Huffington Magazine Issue 22 | Page 111

Exit old. You never forget that smell. Or the smell of burning flesh.” 18th Surgical Hospital, Quang Tri, Republic of South Vietnam, 1969. A few miles north, a killing zone where Americans and North Vietnamese are locked in desperate battle. Marsha, age 22, had graduated the year before from St. Vincent’s School of Nursing in Indianapolis. Never worked in an emergency room. Never seen a body mutilated. A straight-A, white-glove Irish Catholic girl, gone to war. Now, suddenly, medics are bursting through the doors carrying litters with the wounded and dying, their eyes wide with pain and desperation. Focus: scissor off the fatigues and boots, scan the body to assess the gaping wounds, insert a chest tube, catheters, an IV, try not to notice that’s a person down there with a name and a mother back home. This is here, now. Keep his throat clear as he’s pushed into surgery and pivot to the next bloody litter as more medevac helicopters thwackthwack to a landing outside. “The abnormal becomes normal,” she says when she speaks again. “War becomes normal. Death becomes normal. You do what you have to do. We worked hard. Played GREATEST PERSON OF THE WEEK hard. We tried to find as much humor and laughter as we could.” ‘WE WEREN’T SATISFIED’ Outside, an elevated train rumbles past the window that looks out on a dreary North Philadelphia neighborhood. Marsha is now the director of a non-profit, the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service and Education Center. She struggles to explain what has drawn her back, HUFFINGTON 11.11.12 Marsha takes a coffee break outside of the Philadelphia Veterans Multi-Service & Education Center.