veterans from world war ii through the iraq war tell their stories in recorded oral history interviews. here is an excerpt from one story. >> one of the most frightening

things that ever happened to me, believe it or not, was on the january 6th date. we talked about being commissioned, wow, this was the january 6th the date of 1971. and, the ev city memo which was about a mile from our hospital. of course i am on my duty, every time we were hit i was on duty. that is the way it happened when it was the first time that i remembered any enemy activity near us. i had been in country about a month and a half and i was walking to work and getting a little complacent at that point, because i was thinking, you know, this is a long tour. and i thought, you know, sometimes things are slow, i would not say i was bored but i

did not work as hard. >> comfortable? >> yes, i was walking to work thinking this is not too bad, i have ten and a half more months, and that night we got hit. it was 2:00 in the morning and i had just taken my last patient from the recovery room into icu. and i said, i will be right back, i am just going to straighten up. and then, all of a sudden the loudest explosion i ever, ever, ever remember hit. and i thought the mortar hit the building next to our hospital, which is where the doctors slept. i was so scared, i head under the middle desk in the recovery room thinking, oh my god, we are being overrun! i trembled, i could not believe, i prayed, and then i heard the yelling of the two nurses in icu and realized i could not stay there. so i grabbed my flapped economic, and it was just a short ten foot walk between recovery and the ico. there we had about 12 american

soldiers at that time we had civilians, and we had p.o.w.'s so our soldiers came first. we picked them up, shut them under the beds, and got other mattresses to shield them. no other loss or shrapnel could hit them. all of our soldiers first, and then we did they women, there were two women me and then we did the man. and last but not least was the p.o.w. head trip the land mine and was in a body cast. it normally took five people to take care of him. about two nurses to even begin to turn him. another nurse and i picked him up, put him on a shot, and shoved him under his bed. at that time we did not have any more mattresses, so we figured his body cast will protect in that way.

. i will show you the picture of what our unit looked like before, and then what our unit looked like the night of the explosion. this is what our unit looked like before, can you say that? >> can you just hold that up next year just? >> that is even better, there you go. you can see we have lights, windows on the upper part. they windows, though, had tape on them so that, in case something like this happened the glass would not explode through. but, the doors were wooden doors. you could see all of the beds in the unit. this is what it looked like afterwards, i am sitting on a

bed, we has one of the mattresses, and the doors are blown in, we put initiate over the door, they windows are all blown up, we are on emergency power, all of the power went off. my fellow nurses will laying down on the desk, and we were just taking a break before everything happened, to get ready for the day shift. but, one of the follows had a trick, so this one nurse and i would crawl on our hands and knees. we were sectioning him, i can show you, right here, in the pictures. we have a mattress right beside his bed, we had to put the mattress out and then the suction machine at the head. so there i am sectioning him and the other nurses ambling him, because when you suction your taking out the oxygen, so we had to put the oxygen in. so, as i said, every time we got hit it was night did a.

there were a few other times, but nothing was quite as bad as that ammo dump. . the ammunition, there was 5000 tons of munitions that were exploded that night. and it lasted into the wee hours of the morning. finally got used to hearing it and realized it was not the hospital, which was the main thing that was a comfort. but many realize that complacency has no place in war. zones >> so were you there, where they're unexploded devices that flew into the hospital area? >> no. it was the sound wave. the blast wave itself, which also was a learning experience. but i had no idea that the progression could be that great. of course, i guess with 5000 tons, i should've realized. but we didn't know what it was at the time. so, okay. one of my favorite stories is.

bob could not come. we were and you have an area. we don't have an amphitheater big enough for him to do his show. but, they sent phyllis george who was miss america 1970, i believe. and she later became the first lady of kentucky. but she was so beautiful and so all of her entourage. and they came to our icu and talked with every single soldier, which was awesome. and one of the soldiers i was taking care of that day was a double amputee. both of his arms were amputated from the elbow down. and he did not own himself up. so i was holding him up and she spent a lot of time. when she was leaving, i late him down. and i said, wouldn't it be great of all of us looked that good. and he looked up at me, and

said they don't hold a candle to what you would like to us. well, i just couldn't believe he said that. and i leaned down and i kissed his forehead and i said i will never forget you. thank you. here he was, supporting me when i was supposed to be supporting him. so. another story is that, i never forget this one. there was an ambush at the on cape pass. an kaye was right near we were. it was up in the mountains and for whatever reason strategy had that we needed that path for the soldiers and then they would let it go and d.c. would take over and i just went on and on. one of the nights i was in the recovery room and we had a -- . and one of the soldiers came in to the recovery room in the doctor looked at me and he said, he has lost his one i, i think it was a left eye. and his right i had what they call high fema and it which is

blood in the eye. so i wasn't sure if he was going to be able to see out of it. but both eyes were patched. he lost his left arm above the elbow and his right arm was totally off. and as he was making up from anesthesia, he was going years i can put my arm down. and he literally was lifting his chest of trying to put his right arm down. and there was another nurse and myself working with this patient and i went over and talked with him and i said, you know, you are just waking up from anesthesia. do you remember what happened? he said yes. he said i, and then he never finished. so i said okay, let's just try to relax. are you in? pain no i'm not in pain. and he was almost defiant. he was angry, like why can't i see? why can't i do this? why can't i do that? are you having me tied down? and so i laid my hand on his chest, and i said you know you are in the recovery room.

you have been injured. and he said one of the extent of my injuries? and i looked at the other nurse, because i knew we weren't supposed to tell him very much. and i said, well your arms have been injured. well how can i can't put them on the bed. and she and i both looked at each other, and she said tell him now. and so she said she was a more seasoned nurse than i. she had been there quite a lot longer. and i called him by name, and i told him about his arms. and he said, well why can't i see. and i said well, both eyes are patched right now. and i said the doctor is going to come in the morning in check your eyes. he said, well great. now i'm going to have to sit and sell pencils on the side of the sidewalk just to make anything due. and i said, no no no. someone is determined and strong as you are, and gone

through this, we will get you through this. but i'm gonna give you some pain medicine now and talk with you. and we will just see how things go, okay? so the next morning, the doctor came in and looked at his eyes and the doctor was pretty hopeful for that one either have the high fema. but he was still pretty upset, obviously that he had lost everything except his legs. so he was with us at least two weeks, which is usually the 14 days is usually the amount of time that they, that someone that seriously injured would be with us. and every day we would sit down and write a letter to his newlywed wife and then, his wife did get some letters through to him. so we would sit and read it to him and then we would sit and write some more letters for him. he was finally medevacs to japan. then he ended up back in colorado, and he was one of the first bionic arms for the army. so he wrote to us. he wrote back to us to tell us this.

and this was so important to us because we never knew what's happened to the fellows after they left us. and again, here he was supporting us, letting us know that he did okay. even though things, he's already been to, he says i can't go any further. he said but i am going to make it. so, something like that just gave us hope that maybe we can continue helping these fellows that are so young. i mean, we've all told. we felt old. 22 years old and you feel because these kids were 18 and 19 years old coming in. and one of the statistics that i looked up, the age of 20 was the most that had died. it was over 30,020 year olds that had died in vietnam. so it just seemed kind of unreal to me that