A nurse in Vietnam

All Pat Fiol ever wanted was to be a nurse. She didn’t expect to live out that calling in the jungles of Vietnam.

Born in Cincinnati, Ohio, as Pat Luers in 1944, she was the first child to a WWII veteran and pharmacist father and high school graduate mother. A younger brother would join the family 10 years later. 

In 1965, Fiol earned her degree from the Bethesda Hospital School of Nursing. After graduation, she got on-the-job training to become an intensive care unit (ICU) nurse. The next year, there was an all-out call for medical personnel to back up U.S. troops in Vietnam. A 20-year-old Fiol answered. 

“I was single and there was no reason I couldn’t go, so I signed on the dotted line,” she said. 

After completing training at Fort Sam Houston Hospital in Texas, Fiol deployed to work with the 36th Evacuation Unit in Vung Tau, South Vietnam, 35 miles southeast of Saigon. Her duties were to receive injured men off the helicopters and triage them. She also worked in the intensive care unit, recovery unit and medical/surgical unit. Some weeks she would work 12-hour shifts seven days in a row.

“It took me a while to build up to be able to handle certain situations, because you never knew what would come in. There were things you couldn’t even imagine,” Fiol said.

Her hospital in Vung Tau was located next to an army airstrip but had to keep being moved back to avoid mortar attacks. Fiol was trained to use an M16 automatic rifle and a Colt .45 pistol. She would carry the pistol, but never inside the hospital.

“I never had to use it, but knew how,” Fiol said. “The closest I ever came personally to using it was in Vung Tau. One evening a friend and I were walking down the road and a sniper shot two of our soldiers down in front of us.”

In her free time, Fiol taught conversational English to elementary school children and their parents, and also hygiene classes. She saw incredible poverty, with up to six families sharing a single hut and using the same water supply for every purpose. Being a nurse in South Vietnam was an exhausting task, but it could also be fulfilling.

“The sand fried my feet and I got a case of dysentery while in Vietnam, but other than that I was sort of thriving,” Fiol said.

Fiol was also one of the last nurses to assist in the medical civil action program (MEDCAP), which provided medical services to civilians. She flew in a Huey helicopter that made trips into the Mekong Delta to bring medical clinics before they were discontinued. Since she was in the service by direct commission, Fiol was finished with her service in 1967 after completing her year in Vietnam. 

Transitioning to her life back home wasn’t easy for Fiol. She struggled with how materialistic the U.S. was, after being with people who had nothing. No one really understood what she had experienced, which caused her to pull back from her friends. She was also disappointed to see Americans fighting and killing each other during racial riots. 

In many people’s eyes, Vietnam had become a war that was not worthy to be fought. 

“So many of our people began to look at it as an unworthy war to be involved in and be dying in for those people. Since I had a relationship with those people I felt very differently about that,” Fiol said. “Once you have been so committed to a life and death situation and return, no cause is great enough any longer. I prayed a lot and asked the Lord to lead me to something I could do that would be worthy without going back to war.”

Fiol began speaking and educating others on the reality of the situation in Vietnam. In 1969 she married Stephen Loescher, also a Vietnam veteran. They had a son, Peter, in 1970 and daughter, Rachel, in 1972. Fiol found a new passion in working with inner city ministries and college international students while her family lived in Baltimore and Mobile.

“It was good for them, but also good for me, to be able to reach out to folks from an area where I had served, and I felt like we had truly let them down in the end,” she said. “We walked out and there was not much I could do over there, but I could help here.”

After becoming a widow at age 50, Fiol moved to Atlanta to be closer to her children and grandchildren. She again became involved in inner city ministry as a nurse and later board member at Good Samaritan Health Center.

“As I look at being involved in that ministry closer to the end of my life, all of those things I’ve done go back to working with those young people and doing those clinics in Vietnam,” she said. “The skills I learned there have helped me be useful here and now.”

After spending 16 years in Atlanta, Fiol, now 70, resides at Danberry at Inverness. Her second husband, Bob Fiol, a 30-year Navy chaplain, passed away last November and was buried at Arlington National Cemetery in March. While she is no longer a nurse, Fiol is active in visiting her grandchildren, being involved in her church group, visiting shut-ins, reading to fifth-graders at Oak Mountain Intermediate School and working with the Discovery Club teaching the Bible in schools.

She enjoys her time at Danberry and the shared experiences of other veterans who live there.

“There is a large contingent of military here at Danberry,” Fiol said. “Once you’re with these folks and they know you are military, there is a common bond in that.”