When I Die I'm Going to Heaven 'Cause I Spent My Time in Hell (a Memoir of My Year as an Army Nurse in Vietnam)

WHEN SHE WAS 18 Barbara Hesselman joined the Army to finance her nursing education. A little more than four years later, and with less than six months of nursing experience, she was assigned to the 24th Evacuation Hospital in South Vietnam. On the neurosurgical intensive care unit where she worked, she and her fellow soldiers fought for the lives of the wounded - and sometimes their sanity - with hard work and silly antics that included a mascot named Mighty Ralph. The rhythms of daily life at t…