Justice recalls the good and bad of her past as a nurse in Vietnam

California Court of Appeal Justice Eileen Moore delivered a heart-wrenching speech at the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on Sunday.

“Every night in the nurses’ quarters, quiet sobs could be heard,” said Moore, who in 1966 served as a combat nurse for the 85th Evacuation Hospital located in Qui Nhon. “I doubt any nurse came away from that war without emotional wounds.”

Nurses were trained to make people better, she continued, “but in Vietnam, they helped soldiers mend, only to send them back to combat to possibly be killed.”

Moore was 20 when she entered Vietnam and, in her speech, said she recalled feeling scared most of the time.

“Sounds of mortar attacks seemed to be omnipresent,” she explained.

Even though nurses had mosquito nets, Moore said she once counted 167 mosquito bites.

“Sometimes I cried myself to sleep,” she said on Sunday.

Acknowledging “our boys in the jungle” did not enjoy the luxuries she did, Moore explained, “They faced actually being shot or bombed, not just sounds. They were bitten by a lot more than mosquitoes; I know because I gave many rabies shots.”

Asked what prompted her to leave home and enter a war zone, Moore said in a Tuesday phone interview she came from modest beginnings.

“I was just a young girl, and I was patriotic, and I wanted to do my bit,” she said.

At the time, nursing school tuition cost $150 per year.

“My parents couldn’t afford it,” Moore explained. “The Army paid for one of the years, and then I owed them some time after that.”

Noting she loved her country and initially “thought we were doing the right thing,” Moore said, once she got to Vietnam, she struggled with the reality of what “all these young boys” faced.

“I was just a naive kid,” Moore said on Tuesday. “I found myself just trying to think through the moral implications. ... It was very difficult for me from a moral and ethical standpoint.”

When she returned from Vietnam, Moore walked right into the middle of the Women’s Liberation Movement, and along with thousands of other American women, she went to college.

“I could hardly believe that I — a nothing, the daughter of a high school dropout, a girl — that I could actually study at a university,” Moore said in her speech on Sunday.

After graduating from UC Irvine, she went on to Pepperdine School of Law and eventually to the University of Virginia for a master’s degree.

Moore was appointed to the superior court in 1989, and in 2000, she was nominated for the 4th District Court of Appeal.

Retired Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputy Greg Young was a flying crew chief on an O1 Bird Dog forward air controller plane and an OV-1A Mohawk Gunship in Vietnam. Explaining he heard Moore speak at the Richard Nixon Presidential Library in the 1990s, Young said, “I got chills up and down my spine.”

Shocked by the possibility the two may encountered one another decades ago in the little Vietnamese town, Young introduced himself to Moore and thanked her.

“She hugged me,” Young said. “It was healing for me, and it was healing for her, I think.”

Because they were at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon around the same time, Young believes Moore may have treated him during the war. Noting his injuries required morphine, Young admitted, “I would be hard pressed to remember the face. [But] when you got injured or hurt, ... nurses were a blessing.”

Describing Moore today as kind, generous and compassionate, Young said, over the years, he’s followed her efforts to help battered women, disabled veterans and Vietnam veterans.

“She was all in, and that meant everything,” he said, noting that when Moore was sworn onto the appellate court, he and other veterans came to support her.

Moore understood her role in the court system put her in a unique position to aid veterans, and 10 years ago, she launched a statewide military and veterans committee within the courts.

Noting California now has 33 Veterans Treatment Courts, Moore said she spent 9 years volunteering her time at the one in Orange County, mentoring veterans who found themselves sideways with the law. Most of them were women, and according to Moore, the majority were victims of military sexual trauma.

Influenced profoundly by that experience, when Moore spoke on Sunday, she decided to open up about some of the trauma she encountered in Vietnam. Recalling her first night in-country, Moore shared details of a difficult evening she and two other nurses endured in Saigon before flying to their duty stations the next day.

“At first it was polite knocking at the door of the nurses’ quarters by a major and a captain, ‘Do you girls want to have a drink with us?’” Moore recalled, noting the women declined several times.

The situation escalated, Moore said, and ultimately she jumped out the window and then dragged “the perimeter guard by his Sam Brown belt [back] to the outside of our quarters’ window.”

When the guard saw the officers climbing into the nurses’ room, Moore said he politely saluted and apologized for disturbing them.

“I whimpered something like, ‘Don’t salute them; shoot them,’” Moore said. “The major and captain spewed out more vulgarity and left. I spent the rest of the night sobbing in a corner.”

The next morning, Moore sought out the executive officer and told him what happened.

“There was a twinkle in his eyes as he sucked his tongue through his teeth,” she said in her speech Sunday. “It looked to me as if he was thinking, ‘Why did I have to miss all the fun?’”

As a young combat nurse, Moore said she felt schizophrenic. On one hand, she believed every one of our soldiers would protect her with their life, “and I loved them for that,” she said Sunday.

On the other hand, she was constantly afraid that a soldier might hurt her, Moore recalled, and “I still feel guilty about that.”

Former Army combat nurse and Vietnam veteran Diane Carlson Evans founded the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation. and served as master of ceremonies for the monument’s 25th anniversary commemoration this past weekend.

Each year on Memorial Day and Veteran’s Day, the foundation sets up an on-site podium and microphone and invites Vietnam veterans and their loved ones to share stories. Evans invited Moore to tell her story at this year’s event.

The judge was hesitant to participate at first, Evans recalled, but Moore later asked if she could speak about military sexual trauma.

“I affirmed with Eileen that she should share whatever she was comfortable doing,” Evans said. “If we keep these secrets, we’re not helping ourselves, and we’re not helping our sister veterans either.”

When she and Moore served, women accounted for less than 1 percent of the military force, Evans explained.

“We had to be very careful, and we had to watch our backs,” Evans said. “Women were raped in Vietnam. Were they all raped? No. Were all men rapists? No, but there was that fraction.”

Noting Moore’s speech addressed both the good parts of the experience — “caring for the soldiers” — and the bad, Evans said, “She was wonderful. She was so honest. ... It was so heartfelt, and she’s very eloquent.”

Many attendees were, seemingly, flabbergasted after hearing Moore’s story, Evans said. “I think they were pretty stunned and saddened.”

Involved in veteran’s events now for over 30 years. Evans acknowledged she hasn’t heard every person’s story but was quick to note she’s heard many.

“I think this was the first time a woman was brave enough to really say it happened to her,” Evans said, “and give the details about it.”