An Adventure of Her Own
By Lexie Graham
Martha Ann Blome
December 8, 1935-April 26, 2010
Martha Blome Air Force nurse portrait. Year unknown. Photo from the Ottumwa Courier. http://obituaries.ottumwacourier.com/obituary/martha-blome-770291711
Born in 1935 to Glenn and Laura Blome, Martha Ann Blome had an adventurous spirit. Even at ten years old, she was a traveler, going from Iowa to New Orleans[1] with her parents. Five years later, she traveled from New York to Southampton, United Kingdom[2] and stayed there for two months. The course of her life would take her many other places: Colorado, for nursing school at the University of Colorado; Hawaii and Seattle, to work in hospitals; and all over the world, including Cam Ranh Bay, Vietnam, to serve as a nurse for the United States Air Force.[3] Outside of her time traveling abroad, Martha had many other hobbies. In high school, she was involved in the school newspaper, serving as a reporter for the Argus News[4] at Ottumwa High School. Literature remained a love of Martha’s but did not become a profession. Nursing, it turned out, was better suited to her tendencies to have “strong beliefs” and to “serv[e] her fellow mankind.”[5]
Since the American Revolution, women have been involved in the war effort on some level, but they were not allowed into the military ranks until the twentieth century.[6] A woman’s primary role in war before she was able to enter into official military service was that of a nurse or caretaker, so it makes sense that so many women who served in an official capacity were nurses. About 11,000 women served on the ground in Vietnam during the war (with more than 265,000 women participating in total) and nurses made up ninety percent of that service.[7] Most of them volunteered.
Cam Ranh Bay Air Base was at the center of medical treatment in Vietnam, and Martha’s service there reflected a common theme for Air Force nurses. According to the Air Force Medical Service website, the first women who served as nurses for the Air Force went to Vietnam “in February of 1966, many to Cam Ranh Bay.”[8] Martha joined the Air Force in 1962[9] but was stationed in a few bases stateside and in France until 1966. Not long after her arrival, then, “by 1968, the Air Force hospital at Cam Ranh Bay Air Base...was the second largest in the Air Force.”[10] With hundreds of beds and multiple operating areas, “Cam Ranh Bay became the aeromedical evacuation hub for the entire theater.”[11] The importance of Martha’s work (and that of her colleagues) cannot be overstated.
Women who were nurses in Vietnam treated a variety of patients. Aside from tending to soldiers, they also treated Vietnamese prisoners of war and civilians.[12] For the American soldiers, women acted as more than just nurses. One Colonel in the Army Nurse Corps said, “In World War II and Korea, we had a front line. In Vietnam, there was no front, the war was all around us… and the casualties in Vietnam were much worse. The helicopters would bring in severely wounded boys who would have died on the battlefield in another war. And the nurses took so much of it to heart.”[13] The nurses stood in emotionally as mothers, sisters, or girlfriends for wounded men who longed for a taste of home.[14] Femininity, though difficult to perform in the humid jungle of Vietnam, was almost seen as a patriotic duty. The men needed something to believe in, and “the American “girl next door” – white, middle class, and pure” was an idealized image which “symbolized the way of life the United States [wanted to promote].”[15]
After the war, Martha continued her love for reading and writing, and was also passionate about animals.[16] In 1985, a year after the deaths of both of her parents[17], she bought a house in Colorado Springs. Her time in Colorado Springs was characterized by many years volunteering for the Cheyenne Mountain Library. She worked on pulling books for library patrons and making book displays.[18] Martha never married but was often accompanied by her dog. She resided in her home on Woodburn Street until her death in 2010.
Footnotes ↓
[1] New Orleans, Passenger Lists, 1813-1963, entry for Martha Ann Blome, available at Ancestry.com, (accessed July 2019).
[2] UK, Incoming Passenger Lists, 1878-1960, entry for Martha Blome, available at Ancestry.com, (accessed July 2019).
[3] "Martha Blome Obituary." Ottumwa Courier, (accessed July 2019), http://obituaries.ottumwacourier.com/obituary/martha-blome-770291711.
[4] Ibid.
[5] Ibid.
[6] "The History of Wartime Nurses: Duquesne University," Duquesne University School of Nursing, (accessed July 2019), https://onlinenursing.duq.edu/history-wartime-nurses/.
[7] Diane Carlson Evans, RN, "Vietnam Women's Memorial," Vietnam Women's Memorial, (accessed July 2019), http://www.vietnamwomensmemorial.org/vwmf.php.
[8] Peter Holstein, "Air Force Medicine during the Vietnam War," Air Force Medical Service, January 25, 2018, (accessed July 2019), https://www.airforcemedicine.af.mil/News/Display/Article/1421624/air-force-medicine-during-the-vietnam-war/.
[9] "Martha Blome Obituary," Ottumwa Courier, (accessed July 2019), http://obituaries.ottumwacourier.com/obituary/martha-blome-770291711.
[10] Holstein,“Air Force Medicine during the Vietnam War.”
[11] Ibid.
[12] Dana DiFilippo, "'Blood Smells the Same,' but for Vietnam Nurses, the War Never Ends," WHYY, September 08, 2017, (accessed July 2019), https://whyy.org/articles/vietnamnursesdd/.
[13] Elizabeth Norman, "Nurses in War: A Study of Female Military Nurses Who Served in Vietnam during the War Years 1965-1973" PhD dissertation, New York University, 1986.
[14] Heather Marie Stur, Beyond Combat: Women and Gender in the Vietnam War, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), p. 106.
[15] Stur, Beyond Combat, p. 3.
[16] "Martha Blome Obituary," Ottumwa Courier, (accessed July 2019). http://obituaries.ottumwacourier.com/obituary/martha-blome-770291711.
[17] Dr. Glenn Caldwell Blome and Laura Mae Bolle Blome profiles, available at FindAGrave.com, (accessed July 2019).
[18] Brose, Michelle, Interview by Lexie Graham, Unrecorded phone interview, July 2019, DU VLP.
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