When I Die I’m Going to Heaven ‘Cause I’ve Spent My Time in Hell: A Memoir of My Year As an Army Nurse in Vietnam

Published in 2018 (first published 2013)
206 pages

epub



A native of Western Pennsylvania, Barbara Hesselman Kautz, MSN, RN, joined the Army to finance her college education. In addition to serving in Vietnam, she served at Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco and Ireland Army at Fort Knox, Kentucky. After leaving the Army she married a fellow Vietnam veteran and attended graduate school at the University of Cincinnati. For much of her nursing career, Barbara divided her time between clinical nursing practice and teaching Maternal-Child Nursing. In addition to writing, Barbara spends her free time knitting and biking. She sings in two choirs and volunteers for AIDS Response Seacoast in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. She and her husband live in York, Maine, where they raised their three children. She has never wanted to return to Vietnam as a tourist, but would like to be part of a medical mission to help Vietnamese children suffering from the lingering effects of Agent Orange.

What is this book about?
When she was 18, she joined the Army to finance her nursing education. With less than six months of nursing experience, she was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam.

True tales of the war that are by turns horrifying and humorous, told with an eye for detail, by a woman who was in the thick of it.