MaryLu Brunner

MaryLu Brunner (née Ostergren), originally from Minneapolis, served in the US Army Nurse Corps as a surgical nurse and was stationed in South Vietnam from 1968 to 1969. She was assigned to the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku, known as “Rocket City” on account of frequent rocket attacks at nighttime. After her year of active service, MaryLu spent six years in the Army Reserves and worked as a registered nurse in Minnesota. MaryLu’s story was featured in Dr. Kim Heikkila’s book, Sisterhood of War: Minnesota Women in Vietnam, and her poignant poem, To My Unknown Soldier Boy, was published in Lynda van Devanter’s essay collection, Visions of War, Dreams of Peace.

Where was marylu?

When she received her orders for Vietnam, MaryLu was given an option: she could either serve by the ocean or in the mountains. She chose the latter and was sent to the 71st Evac Hospital in Pleiku, nestled amongst the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. Can you find it on the map?

Self-Expression

Coping with difficult experiences can come in many forms. MaryLu chose poetry. This is her poem, My Unknown Soldier Boy, written in 1984:

Your bleeding wouldn't stop 

the doctor kept yelling for blood 

but I was frozen, your hand in mine 

you kept calling for your mother. 

I regret I didn't know you. 

I can't tell your mother I was there 

Perhaps 

she would feel some comfort. 

I felt none. 

I regret I didn't take your 

dying, broken, dirt covered body 

into my arms for her,

for you, 

for me. 

Your name, your unknown name

keeps running through my mind. 

Your wounds, 

your crying for help,

your pleading eyes,

will haunt me until 

my own death. 

It was only a matter of minutes, 

then another wounded Soldier

took your place, 

Then another and another 

and another. 

Yet, perhaps

somehow 

you knew I was there. 

For you. 

Write your own poem. It can be similar to MaryLu’s or from a different perspective: the soldier, his mother, another nurse, a friend of the soldier, another wounded veteran, or a bird on the roof. Or maybe just how this makes you feel about the world.

Digging Deeper

Take the map on this page and visit your fellow students. Find where their service members were stationed in Vietnam. Is there a chance anyone from Anoka County would have crossed paths on their deployments?

MaryLu was born and raised in South Minneapolis, the third of four children. Her father worked as a box cutter at Flour City Paper Box, and her mother worked as a cashier at several grocery stores. MaryLu attended a Catholic elementary school and graduated from Regina High School (which closed in 2000) in 1963. From there, she enrolled in a three-year nursing program at Saint Gabriel’s School of Nursing in Little Falls, MN. She got her nursing degree in 1966 and spent a year working as a registered nurse at the Minneapolis VA Medical Center. In the fall of 1967, wanting a change, MaryLu joined the US Army Nurse Corps and completed her six-week basic training at Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas. From there, she was sent to San Francisco for advanced surgical training. The surgical program was initially meant to be five months long, although her schooling was interrupted after only three and a half months; the war in Vietnam was escalating, and there was suddenly a desperate need for surgical nurses at the front. 

When she received her orders for Vietnam, MaryLu was given an option: she could either serve by the ocean or in the mountains. She chose the latter and was sent to the 71st Evac Hospital in Pleiku, nestled amongst the Central Highlands of South Vietnam. She arrived in-country as a Second Lieutenant in June of 1968 and immediately got to work. When she started, the nurses worked eight-hour shifts, but only a month after she arrived, the shift length was changed to 12 hours. She usually volunteered for the night shifts; Pleiku was often attacked by rockets and mortars at night, and MaryLu figured that if she was going to be kept awake at night anyway, she might as well be working.

MaryLu recalled that there were approximately 40 nurses on staff at the 71st Evac and that, as officers, they were forbidden from socializing with the enlisted men. Even still, the distinction was not nearly so clear; MaryLu remembered that the corpsmen and non-commissioned officers treated her as an equal, and that she was viewed more as a nurse and a woman than as a superior officer. There was no “average day” at the hospital; one day would have no activity whatsoever, and the staff would be left in complete boredom, but the next day the operating room would be overflowing with wounded men, and the nurses would have to work around the clock without breaks. Treating wounded soldiers came with its own set of traumas. MaryLu later indicated that it was better not to know anything about the wounded and dying men that came through her ward, so as to ease the emotional toll.

When MaryLu left Vietnam in July of 1969, she had grown disillusioned with the war and the destruction it wrought. She returned to working as a nurse at the Minneapolis VA and recalled feeling comfortable never speaking about her service. She spent a year in the US Army Reserve and met her husband in 1970. They married in 1971 and had two children, around which time she retired from the VA. She participated in the fundraising for the Vietnam Women's Memorial in Washington, D.C., and attended its dedication ceremony in 1993. She participated in an interview with the Minnesota Historical Society in May of 2006 about her experiences, and another with the Anoka County Historical Society in 2025.