We have been learning about Sharon McCully, a 1957 Russell High School graduate who trained as a nurse and volunteered for the Air Force in 1968. She had an initial assignment and completed flight nurse training before deploying to Vietnam in May 1970, serving with the 903rd Aeromedical Evacuation Squadron at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base.

Sharon described the area where the air base was located.

“Cam Ranh Bay is on a peninsula. (Sharon chuckled) We were on a sand pile surrounded by water. There were two seasons, the hot and the wet. The winter was the wet season. It was damp and cold — very difficult.”

Sharon spent most nights at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base as her medevac flights usually ended back at their home base and Air Force regulations mandated nine hours of crew rest between flights. She spent most of that time in her quarters.

“The women had better quarters than the men. Ours were one-story, flat buildings with surrounding fences with (razor) wire above that. There were cement block barriers (blast protection) around our quarters. The quarters had a hallway and off the hallway were four rooms and then down a little ways would be another hallway and four rooms. There was a central bathroom and shower. The water there was very brown with rust. There were two of us to a room. The Red Cross women, we called them Donut Dollies, also lived there.”

The nurses’ quarters were near the flight line, which was convenient for accessing their medevac flights, but that proximity also led to danger.

“When in-coming rockets were hitting the flight line, it was a scary time because we were right across the street. You had your flak vests and helmets on and you laid on the floor. There was one night when we were on the floor all night long. It was just getting light when the siren went off that meant we could proceed with caution. I had a flight early the next morning, so I was going to my squadron building. I looked up at our flag on the side of the flight line. There was a faint breeze and our flag was moving in the quiet of the morning. I thought of Francis Scott Key writing our national anthem — that our flag was still there. After spending all night on the floor, that picture of our flag has stuck in my mind all these years.”

Sharon attended chapel worship services on-base and described its place in her Vietnam tour.

“One of the chapel buildings was close. We would have chapel services on Sundays. If you didn’t feel the need to attend when you got there, you certainly felt the need while you were there. The chaplains were very understanding. It was a church service and you could sing and pray and all the rest. We all needed that.”

The 903rd personnel tried to make holidays special.

“I recall we did some group activity on holidays. The first big holiday was the 4th of July. Some of the men had been at Clark Air Base in the Philippines and managed to bring a pig back in a cage. (Sharon chuckled) So, they created a fire pit outside in the sand; roasted this hog; (Sharon laughed) and we had a big pig roast. For Christmas they had managed to put two Christmas trees in the wheel wells on two of the big, C-141 flights from the United States. So we had a couple Christmas trees that we paper-decorated just to make things brighter. To be able to touch a live Christmas tree from the States (Sharon laughed) that was a special touch!”

Sharon recalled other ways the 903rd personnel created special events for holidays or otherwise.

“Sometimes the enlisted men went across the flight line to where they made meals for the flight crews. They would swap something and then come back with beautiful steaks. Somebody always had a grill and a bunch of us would have steak. It’s nonsense now, but at the time it was real and it was great! It was probably the first time I ever had lobster because they were so plentiful along the coast.”

Sharon and her friends found escape in on-base entertainment.

“We had movie theaters. Before the movie they played ‘America the Beautiful’ and my tears would roll. Then they’d show the news reels and the movie. Oh, that was big stuff!”

Sharon and her friends also found escape in entertainment in their quarters.

“At that time the big thing was reel-to-reel tapes. I don’t know where (the tapes) initially came from, but they were copied zillions of times. I had gotten a TEAC reel-to-reel player; I had speakers; and I had these reel-to-reel tapes. Oh, that was next to heaven. It was music like ‘Leaving on a Jet Plane,’ Peter, Paul, and Mary, and John Denver.”

Sharon also kept in regular contact with her family and friends in the States.

“I wrote lots of letters, but cassette tapes were also popular then. So, especially for my parents and family, I used cassette tapes. I would record and send tapes to them and then they would send a tape back. When my family was finished making a tape to me, if they had time left on the tape, they would record some of the music from my records at home that were special to me.”

But Sharon’s downtime was limited when compared to her medevac flight schedule. Some of those medevacs were particularly challenging.

©2024 William D. Palmer