Eleanor Grace Alexander would have turned 84 next week.
But, like too many of her generation, she was cut down in her prime, her life snuffed out 57 years ago on a forlorn mountainside in South Vietnam.
Alexander died a captain in the Army Nurse Corps. She holds the tragic distinction of being the only woman from New Jersey killed in the line of duty in Vietnam.
Today, those who served with her are keen to honor and keep alive the extraordinary spirit and soul of a woman who first volunteered to become an Army nurse and then volunteered to wade into the muck and gore of a brutal jungle war.
“She was a goddess to us for volunteering for Army nursing. She was our Florence Nightingale,” remembers Patrick Vellucci, who served with the 10th Calvary, 4th Infantry in Vietnam during 1967-68 and now volunteers at the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Museum in Holmdel.
“She was a wonderful human being, always helping people, which is the most altruistic thing you can do,” recalled John Nugent, another volunteer at the NJVVMM, who served in Vietnam from November 1966-67 with the 195th Light Infantry Platoon.
“Capt. Eleanor” as she was called by those with whom she served, deployed to Vietnam in early 1967, serving at the 85th Evacuation Hospital in Qui Nhon.
She was there barely seven months when an urgent call came for an emergency medical team to fly to the city of Pleiku in western South Vietnam. A raging battle, which history would come to call the Battle of Dak To, had broken out, and word was, American casualties were piling up.
Alexander was not part of the emergency team being summoned, but, when the nurse for this team could not be found, Alexander unhesitatingly took her place.
For six weeks, the entire medical team performed heroically, with Alexander tirelessly working to triage, stabilize and comfort severely wounded soldiers.
“God knows how many broken bones and broken bodies she saw,” said Vellucci.
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It was Nov. 30, 1967.
The Battle of Dak To was over.
Alexander and the rest of the emergency medical team boarded a twin-engine C-7 Caribou Air Force transport plane for the 60-mile flight back to the 85th Evac Hospital and a chance to rest up.
Eleanor Grace Alexander (1940-1967)
Eleanor Grace Alexander was born in Queens, New York, on Sept. 18, 1940. Her family moved to River Vale in Bergen County, but Alexander did not join them until after graduating St. Michaels High School in Manhattan in 1957.
Alexander earned her nursing degree at the D’Youville College School of Nursing in Buffalo, New York, in 1961 and worked at Madison Hospital in New York for six years.
She had notions of joining the newly formed Peace Corps, but the waiting list was too long, and, by this point, she felt compelled to do her part in the now raging war in Vietnam.
She joined the Army Nurses Corps in 1967 because it was a fast ticket to the battle arena of South Vietnam.
She trained at the Brooks Army Medical Center in Houston, where she attained the rank of captain and was assigned to the 44th Medical Brigade, 85th Evacuation Hospital.
The plane took off in bad weather, which worsened as it approached Qui Nhon. The pilot was advised to bypass the intended landing site because visibility was below safety levels.
The pilot acknowledged and said he was going to try a nearby airfield.
The plane never made it. It crashed into the side of a mountain in dense jungle about five miles away. All 27 on board were killed.
“It was a horrible site,” remembers Vellucci, who was part of the retrieval team at the crash site. “The plane had smashed directly in the side of the mountain. By the time I got there, Eleanor’s body had already been bagged. We said a prayer over her.”
Vellucci clearly remembers the weather conditions that day.
“After the monsoons, the fog in that part of Vietnam is unbelievable. It was so thick you could not see your hand in front of your face. The fog is not like here. It can last for a week.”
Alexander was posthumously awarded a Purple Heart and a Bronze Star.
“Remember,” said Vellucci, “she volunteered to go to Vietnam. She volunteered to leave the relative comfort of the evac hospital and join us on the line to help anybody who needed it. And she volunteered to go on the mission to a danger zone in Pleiku, from which she did not return.”
“She volunteered to go to this forward position to save lives, and it turned out she gave her life for us,” Nugent said. “I make sure to tell her story to many of the teenagers who come to the museum. I explain to them she gave her life for something bigger.”
“She was engaged to be married when she was killed,” Vellucci recalled wistfully. “She had already bought her wedding dress and chosen the bridesmaids gowns.”
“Incredibly sad,” Nugent agreed. “Her fiancé never married — at least, that was true up until 10 years ago, when I last had contact with him.”
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Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander was buried in St. Andrews Cemetery in River Vale. There was only a plain headstone marker to designate the grave site; it said nothing of her service or sacrifice.
When Jim McGinniss, another volunteer at the NJVVMM, heard of Alexander’s service. he made it a point to visit her burial site. McGinniss, who served in Vietnam with the 196th Light Infantry in 1966-67, was perturbed by what he saw.
“There was no indication she served in the military and that she was killed in Vietnam,” he said.
Military women in Vietnam
The Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation estimates 11,000 military women were stationed in Vietnam during the course of the war, and about 90% of them were nurses.
Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander was one of eight women killed in the line of duty during the war.
Many more military nurses suffered psychological trauma, as pointed out by John Nugent, who served in Vietnam in 1966-67:
“What most people do not realize is that military nurses have the highest incidence of PTSD of any subgroup. What they saw and what they had to do every day was brutal. These were moms, daughters, girlfriends and they had to triage the wounded coming in on the trucks and the helicopters. Many of them had to decide which of the wounded would be brought into the hospital for treatment and which were beyond help. They had to play God — looking at all those wounded soldiers and saying essentially to each one, ‘You are going to live’ or ‘You are going to die.’”
“With the family’s permission, I placed a new bronze marker at her gravesite,” said McGinniss. “The marker tells of Capt. Alexander’s military service and her sacrifice. Each Memorial Day, I place a black-tipped American flag to properly honor her. Also, when I give a tour, I make sure to tell her story, so she will not be forgotten.”
McGinniss was the catalyst in getting his Franklin Lakes VFW Post 5702 to pass a resolution honoring Alexander. The resolution was presented to Alexander’s brother Frank at a special ceremony in 2013.
The fact that Frank Alexander came to this ceremony was an extraordinary story in itself.
For years, the museum had been inviting members of the Alexander family to events, but the invitations were always rebuffed.
“Eleanor’s death broke the family,” said Nugent. “For her brother Frank, the wound was always raw, and he did not want to relive it.”
When Nugent retired from military service, he enjoyed a successful career working for companies such as Johnson & Johnson, Procter & Gamble and Unilever. Also, he was a frequent golfer. For more than 20 years, he golfed with Frank Alexander without realizing who he was.
In a casual conversation one day, a third party told Nugent the Frank Alexander he was golfing with was Eleanor Grace Alexander’s brother.
“I had no idea,” Nugent said. “I almost never talked about my experiences in the war. When I next spoke with Frank, I asked him why he never told me who his sister was. He asked me why I never told him about my service.
“When he and I connected, Frank agreed to come to the Museum ceremony where we unveiled a stone memorial in Eleanor’s honor.”
“We just never knew how much Eleanor meant to the men and women she served with,” Frank Alexander said that day.
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Perhaps the most poignant post-script to the Eleanor Grace Alexander story is a letter written by Rhona Prescott, the nurse whom Alexander replaced on the fateful trip to Pleiku.
After the war, Prescott explained to the Veteran’s History Project (an initiative of the Library of Congress) that she was not immediately available for the flight to Pleiku because she had gone off to take a break following a day of triaging heavy casualties and spending long hours in the surgical tent.
Prescott estimates she was gone for 10 minutes, but it was in that time the call for the emergency team came in.
Prescott returned from the war to become a therapist. The guilt she felt over Alexander’s death weighed heavily on her. To deal with her feelings, she began writing a letter to Alexander after returning home in 1968. She did not finish it until 1991.
In the letter, she marveled at Alexander’s competence, writing that “The guys really leaned on you,” and stating “You are a hero in New Jersey.”
After reviewing her memories of the plane crash, Prescott admitted: “I couldn’t keep it together to go to the memorial service. My way of coping was to get tranquilizers. Why did you die, and I survive?”
Prescott then poured out her soul.
“Eleanor, I cry when I go to the Wall. I cry about your death 23 years later. Was it God’s will or did I screw up your destiny and, along with it, mine?”
“I am struggling to make an impact,” Prescott closed the letter. “I must succeed in helping other survivors like me and I must do it for you.”
