Paris woman, Army veteran, shares stories of Vietnam War service
Anna Kathryn Tolbert cracked open a photo album, peering at the faded pictures.
“Let’s see, I don’t have a whole lot of photographs because I was so busy working. There wasn’t much time," Tolbert said.
The Paris native flipped through the photos that remained of her service in Vietnam.
In one, she holds up a Vietnamese toddler as she stands in front of shelves of supplies. In another, she smiles in green Army fatigues sitting next to a woman named Co Phu. In a third, Tolbert leans over a makeshift crib holding a sleeping baby.
Starting in 1968, Tolbert served for close to two years in the Army Nurse Corps, stationed in the midst of the fighting in Cu Chi.
“Every day was pretty much the same — lots of work interspersed with rocket and mortar attacks," Tolbert, 77, said.
The attacks usually came at night under the cover of darkness and were aimed at the airstrip nearby, bringing strikes close to the hospital. One night, the building next to her quarters was hit, killing five people.
“You know I’ve picked shrapnel out of the walls you know the outside walls of my barracks building," she said.
As a nurse in a warzone, she relied on a triage approach, ranking patients by their level of need and affording care only to those who could be saved.
One day, she broke from the system and continued caring for a man who had been shot in the chest, even after her commanding officer reprimanded her for the care.
“I had a patient who really no one thought was going to make it, and we were so busy, and he was on a ventilator and had been shot through the chest, and it was difficult to care for him because every time you took him off the ventilator to suction him you know it was, he would practically, he would turn purple from lack of oxygen," Tolbert said. "But he had to be suctioned, and we were so busy, but I just kind of had this feeling about him you know that gee if he could just breathe, he’s just got this one wound in the chest."
Her persistence paid off. The man survived.
“That’s something that I will always remember. He’s one person that I really helped to save," Tolbert said.
After two years of active duty, she spent five years working as a flight nurse in an Air Force reserve unit. From 1970 to 1975, Tolbert trained at least one weekend a month and carried out missions for two weeks out of the year.
This was while Tolbert lived in Oregon. The base was originally in Oregon but moved to Washington during her period of service.
During missions, Tolbert flew to the Philippines on a plane carrying cargo and returned to the United States with injured Vietnamese passengers.
The planes could hold 72 people and she was one of about two nurses caring for patients on board.
“It wasn’t like being a stewardess,” Tolbert said with a laugh.
Now, Tolbert lives back in Paris, where she suspects she is the only veteran from the Army Nurse Corps in the county. Her service in Vietnam gives her a sense of pride, she said.
The Vietnam War lasted from 1965 to 1975 and killed 58,220 Americans, according to the National Archive.
"Perhaps some people are alive that might not have been had I not served," Tolbert said. she added, "I have no regrets at all for having done it."
Alex Gladden is a University of Arkansas graduate. She previously reported for the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette and The Jonesboro Sun before joining the Times Record. She can be contacted at agladden@swtimes.com.
This article originally appeared on Fort Smith Times Record: Army nurse reflects on her time in Vietnam
