Another great sliver of Google art.

There are a lot of nurse veterans in the country, and I thought I’d take this opportunity to point out some interesting and not so pleasant facts about military nursing.

Male and minority nurses have been basically ignored as non-entities by the military, and even in times of severe need, their services were not accepted. During WW II, when the need for nurses was so severe that a nursing draft was passed (yes, Pres Roosevelt signed it into law and the only reason nurses weren’t drafted was that the war in Europe ended), male nurses were not permitted to work as such, and minorities were either severely restricted or in some branches of the military, not permitted at all.

While the restrictions and quotas on female minority nurses were lifted after WW II, male nurses were still drafted and treated as your ordinary grunt. Is that absurd or what? There are plenty of men who can pick up guns and go blast someone’s head off, but skilled caregivers are at a premium and desperately needed by the military. Since male nurses are only a small group anyway, one would think that allowing them to work as nurses would not seriously deplete the ranks of soldiers.

But as daft as it may seem, it wasn’t until Vietnam that this changed.