"These kids, they would watch you when you were changing their dressings. They would watch every movement, every expression on your face. So you just had to gear yourself not to have any expression." (Audio Interview, Part 1, 30:14)

Helen Eileen Hause

War: Vietnam War, 1961-1975 Branch: Air Force Nurse Corps Unit: 4162nd Air Force Hospital, 92nd Tactical Air Command Hospital, 6160th Air Force Hospital, 9th Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron, 820nd Medical Group, 81st Tactical Air Command Hospital Service Location: Travis Air Force Base, California; Hickam Air Force Base, Hawaii; Wake Island; Tachikawa Air Base, Japan; Plattsburg Air Force Base, New York; RAF Bentwaters, England; 21st Casualty staging Flight, Ton Son Nhut, Vietnam; Selfridge Air Force Base, Wurtsmith Air Force Base, Oscoda, Michigan; Iraklion Air Force Base, Crete; Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana Rank: Lieutenant Place of Birth: MI

A year after graduating from nursing school in 1955, Helen Hause joined the Air Force for a 20-year career, much of it as a flight nurse. She logged over 1000 hours in peacetime Japan, flying in unpressurized planes that rarely went above 10,000 feet. After a less pressured tour of duty in England, she was assigned to Vietnam for a year. She prepped wounded men for evacuation in an 85-bed plane, and managed to survive a series of mortar attacks on Ton Son Nhut, her air base. Hause’s homecoming to her home in Detroit in April 1968 was hardly peaceful; the city was in flames in the wake of the assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.