American Daughter Gone to War: On the Front Lines With an Army Nurse in Vietnam [Hardcover]

Winnie Smith (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: October 1992

A former army nurse during the Vietnam War describes her days and nights, dating fighter pilots, tending to wounded soldiers, and getting a taste of the tragedy of war while working in a Saigon intensive care unit. 25,000 first printing. $17,500 ad/promo.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Terse and telegraphic, Smith's style suits her subject: a year this army nurse spent caring for patients in the ICU, emergency and triage wards of a Saigon field hospital during the Vietnam War. Smith's story is almost unbearably gripping. The tenor and misery of the sick and wounded emerge vividly as she describes burn victims, amputees and the phantom pain felt by those with severed limbs. Primitive conditions, the tropical climate, stench, blood and constant danger all added to her occupational stress and exhaustion, which she relieved only through brief respites in local bars and hasty romances. After returning from three years of duty (1965-1968) to a family and a country torn by dissent, Smith was haunted by memories of Vietnam. Now 48, she has honored those memories in this book. Photos not seen by PW.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Library Journal

The remarkable thing about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder is the similarity of its effects on its victims. Captain Smith was under constant stress from witnessing injury and death as an army nurse in a post-operative ward near Saigon and later in Long Binh. When her tour was over she retreated into a semianesthetic fog of alcohol and work until her internal anguish forced her to choose between self-destruction and the painful process of healing. This memoir is an eloquent description of that journey. At one point, as she stands in the screened corner where hopeless cases are sent, a coworker stops by. " 'I come here, too,' she says quietly. 'I hate them dying alone.' " An excellent picture of both the medical role in the war and war's cruel effect on the healers.
- Mel D. Lane, Sacramento, Cal.
Copyright 1992 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 352 pages
• Publisher: William Morrow & Co; 1st edition (October 1992)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0688111882
• ISBN-13: 978-0688111885
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (13 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,131,473 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Should be called an American survivor comes home from war, August 24, 2005

By 

Kali "bengaligirl" (United Kingdom) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Daughter Gone to War: On the Front Lines With an Army Nurse in Vietnam (Hardcover)

Another thrift shop purchase that I wasn't sure I would take too but strangely enough I was compelled to read the book from cover to cover.

At first the author Winnie Smith didn't strike me as all that likable, look at it from my point of view, a young white and attractive woman of the sixties, promiscuous yet strangely innocent, racist though she doesn't know it, after all racism was something that most people accepted as a kind of norm and at first filled with gung-ho patriotism to do her "bit" in Vietnam.

However as I turned each page I began to see the human side of Winnie and I realised she was a woman of her time or rather she was a woman living in time of misunderstood values, and misplaced values that she just happened to be partaking a part in.

Knee deep in blood, gore and guts Winnie does her "bit" sometimes seeing friends die in front of her, a particularly gruesome experience is seeing the chopper pilot she is with get the top of his head sliced off when their helicopter crashes. It is obvious from the way she writes that she is remembering every moment of that terrible incident.

Despite all of this horror she seems to get used to sending young men back home minus limbs or their minds or in body bags and she gets on with her job of being a nurse.

Interspersed in all of this is her innocence that is slowly but surely eroded by war and its indifferent cruelties, I laughed out loud when I read a section where she has to be told what "condom" is at the ripe old age of 22, Winnie grew up in Vietnam, came of age as did many of her counterparts but as woman she was never to be counted as one of the "survivors" of the Vietnam war.

Winnie is as much a causality of the war as the men she has helped put back together or sent home in a casket. She doesn't realise this until she is sent stateside and only then does the real horror begin, she has to come to terms with what she has seen and been through.

This is not a sentimental read, it is abrasive, harsh and mind numbing but it is also gives a real insight to the "other side" of war, of what it was like to be a Nurse looking after the soldiers wounded in battle.

Despite having a loving family at home Winnie is never able to make them understand what it was "truly like" in Vietnam but if Winnie is anything she is a survivor and in the end she comes to terms with her being a "Vietnam Vet" and gets on with her life, scarred, battle weary but totally and utterly a survivor.

14 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars We will remember nurse Smith always., September 30, 1999

By 

[e-mail] (Cocoa Beach, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: American Daughter Gone to War (Paperback)

I've never been quite so moved by a written account of the Vietnam experience as I was when reading Winnie Smith's "American Daughter". I was one of the hundreds of young soldiers for whom she cared, carrying with me the hopeful thoughts for her these past three decades. So many years ago, in reply to my asking her about her plans following the war, Winnie said she hoped to "return to the Carolina's, marry, settle-down and raise 12 kids!" The young girl I knew during my month's hospital stay is gone, and in her place a new and different Winnie Smith emerged from the hellishness of that war; a stronger nurse Smith indeed, and as her story portends, a woman who has finally found some peace with herself. While a riveting, graphic and abundantly candid account of her time at war, at least this one old soldier who was fortunate to have crossed her path ever so briefly, was left with a saddened and empty feeling after reading her story. Her story confirms it was too much to hope that that war would leave untarnished the gentle and innocent nurse Smith we knew then. "American Daughter" should be requisite reading for all war-makers. D. Lewis Smith, Jr. (no relation), 173rd Airborne, Bien Hoa, Vietnam, 1965/66.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A nurse's account of the Vietnam War, May 31, 2001

By 

Kris Dotto "Bookworm Extraordinaire" (Phoenix, AZ USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: American Daughter Gone to War (Paperback)

Long ago, my boss gave me a copy of a thin (by my standards) book, and said it had been written by a friend of his; would I like to read it? I said yes; I love to read, and Bob Thomas was someone I admired. If he said a book was worthwhile, then I knew it was. "American Daughter Gone To War" has been with me ever since.

Winnie Smith's writing is straightforward. Her account of her childhood and adolescence is as clear as her account of her tour in Vietnam, even when the horrors start mounting up; although Smith's narrative sometimes skimps on description, the reader should keep in mind that she's writing her memoirs, not a novel. She shows a gallows humor throughout, particularly when she tells of dealing with arrogant doctors, officers, and (later) men who lie about having served in the war; she gives glimpses of the day-to-day life at the bases (tarantulas in the latrine are just one ordinary occurrence). When I finished the book, I felt as if I'd spent the time actually speaking to Smith, sharing in her memories, and was just as emotionally wrung as if I had.

If all history is relative, a patchwork of accounts from witnesses in high and low places (as well as on the giving and taking ends of orders), then the American involvement in the Vietnam War is a kaleidoscope. Of all the literary fragments worth piecing together, "American Daughter Gone To War," although small, is one to keep.