Interview of retired Colonel Patricia Silvestre on her career in
the U.S. Army Nurse Corps and service during the Vietnam War

Ruth Stewart:	Patricia Silvestre is being interviewed as a member of the WOSL, San Antonio, Texas unit at San Antonio, on October the 22nd, 2003.  Pat was born in New York City on June 13th, 1936.  Ruth Stewart is interviewing.  [00:26] Pat, tell us a little bit about your early life and what got you into nursing and then the military.	  

Patricia Silvestre:	Well, I was born in 1936 in Manhattan; raised primarily in the borough of the Bronx.  I was an only child of a typical New York family – mixed Italian and Irish.  My mother was the Irish side; my father was the Italian side.  Uh, I wanted to go into nursing from a very, very early age; and was fortunate enough to win a partial scholarship to an excellent school in New York – Lenox Hill Hospital School of Nursing, which was a large teaching hospital in the city at that time. 

	Unfortunately, I realized towards the end of my second year in nursing school that I was not gonna have enough money to finish the program.  So, I was probably going to have to drop out and go to work and then come back to nursing school.  At that point in time, a notice appeared on the bulletin board in the student quarters, from the U.S. Army, offering us the opportunity to become PFC’s with a grand salary of $84 a month for our last 12 months in nursing school.  And it was called the Army Student Nurse Program.

	I was in the first group of students in that program and it led into graduation and licensure; and later on, it led to commission as a 2nd lieutenant.  And two years of active duty was the requirement.  

	Uh, it was years later when I found out that that time in nursing school – in my last year in nursing school – counted for pay and counted for retirement purposes.  I had no idea of that.  So, even though the West Point graduates, their time, their four years in the military academy did not count for retirement or pay, ours did. Don’t fight it. [chuckle]

	There were four of us from New York City that got on the airplane to come to Texas for basic training.  We had been given our airline tickets by the sergeant in the recruiting office.  Good thing because we would have gone to Houston – of course we would have.  Where else would Fort Sam Houston be?  We got in town in San Antonio on a Sunday and they finally got us into barracks and got us situated.

	And a couple months later, we finished basic.  And with our bright and shiny new 2nd lieutenant bars on our uniforms; and me, my great and shiny new drivers’ license in my pocket, we took off for our assignments – which for me, my first assignment was in Fort Lewis Washington – American Army Medial Center. 

	It was a lovely assignment.  Very… Only about 50 miles from Seattle; enjoyed it thoroughly; and it was there I found out I wanted to be a pediatric nurse.  So, I went into pediatrics.  I had never thought I wanted to be a pediatric nurse. [chuckle] I went into pediatrics; and at that time, the army indicated to me that if I, if I re-upped for an extra year, I could go to Germany.  So, I signed all the necessary papers; and two weeks later I had orders for Korea.  [chuckle] They were spelling Germany funny, uh, strangely that year.  

So, off I went to Korea, where I was the head nurse on a 76-bed orthopedic ward.  You had to see it to believe it. We were in Quonset huts; we heated with kerosene stoves; and oh gosh, it was cold.  It was so cold.  And we… Our duty uniforms were the old woolen fatigues – wool pants, wool shirt, etcetera.  What I remember most vividly about Korea was good Lord it was cold.  But we did have a lot of orthopedic patients.  It was an amazing learning experience.  It was an amazing experience period.  I had never been around oriental’s.  I certainly had never been around Koreans; and they were a fascinating group of people.  Lovely assignment.  Really enjoyed it.  Did not like the country very much but enjoyed the assignment.  Came back to the United States and I was stationed in Georgia – Augusta, Georgia.  

Ruth Stewart:		[4:48]	How long were you in Korea?

Patricia Silvestre:	Thirteen months.

Ruth Stewart:		[4:50] And that was from when to…

Patricia Silvestre:	Mm, ’57; came back in ’50, 1958.  And was assigned to Augusta, Georgia.  At that time, my…

Ruth Stewart:	[5:03] Pat, before you leave Korea, could you tell me a little bit about your living conditions…

Patricia Silvestre:	Oh, sure.

Ruth Stewart:	…and all while you were there and what kind of – you were an orthopedic… Keep going about that a little bit.

Patricia Silvestre:	Okay.  Well, in Korea, we lived in what we called hooches.  They were Quonset huts.  We heated with kerosene stoves.  I set the hooch on fire one night trying to get the kerosene stove up a little bit more, [fill 5:26] up a little more heat.  That’s a funny humor there.  And uh, it wasn’t primitive.  We had all the medial supplies we needed.  It was just the general stuff that we did not have.  Uh, we enjoyed a very, very active social life.  My roommate got married over there.  She fell in love with one of the pharmacists.  And they got married over there.  And I was her maid of honor.  Now that was a hoot arranging a formal Irish Catholic wedding in Korea. [chuckle] The flowers came from Japan two days early.  We had to store them in the morgue.  We told the fellows in charge of the morgue if anybody died that he buried them under the, under the rack.  That’s all there was to it. 

	So, we had this wonderful formal, formal wedding.  And off the bride and groom went.  They are now here in San Antonio, Texas.  Again, he’s retired.  They have two children.  Uh, and orthopedics – the work was very, very interesting and very exciting.  We took care of a lot of Koreans, uh, and a lot of Korean children.  We also took care of Turks; the Turkish government had a division stationed in Korea and we were responsible for the sophisticated medical care of their troops.  So, we always had a fair number of Turkish patients.  There were some problems between the Turkish patients and the Koreans.  Nothing lead to death, but there were a few near riots. 

	Uh, one of the most horrible things I saw over there.  We had this man in – Korean gentleman in – who had fallen asleep on the railroad tracks.  He had gotten hit by a train and had a very severe fracture of his femur.  And they had him up on traction and they had a k-wire in him.  And he came to and he didn’t know where he was or what was happening.  He was old and he was disoriented and whatnot.  And he pulled his k-wire out of his leg.  I didn’t know you could do that.  Uh, and it was about 3:00 in the morning and I’m trying to get this poor doctor out of bed, who certainly did not believe me that this patient had pulled a k-wire out his leg.  But that was one of the most awful things I saw. [chuckle] I couldn’t imagine the pain connected with that.

	Uh, we did a lot of very good surgeries on the Koreans.  Uh, at that point in time, Korea was still devastated from the war.  And they simply did not have any – much medical capability whatsoever; certainly, different from today.  So, we were a godsend to them.

	Uh, when I, when I came home, I went to Augusta, Georgia and my mother became quite ill and became my dependent.  So, I asked for and received a transfer to New York City.  The only hospital they only had in New York City at that time was at Fort Jay Governor’s Island, which was a fascinating place.  It was at the tip of Manhattan Island.  You could only reach it by ferry.  And it’s been a military post since before the American Revolution.  Governor’s Island – the name came from the fact – the Dutch governors of New Amsterdam lived there.  So, it was a very historical post.  It used to be wonderful to go out early in the morning just as the sun was coming up and stand on the steps of the hospital and watch the sun come up over the Statute of Liberty.  It was just wonderful to see New York sparkling and clean and beautiful in the, in the earth light of morning.  

	Uh, I was a general medical surgical nurse there.  It was a very small hospital.  If we had 40 patients in beds, we were overwhelmed.  Uh, but it was a good, good assignment.  I really enjoyed it.  I had put it – the reality of the situation had co-, had hit me in the face quite a while ago that if I didn’t have a bachelor’s degree, I might as well forget staying in the army or forget doing much in nursing period.  Uh, that had not been my original intent, but I’m not stupid.  I figured that one out pretty fast.  So, I was taking courses at Hunter College in New York.  And as a city resident, I was paying $10 a course.  And in this day and age, we can look at the, at the tuition prices for state schools, that is absolutely astonishing.  

I then transferred to Columbia University, so I could get my degree in a fairly reasonable period of time.  And applied to the army for what we call [“boot stuck” 10:40].  It was 12-months full-time schooling at the school of your choice.  But you had to complete it in the 12 months.  Low and behold, I got selected and I was off to Columbia University.  My travel pay was a subway token. [chuckle] So, I finished my bachelor’s degree at Columbia University.  And I’m very glad I selected Columbia.  It was a very good program – an excellent program.  And I got in just in time, because they changed the curriculum and I would not have been able to complete in 12 months if I hadn’t gotten there just in time.

	Uh, so now I’m a 1st lieutenant going on captain with a brand-new bachelor’s degree.  And the army sends me on to recruiting duty.  Well I always had a big mouth and I could always talk, but I didn’t know anything about recruiting. [chuckle] And in those days, they didn’t send you to recruiting school first.  They just put you out in the field and said, “Go talk.” [chuckle] And we did.  We had a wonderful time.  I was stationed in Philadelphia; my mother was with me as my dependent; and it was a wonderful – I really enjoyed that assignment.  

Uh, we had the support of our fellow service nurses – air force and navy – uh, working with us – were excellent non-commissioned officers.  And we had commanders, recruiting command-, commanders who didn’t have the vaguest idea what to do with female nurses that worked for them. [chuckle] They never had anything happen to them like this before.  They were infantry officers.  They didn’t know what to do with this.  So, there were some amusing times.

Ruth Stewart:	[12:22] Tell me about some of them.
Patricia Silvestre:	Okay, uh… We had an ass-, we were going out to a school of nursing in Philadelphia, and it was an evening assignment.  They wanted us there 7 to 9 or something like that.  By “us”, I mean army, navy and air force.  And my NCO decided that that was… He was from Philadelphia and knew the area quite well.  And he decided that was not a safe area; that we could not go out there by ourselves.  And I was standing there saying, “But sergeant, of course, we gotta go out.”  And he said, “No, no, no, no you don’t understand.  We’re taking you out.”  And I said, “Who’s we?” and he said, “The air force, the navy and the army and [SEALs 13:05] will take you out and will stay with you.  And we really don’t want to hear anymore from you.” [chuckle] So, here are all these captains being escorted and guarded.  It was hilarious.  

	But one of the funniest things that happened was we changed the student nurse program around so that the kids in the hospital schools of nursing, if the school charged them anything for room and board or – for room and board, they got military pay for quarters and for food.  You know, if you were in a school of nursing that did not charge you for this, you didn’t get it, okay?  But there was one school in Philadelphia that decided to a charge a minimum amount – something like $15 a month or something like that.  Well that immediately changed the kids in the student nurse program payrate from $84 a month to $300 a month.  Now the school was not amused, because now half the class wanted to go into the student nurse program.  

So… They were mad at anyway for another reason I’ll tell ya about after this.  So, we went out to enlist the kids that had been selected for their student nurse program for their 12-months of nursing school.  We go down to South Broad Street, bop into the school of nursing and we are greeted by the director; and she’s got everything ready.  She shook it… She had the American-, the paper flag.  It was a Catholic school.  I had gone through the checklist with her and I asked does she have the flag and she said, “Yes”. [laughter] I had not specified “American flag”.  She was trying to get even.  So, I called around a couple places and nobody had a flag.  And I finally called the local army recruiter and said, “Sergeant, do you have an American flag?”  And he said, “Well of course I have an American flag.”  And I said, “Bring it down to St. Agnus, right away.  We’ve got to enlist 12 kids.  And we’ve got the new-, the media coming and everything else and I need a flag.  You cannot enlist anybody without a flag.  You can commission in as an officer without a flag, but you cannot enlist.”  

So, he said, “You want a flag?”  And I said, “Yes.”  Ten minutes later the navy nurse asked me, “Come over here.”  And she’s hanging out the window of the school and she said, “Look” … And up South Broad Street in Philadelphia comes my NCO, my sergeant, with the flag over his shoulder marching down the street.  Funniest thing I’d seen in weeks.  We got the kids all enlisted.  

But what had ticked the school administrators off before that was, these same – these kids that were already seniors; and therefore, PFC’s in the army; and therefore, eligible for all army benefits, had decided to go to California for a nursing conference.  They wanted to go to the student nurse conference.  They didn’t have much money, so they went over to the local air force base and they hopped a flight on an air force plane.  And aside from the pilot calling me and saying, “Who are these girls?  They’re wearing these short skirts and they want me to take them to California?” And I said, “Please take them to California”. [chuckle] He said, “But they’re wearing these shorts skirts.” [chuckle] It was the days of the miniskirt.  [chuckle] 

Ruth Stewart:	[chuckle] [16:33] What year was this?

Patricia Silvestre:	This had to be, let’s see, this was in the ‘70’s. 

Ruth Stewart:	Yeah, okay.

Patricia Silvestre:	Yeah.  And these cute little girls were out there at this air force base saying, “We want to go to California and we’re in the army”.  And they were wearing short skirts. [chuckle] But the school had gotten very upset because the gals could not get a hop back.  They had gotten to California and they were having an awful time getting back – an absolutely awful time getting back.  And of course, that was all my fault. [chuckle] 

	But recruiting was a very interesting time – very interesting.  Had a lot of good memories from that.  And that’s how I got my first Legion of Merit.  I was the top recruiter – nurse recruiter in the nation.  As I said in the beginning of this, if you go on recruiting duty, they, they pick people who could talk.  And I could sure talk.  

	So, you want to go onto the next one now?

Ruth Stewart:	Sure.  

Patricia Silvestre:	Okay.  I then went on to our army surgeon general’s office to the procurement division after that re-, recruiting division – and spent a very, very interesting two years there learning an awful lot about regulations and about military facts and military [lore18:04], etcetera.  Had a boss who told me that there was always an army regulation that could tell you how to get what you wanted to do – where it would be legal.  You might have to spend 10 hours looking for it, but it would be there.  

Uh, for example, [Lela 18:23] required his patient that was admitted to the hospital – we were required to do a TB skin test.  Well very few of them are going to be there 72 hours later to read it – to read the skin test.  And it was just a total waste of time.  So, I spent a couple of hours finding a regulation that said we didn’t have to do this on people that were not going to be around to have the dumb thing read.  There is al-, not always, but there is usually a regulation that will tell you, you can do what you want to do.

Uh, later on in life when I had more, more rank and whatnot, I wanted to get my nurse midwives credentials to prescribe narcotics.  You would think this would be a simple thing.  But you say, “Narcotics” and the world falls apart.  And they, they were really impaired in their practice not being able to prescribe narcotics.  So, I found the regulation that says, “If you need an exception to another regulation, put that in writing and go ahead and do what you want to while you’re waiting for the action to be taken on the request for the exception.  Make sure you put in your request that you are going to do what you want to do while you’re waiting.”  

A little over a year later I finally got an answer back on that.  And it was okay to credential them to give narcotics.  It’s, it’s just part of the game sort of played in any large organization.  Nothing peculiar to nursing or to the army or to anything else.  But the point is, there is usually a regulation that will tell you, you could do what you need to do.

Ruth Stewart:	You just find it.

Patricia Silvestre:	Just find it.  You may have to spend quite a bit of time looking for it, but just find it.  But it’s usually there, uh, so…  Anyway, that was one of the things I learned.  At the same time while I was up there, we got hit with the male nurse draft of 1966.  Selective service had decided, without any consultation with the military medical services, that there were 6 – that there were 200, yeah, 200 or 300 male nurses in the United States that had a statutory military obligation.

Ruth Stewart:	[20:47] This is what year now?

Patricia Silvestre:	I think it was ’66.  Well of course there were 200.  The male nurses either had fulfilled their military obligation before they went to nursing school; or shortly after they got into nursing school; or they were not medically fit or otherwise fit for military service.  There were very, very few of them who were eligible for commission. Uh, most of them had fulfilled their statutory obligation.  Selective service came out with these – issuing these letters to all these guys who no way would be eligible to come in the military, you know.  They could barely move without crawling on all fours.  I had the director from the school at Albert Einstein School of Medicine saying, “I would give you anything if you would get this guy out of this.  He is my senior instructor in this area.  And I have to have him.”  

Uh, there were a couple like that; and there were also…There was one guy that nobody wanted.  You wouldn’t have wanted him on a bet.  And we used to call each other – army, navy, air force – “He’s on his way to you.  He just left me.  Lock your door.  Turn out your lights” and whatnot.  [chuckle] Fortunately – this sounds terrible, but I’ll say it anyway – fortunately, he turned out to be a diabetic.  And even with the relaxed medical fitness standards for medical people – doctors, nurses and whatnot – he was not eligible being a diabetic.  We used to say under those relaxed medical fitness standards if you could see lightning and hear thunder, you were medically fit.  [chuckle]

	But anyway, we had this awful go-around while selective service is trying to find 600 guys who simply did not exist.  Which brings up the ones who did exist but were graduates of two-year associate degree programs that none of the military services accepted at that time.  And we were all going, “Oh no, no, no, no, no, no.”  And I was in the surgeon general’s office at the time, so I remember the, “Oh go – go away, go away, go away” business very well.  We were forced to take these poor souls.  And it wasn’t their fault.  It really wasn’t.  We wouldn’t let them go overseas.  We wouldn’t let them do anything that would involve extending their two-year tour of duty.  We wouldn’t let them work nights alone.  We wouldn’t let them even wear the army nurse corps caduceus on their uniform.  We put them in a strange insignia.  And then we wondered why none of them wanted to reenlist.  Can’t really blame’m.  

	A couple of’m did take advantage through the, um, GI bill of the registered nurse student program; and went on and got their bachelor’s degree and then came back into the Army Nurse Corps.  But most of them were very unhappy with the military services.  And it really wasn’t our fault.  It really was selective service.  Uh, [inaudible 24:04]

Ruth Stewart:	[chuckle]

Patricia Silvestre:	Then there was the saddest thing in the world that I had to do while I was there.  A gal from Scranton, Pennsylvania, that had come in through the army student nurse program.  And I had commissioned her before she came on active duty.  And then she’d gone to Vietnam with her best friend; and she got killed in Vietnam.  And I had to go see the family.  And that was one of the hardest things.  And the family asked that I stay over and go to the mem-, to the mass, because her best friend was bringing her remains back from Vietnam.  That was one of the hardest things I ever had to do.  

	First of all, we had to figure out how to get her best friend as her escort officer, because the policy had come out that the bodies of the dead would not be br-, would not be escorted back from Vietnam by people from Vietnam.  The escort would be picked up in California.  Well this best friend had lived across the street from her, had gone to nursing school, etcetera, etcetera.  

So, I called the chief of the Army Nurse Corps.  I got the assistant chief of the Army Nurse Corps.  “Hey, I’m a little [kakin 25:15].  I don’t normally call the chief of Army Nurse Corps.”  And I said, “I don’t know what to do.  The family has asked me to arrange for Lieutenant [Grasbeth’s 25:29] best friend to bring her body home.  And I don’t know how to do that.  And there’s nobody here in Scranton, Pennsylvania, that knows how to do that.” [chuckle] And [Louise 25:42] just asked us – she was the assistant chief of the corps at that time.  She said, “Give me… Captain, you don’t worry about a thing.  Tell the mother and tell the father their best friend will be with [Calla 25:54].  We will make sure.  Now it may delay things in California”, blah, blah, blah – “like 12 hours”.  And it did.  [Calla’s 26:01] body was about 12 hours late coming back, “but her best friend will be with her.”  And she was. And that was, that was really wonderful, I thought.  We really went out of our way to honor the re-, the request of the family. 

	Uh, but it was a very, very difficult time.  It was very, very hard, because American’s were certainly not used to seeing their girls come home in body bags.  So… And of course, the school was devastated.  The school, the school was draped in black – because she just graduated, you know, several months before – 6, 8, 9 months before.  So, they all still remembered her quite well.  But again, American’s were not used to their daughters coming home in body bags.  

	So, where are we now?  Okay.  After recruiting duty and after my tour in the surgeon general’s office, I went down back here to San Antonio for the army medical department career course, which is a 6-month course to teach you how to be an officer and the formations of the artillery.  Let’s not forget the formations of the artillery or the 10 classes or the 8 classes of supply. [chuckle] Could probably still to this day rattle them off.  That was a fun time.  It required no exertion of intellectual talent – the only ability to memorize. [chuckle] The formations of artillery and the 8 classes of supplies.

	Uh, after that I went to Vietnam.

Ruth Stewart:	[27”44] How long then… You were here 6 months for that?

Patricia Silvestre:	Mm-hm.
Ruth Stewart:	And then Vietnam.  

Patricia Silvestre:	Now because I was a pediatric nurse, they gave me children’s hospital in [Quang Tri 27:57].  Yeah.  I was 12 miles from the DMZ, Demilitarized Zone with the, with the surgical hospital.  I was assistant chief nurse at the surgical hospital and the chief nurse of this three-ward thing that was a children’s hospital.  The marines had built it and then left – and left – gave, gave it to us.  We were the only childcare facility within the three-province area.  And a province would correspond to a state.  So, people came from all over with dead and dying children on their shoulders.  And they waited until the kids were almost dead, because we had to look like we were from mars.  And besides, we were so – we [inaudible 28:44] in North Vietnam.  So, they probably considered that that was dangerous to bring their kids to us.  

	We had a...  How many beds was it?  Forty-five bed pediatric unit – three wards.  First ward was communicable disease and contagious.  And it sorta made sense, because so much of what we got in was plague, bubonic plague – not pneumonic, but bubonic plague, uh, all the God-awful communicable things, contagious things and whatnot.  Saw quite a bit of tetanus of the type – of the newborn.  We didn’t know what the heck we were doing with that.  Neither the doctors or the nurses had ever seen tetanus of the newborn.  We had no idea what we were doing with that.  And uh, a lot of other things that we had no idea what we were dealing with.

	One of our docs – only doc – was Haitian born – American educated but Haitian born.  So, he knew French, uh, thank God.  And he could communicate with the families of the Vietnamese kids. 

One ward was intensive care; one ward was what we would call convalescent and that was manned entirely by Vietnamese nurses.  I hired and fired them; and the marine corps paid them.  And the third ward was jointly manned with the Vietnamese and the American nurses.  Our job was to bring them up to something resembling 20th century standards.  And that’s not to mock them or minimize their education or anything like that.  But let’s face it, they simply did not have the wherewithal to be at our level.  

It was an amazing experience.  Did not see that much combat injuries.  Uh, probably only about 20% were combat related.  So, an awful lot of awful orthopedic stuff – TB of the long bones and things like that.  Awful lot of orthopedic stuff.  Saw an awful lot of con, comm-, uh, congenital stuff.  For some reason, even our surgical literature didn’t help us with this one.  For some reason, the Vietnamese population has a great deal of harelip and cleft palate in newborns.  And of course, if the child is defective, they just let the child sit – go in a corner and cry his way into God’s hands, because what do you do with a defective child?  And the miracle was we could, we could do the harelip.  We couldn’t do much about the cleft palate.  We didn’t have that type of surgical capability.  But the miracle was to make that kid’s face look fairly normal – reasonably normal.  The difference in how the parents approach that child after surgery was just astonishing.  And it wasn’t that they didn’t love their children.  They did love their children.  But reality settles in here gang.  

Uh, so we saw an awful lot of that and an awful lot of encephalitis.  Had one kid… He was 12 years old; came in in a coma; two months later he woke up speaking English.  Strangest thing… [laughter] One morning he woke up and said, “I want chocolate”.  And after that, he just went gung-ho making up for his two months of sleep and not eating.  It was an amazing thing – absolutely amazing.  

Uh, because the kids were so charming and adorable and because they were such innocent victims of this war, even if they were there with meningitis, which really probably had nothing to do with the war, uh, they were very, very appealing.  And the American GI’s were very, very good to us – very good to us.  Cause I… It took me months to get the [inaudible 33:04] established.  They kept telling me, “You can’t have that stuff.  It’s going to [inaudible 33:09] issue in the combat zone.”  I kept telling them, “No.  This is not my idea to put me in a children’s hospital in Vietnam,” you know. [chuckle] “I need this stuff and I will get it.”  And we did get it, but it sometimes took a long, long time. 

Uh, but we had some amazingly innovative people on staff, who could come up with what you needed to have out of the damndest things.  Like coffee cans served amazingly well to make weights for, uh, these…

Ruth Stewart:		[33:49] Pullies?

Patricia Silvestre:	      …pullies – for traction and whatnot.  So, you know, it was just amazing.  Also, it was where nurses did an awful lot in the States that was restricted to physicians.  And corpsmen did an awful lot of what in the States is restricted to nursing.  Uh, you did what you had to do.  And that was that.  And of course, we had the GI patients as well.  Uh, that, that broke your heart.  Yeah.  It broke your heart to see a 19-year old kid dying in front of you.  And you were sitting there holding his hand waiting for him to die.  It just broke your heart.  It broke all our hearts.  So, 12 months later I came home.

Ruth Stewart:		[34:40] And that was what year?

Patricia Silvestre:		Uh, that was ’70.  We had heard all this stuff about, you know, being insulted when you were wearing a uniform and whatnot.  Well now even given the fact that we were female – now that makes a big difference.  We were treated pretty darn nice.  I got off the airplane, I got off the airplane in New York – LaGuardia – and I was a day early.  So, my family got out of bed, got into their car and was coming out to get me.  So, I’m sitting outside the airport and it’s very early – it’s about 2:00 in the morning.  And see, I have my duffle bag.  It had been a very long flight in from Vietnam.  We had been flying for a long, long time.  And this man comes up to me – he’s in a business suit.  And he says, “Hi.  Can I talk to you?”  Hey, I’m a New Yorker, I don’t talk to strangers. [chuckle] Why?  Are you crazy mister?  And he said, “Now I noticed you were wearing a nurses caduceus.  Are you just in from Vietnam?”  And I said, “Ye…” And he said, “And I see the duffle bag.”  And I said, “Well, yes I am.”  And he said, “I was in Korea.  Can I keep you company till your fa-, till whoever you’re waiting for get here?”  And I said, “Sure.  Sit down.”  So, he shared my duffle bag with me.  [chuckle] But uh, for a New Yorker to do that with a stranger would be unheard of.  Good heavens, are you out of your mind?  

			So anyway, then I had Vietnam out of the way.  Where did I go after that?  Oh, I came back here to San Antonio, Texas to graduate school.  And I was enrolled in the Army Valor Master’s Program in Hospital Administration.  It was a two-year program; one year here in San Antonio – academic year.  And one year was a internship – residency rather.  And I had the luck of the draw.  I was selected to go to Letterman Army Hospital in San Francisco for my residency.  What a wonderful, wonderful site that was.  That was a delightful year.  I was the only resident, so I got all the choice assignments and whatnot.  And that was really great.  And I lived across the bridge in Marin County; and I could look out one of my windows and see the Golden Gate Bridge.  And I had never paid so much money for rent in all my life, but I knew it was only going to be for 12 months.  [laughter] So I went for it.  

			So now I have a master’s degree and now I have my combat experience out of the way; and I am selected to go to my first chief nurse’s job.  No excuse me, I was selected to go to what the army calls a utilization assignment – where they go to make use of you after they give you your master’s degree.  They want to make use of all that knowledge that is new and fresh in your head.  

			So, I was assigned as an army inspector general, IG.  I was the army’s first girl IG.  Uh, and it killed me to take my nurses caduceus off – my uniform – and put inspector general caduceus, uh [inaudible 38:02]. It just killed me.  I couldn’t believe it.  They wanted me to take off my identity.  

			Spent several years and our job was to inspect medical facilities.  Hospitals are very funny places.  You could find the darndest things in hospitals – going on in hospitals.  And you just fall down on the floor roaring.  Uh, and of course, if you’re a nurse, you know you’re going to find something in some of these areas.  If you just look hard enough and long enough or [inaudible 38:38] enough.  And then everybody will just fall down on the floor howling.  And we would fall down on the floor howling.  Uh, just had a wonderful couple of years.  All the other people on the team, the medical service corps officers...  Uh, and they could not believe some of the things that we came back with.  You know… “Would you believe they have IV tubing in a wooden box down there; and it’s from WWII?” [chuckle] Did you know, etcetera, etcetera.  Uh, so we went on and did our job there.  Uh, made many friends and some enemies.

Ruth Stewart:		[39:16] What were some of the funny things you found besides your WWII IV tubing?

Patricia Silvestre:		Okay.  Uh, postpartum clinic – combined with little baby clinic.  Make sense, except you realize their doing the speculums in the dishwasher. [laughter] They had not set up a reasonable arrangement with central materiel to go with the speculum.  And we had this huge work load.  It was here at Fort Hood.  And they had this huge work load.  So, they did what any normal head nurse would do.  They figured out a way to do it.  And the way to do it was to use a dishwasher.  And after I stopped howling laughing, I said, “That makes sense to me”.

Ruth Stewart:		Mm-hm.	

Patricia Silvestre:		Trying to think of some things that were funny, but that wouldn’t get me in trouble if anybody was listening to it or know what I was talking about. [laughter] So, without naming names or naming places, there was the installation in the hospital that had decided they didn’t have enough ENT doctors – sufficient number of ENT doctors to do all their T&A’s, so they were using [inaudible 40:40].  And the way this came out was a couple of their enlisted corpsmen for the operating room had come to the IG complaint [inaudible 40:50].  They said that something was really wrong that this guy was doing T&A’s.  And he had a PhD, so he was wearing his nametag that said, “Doctor”.  Everybody fell right into it.  Yeah.  

			I knew these two poor little gals [inaudible 41:08] sent them on their way telling them everything will be fine.  I grabbed the team chief and said, “Don’t wait supper for me, I’ll see ya later.”  I went charging off to the operating room, because I knew word would get back real quick.  And they would hide the surgical log.  I would have hid the surgical log.  [chuckle] Found the surgical log, xeroxed everything.  Sure enough he was.  Went down to the wards.  They wards thought he was a physician.  We took this to the commander the next day.  I thought the commander was going to flip out.  He was not a bit amused.  He did not know it.  The chief of surgery did.  I thought he was going to flip out.  Now that wasn’t a funny incident.  That was a sad incident.

			A funny incident was the guy you’ve always – you’ve been in the army for years and you’ve always waited to meet.  You know he’s just out there someplace.  And he came to see me at one of the inflation… Again, I was holding IG complaint [inaudible 42:10].  This guy comes in and the army wants throw him in the stockade and court martial him, cause he was AWOL.  He really wasn’t AWOL.  He had finished basic and had been told to go home and await for his orders.  And he had done just that. And home was this little town in Alabama.  And he kept trying, you know.  He would come over to the post periodically and [inaudible 42:35], you know.  And said, “I’m still awaiting orders”.  And they would say, “Go home and await orders”.  

			His pay was coming every month to him and whatnot.  And he was plowing the back 40 and awaiting orders.  Finally, a year later the army noticed that he wasn’t in Thailand; and they came looking for him.  Now they want him court martialed.  And, you know, it really wasn’t the kid’s fault.  He had tried every reasonable way.  Did he go out of his way to get noticed?  Probably not.  But he had done everything reasonably to be expected.  So, we took care of that.  But I had fun.  I said, “So you sit down.  I’ve been wanting to meet you for years.”  Finally met the soldier who was told to go home and await orders.  And a year or two later was still awaiting orders.  Finally met him.  Uh, so, uh, we would get things like that.

			Well after my IG period, I went on and thought of becoming chief nurse of hospitals.  Started off at a delightful hospital in Maryland at Aberdeen Proving Ground.  Very small, very nice.  Everybody was very comfortable with each other.  Uh, we didn’t do anything dramatic or anything like that.  We were just there; and we kept occupied and we enjoyed the place.  

			And I went on to other army chief nurses’ jobs.  Always a little more intense and involved.  And finished up my career as a chief nurse at Fitzsimons Army Medical Center, right outside of Denver.  This was a very prestigious assignment.  I was delighted to get it and I loved it.

Ruth Stewart:	 	[44:23] How many years were you in the military, all total?

Patricia Silvestre:		Counting the time in the student nurse program, 30 years and 1 month.

Ruth Stewart:		[44:43] And has your experience in the military affected the way you think about the military now – that now you think about the military or war?
Patricia Silvestre:		Oh sure.  I could no longer say to anybody, “Why don’t we go in and finish up that war there?”  You know, just kick a little butt and whatnot and get it over with.  I’ve seen the results of going in there and kicking butt.  They don’t have legs; they don’t have arms; they’re blinded; they’re devastated; or they’re dead.  So, I’d rather not, uh, go rapidly off charging into the sunset without thinking this through.

Ruth Stewart:		You’ve had an interesting career in the military…

Patricia Silvestre:		Fascinating career in the military.

Ruth Stewart:		…and an interesting life.  And, uh, I certainly appreciate you sharing this with us – for this interview.

Patricia Silvestre:		It’s been my privilege.

Ruth Stewart:		Thank you very much, Pat.

/al