TO
·
CASUALTIES
· Hostile deaths: 47,359.
· Non-hostile deaths: 10,797.
· Total: 58,202 (includes men
formerly classified as MIA and Mayaguez casualties). Men who have subsequently
died of wounds account for the changing total.
· 8 nurses died - 1 was KIA.
· Married men killed: 17,539.
· 61% of the men killed were
21 or younger.
· Highest state death rate:
West Virginia - 84.1% (national average 58.9% for every 100,000 males in 1970).
· Wounded: 303,704 (153,329
hospitalized + 150,375 injured requiring no hospital care).
· Severely disabled:
75,000--23,214 100% disabled; 5,283 lost limbs; 1,081 sustained multiple
amputations. Amputation or crippling wounds to the lower extremities were 300%
higher than in WWII and 70% higher than in Korea. Multiple amputations occurred
at the rate of 18.4% compared to 5.7% in WWII
· Missing in Action: 2,338.
· POWs: 766 (114 died in
captivity).
†The
Vietnam War Internet Project an
educational organization dedicated to providing information and documents about
the various Indochina Wars and to the collection and electronic publication on
the web of oral histories and memoirs of both those who served in and those who
opposed those conflicts. [HOME
PAGE]
And many were
Women!
Lt.
Drazba and Lt. Jones were assigned to the 3rd Field Hospital in Saigon. They
died in a helicopter crash near Saigon, February 18, 1966. Drazba was from
Dunmore, PA, Jones from Allendale, SC. Both were 22 years old.
Capt.
Alexander of Westwood, NJ, and Lt. Orlowski of Detroit, MI, died November 30,
1967. Alexander, stationed at the 85th Evac., and Orlowski, stationed at the
67th Evac. in Qui Nhon, had been sent to a hospital in Pleiku to help out during
a push. With them when their plane crashed on the return trip to Qui Nhon were
two other nurses, Jerome E. Olmstead of Clintonville, WI, and Kenneth R.
Shoemaker, Jr. of Owensboro, KY. Alexander was 27, Orlowski 23. Both were
posthumously awarded Bronze Stars.
Lt.
Donovan, from Allston, MA, became seriously ill and died on July 8, 1968. She
was assigned to the 85th Evac. in Qui Nhon. She was 26 years old.
Lt.
Lane died from shrapnel wounds when the 312th Evac. at Chu Lai was hit by
rockets on June 8, 1969. From Canton, OH, she was a month short of her 26th
birthday. She was posthumously awarded the Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm
and the Bronze Star for Heroism. In 1970, the recovery room at Fitzsimmons Army
Hospital in Denver, where Lt. Lane had been assigned before going to Viet Nam,
was dedicated in her honor. In 1973, Aultman Hospital in Canton, OH, where Lane
had attended nursing school, erected a bronze statue of Lane. The names of 110
local servicemen killed in Vietnam are on the base of the statue.
Lt.
Col. Graham, Chief Nurse, 91st Evacuation Hospital, 43rd Medical Group, 44th
Medical Brigade, Tuy Hoa, from Efland, NC, suffered a stroke and was evacuated
to Japan where she died four days later on August 14, 1968. A veteran of both
World War II and Korea, she was 52.
Capt.
Klinker, a flight nurse with the 10th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, Travis
Air Force Base, temporarily assigned to Clark Air Base in the Philippines, was
on the C-5A Galaxy which crashed on April 4, 1975, outside Saigon while
evacuating Vietnamese orphans. This is known as the Operation Babylift crash.
From Lafayette, IN, she was 27. She was posthumously awarded the Airman's Medal
for Heroism and the Meritorious Service Medal.
Barbara
died at Vung Tau, Vietnam in 1971.
Died
in a jeep accident, Bien Hoa, October 2, 1969.
Murdered
by U.S. soldier in Cu Chi, August 16, 1970.
Died
of Guillain-Barre Syndrome, Cam Ranh Bay, February 9, 1971.
Died
in a jeep accident, Long Binh, October 26, 1968.
Died
in a plane crash, Qui Nhon, 1967.
Died
of a heart attack in Saigon, 1964.
Shot
to death in Pleiku, 1969.
Died
when a car bomb exploded outside the American Embassy, Saigon, March 30, 1965.
Murdered
by a U.S. soldier in Nha Trang, August 16, 1967.
Died
from injuries suffered in a fall from her apartment balcony in Saigon, October
2, 1969
Killed
by a mine on patrol with Marines outside Chu Lai, 1965.
Killed
in a helicopter crash into the ocean near Da Nang, May 9, 1967.
Killed
in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during Tet 1968.
Shot
to death in an ambush, Dalat, March 4, 1963. Janie was five months old.
Killed
in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during Tet, February 1, 1968.
Killed
in raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during Tet, February 1, 1968.
Captured
and burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972.
Remains recovered and returned
to U.S.
Captured
and burned to death in Kengkok, Laos, 1972.
Remains recovered and returned
to U.S.
Captured
during raid on leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot during Tet 1968. Died in 1968 and was
buried somewhere along Ho Chi Minh Trail by fellow POW, Michael Benge. Remains
not recovered.
Captured
at leprosarium in Ban Me Thuot, May 30, 1962.
Still listed as POW.
LINKS:
Unarmed and under fire: An oral history of female Vietnam
vets
