Jan Bell knew she was in for an adventure even before she set foot in Vietnam. On the civilian flight from Singapore to Saigon a flight attendant inadvertently discharged a canister of tear gas which temporarily incapacitated the 707 crew and passengers.
Jan completed her Nurses' training at Concord Hospital in 1961 and although now retired, worked there for most of her career. After a stint travelling and working overseas, she returned to Concord in 1965. When a notice went up calling for volunteers to join a civil surgical team in Vietnam, she jumped at the opportunity to "continue the great adventures of life". Between 1964 and 1969, the Australian government sent 100 civilian nurses to four sites as a gesture of support to the Vietnamese people. ]an was posted for a year at Vung Tau, "the Riviera of South-East Asia" about 13XOkm south of Saigon.
"Basically we took over the operating theatres and outpatients department of a Vietnamese hospital although we did work alongside some Vietnamese staff,"
Jan recalls. "Needless to say, they weren't terribly happy about having us come and take over their hospital. At the time you felt you were an evangelist showing them the right way to do things. In hindsight we were doing it at the expense of their values. However, having said that, it was hardly surprising that we tried to instill our methods. We'd come from modern, clean well-ordered Concord to a filthy in our eyes - ill-kempt, badly-maintained hospital. The toilet facilities for patients were to say the least, appalling.
"Under those conditions you either got used to it and adapted or went mad. There was one nurse whom the Vietnamese dubbed Madam Mop, because she was always "rig to clean things up. She never relaxed her standards, and strangely, she stayed longer than any of the rest of us. Personally, however, the experience turned me around, stopped me being complacent and made me more adaptable. To live in an Asian culture for a year made me a better communicator, more accepting and gave me a greater political and social conscience, which 1 think made me a better nurse." Jan also recognises the exposure to conditions and wounds she would never have encountered back home. Along with the "whole gamut" of medical and surgical conditions, the unit saw lots of tetanus and TB as well as occasional cases of leprosy. When the fighting came closer, they had to deal with gun shot wounds, burns, injuries from explosions, head injuries and multiple abdominal wounds.
"During the Tet offensive in 1968, the hospital became a dumping ground for thousands of injured people, mainly women and children," she recalls. "I remember coming to work one morning and the lawn was just covered with dead and dying people. My mind was doubtless clouded by the enormity of the situation, but we just got on with the job. We had good relations with the Australian military hospital and the Americans and fortunately were able to use their facilities when ours were inadequate or non-existent.
In Jan's experience, once war-time nursing is in the veins, it never really leaves. "It opened my eyes to a whole new world," Jan says. "In spite of the fact that until the Homecoming in 1987 we received virtually no recognition for our duties, it was a fascinating and life-enhancing experience. There's no question that given the opportunity, 1 would do it again. In fact, when the crisis in East Timor hit the news, 1 had that strange yearning to go and do something to help."