redeemed of my misgivings only a few pages into this gem of a book that truly captures the emotions and day-to-day life of a hospital in Vietnam.
Most books about this war hone in on men fighting on the front lines, and while this is an important perspective, we often forget about the women who fought in battles just as gruesome.
The experience of war to a nurse is one of saving lives instead of taking them, and yet O’Niell makes it clear the battle was just as hard fought.
The story follows a woman known as the lieutenant as she serves in three separate hospitals. The perspective jumps between characters in each chapter to tell different stories and portray how different experiences were lived.
O’Neill’s stories may not have been entirely true, but they each hold a piece of war that is accurate in every sense. She never shies away from the vulgar language, abuse of drugs, talk of sex and racism that truly existed in these hospitals, and each chapter feels like a very real step into the era. O’Neill expertly avoids the feel of a history textbook with her story and tells it how it is, so to speak.
The psychological toll of war brings to question the role of women in the conflict, which was a new concept at the start of Vietnam. Were women present to be a relief for men? To lead the hospital staff? Or something else entirely? The identity of many women had to change throughout the experiences of Vietnam, whether it was subconscious or intentional.
Women were few and far between and therefore seen as both goddesses and whores.
The army intentionally put women in higher ranks to create a power imbalance and discourage sexual activities, and though this didn’t always work, it made some think of women and female lieutenants as separate beings altogether.
“When the lieutenant got cranky, he was apt to forget that she was an officer and not a woman.”
Even with this intentional divide, women in the war were often raped or seen as a way to escape reality. This led to several uncomfortable situations within the book, including a scene where women recruits sat side-by-side with male counterparts as they watched a show meant to boost morale, one of women stripping on stage.
One can’t help but notice the irony of discouraging men from considering their coworkers women, and then putting on a show where woman dancers strip for entertainment.
A recurring theme was how opinions of religion and God changed throughout time in Vietnam. Catholicism teaches not to kill, hate, steal or rape. Yet recruits in the war were constantly bombarded with these very concepts, and most quickly became desensitized to their horrors.
“What we’re living in—here, in this country, in this war—that’s all about death. And sin—real sin. Killing. Raping. Stealing. Hating… it’s just about every sin in the commandments, except maybe honoring your father and mother. And if God goes along with it, he’s just not any kind of god that we should be dealing with. He can’t be.”
O’Neill expertly captures the desperate need for control each character feels, and the mental anguish they experience when the war rips that control away. Whether it was the ever-itching lice that were impossible to kill, an inspiring class being canceled after the professor contracted rabies, or a man having the child he was anxious to adopt be snatched away, the loss of control was ever present within the pages.
Those who went to war had different methods for coping with the sudden change in environment and culture. Characters of this story considered The U.S. to be “the real world” while Vietnam was just an in-between place. A place where, unlike other American wars, the things that happened were considered unethical by many. So, what was the point of being there? Why did the nurses work tirelessly to save lives, when so many of them died regardless? Perhaps this is why so many resorted to believing that what happened to them in Vietnam don’t mean nothing.