Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Hi, everyone. This is Dawn Clem, and you are on my podcast, Milkweed and monarchs.
[00:00:08] In the summer of 1980, we had already been informed all the corpsmen that had been working at Balboa Naval Hospital that our last year as an enlisted person would be spent overseas. Or if you were a male corpsman, you may be stationed on a ship.
[00:00:29] The female corpsmen were not yet allowed to go on ships. Those rules have changed, and women have been on ships now for at least 20 years. But during the time when I was in, we weren't allowed to be on a ship. I'm kind of glad about that.
[00:00:48] So we had the opportunity. It was just like when I was leaving hospital school training. You could pick three duty stations that you were interested in going to. So I picked, and you could go, like, we had a chance of going to Japan, Okinawa could go to the Philippines. We could go to Guam. We could go to anywhere off the west coast where we had a base, Hawaii, or we could go off the east coast.
[00:01:28] And so we had some duty sites in Europe. There was one in Naples, Italy. There was one in Germany. And then there was also islands. I think we had one in the Azores from Portugal, and then there was also Iceland. So I looked through all my options, and the packet that came for Iceland just fascinated me right away. It was like, hook, line, and sinker. I gotta go see this place.
[00:02:04] I am an outdoorsy kind of gal, so I love being outdoors, and Iceland appealed to that part of me. It showed the whole map of Iceland. It showed all the natural sights to see. They had a geyser there. They have a volcano there. They have, you know, huge fishing ports, and they had the puffins there on the islands. They showed the capital where the president lived. They have a president there, and it was actually a female when I was in. And they just. And there's tons of natural waterfalls everywhere. Well, I took one look at that brochure, and I'm like, yeah, that's. That's where I want to go. All of my friends are like, are you crazy? Most of them were trying to go for the warmer weather places, you know, like Hawaii.
[00:03:08] But all that being said, you still had to pick three options, and not necessarily were you gonna get your first choice.
[00:03:18] And most of the men were actually going to be put on a ship, which is unfortunate. But I picked Iceland first, and then I picked Naples, Italy, second. And the third choice I picked was the Azores, the islands outside of Portugal.
[00:03:42] And sure enough, I got my first pick. I got Iceland. And everybody said, yeah, because nobody wants to go to Iceland, and you're crazy for wanting to go to Iceland. I didn't care. I. That welcome package was all I needed there. They have postcards in there, and I still have the postcards. I still have the map that they sent me. I mean, it was just one of the coolest places to actually be stationed. And I explored that whole entire island. Believe me, I got my money's worth out of that duty station.
[00:04:22] But nonetheless, on. In October of 1980, I took my plane flight from San Diego to New York. And then from New York, I got on icelandic air and traveled to Reykjavik island or Iceland. Sorry.
[00:04:44] I was kind of petrified when I got off the plane, because I'm like, oh, boy, what have I done? Right? I didn't know anybody there at all, so it was like starting all over again, and I had become very comfortable in San Diego in a routine, so this was going to be a challenge for me, no doubt.
[00:05:11] Well, there were, like, four to six other people. I can't remember. It was a low number of people that were traveling with me, and when we got off the plane, they had a bus there from the naval air station in Keflavik. We landed in Reykjavik. Reykjavik is the capital of Iceland, and Keflavik is about 40 minutes away from Keflavik.
[00:05:39] So the bus was there. We all got on the bus. Of course, I had my seabag. That's how we travel. And, you know, I'm loading up, getting on there, thinking, oh, lord, what have I done? Now it's October, and Iceland is very similar to Alaska.
[00:06:01] It has the northern lights.
[00:06:04] It's the land of the midnight sun. So in the winters, like January, December, and January, you might have 2 hours of daylight.
[00:06:17] And conversely, in the summer, in June, July, and August, you. You have.
[00:06:27] You had 20 hours of daylight or 22 hours of daylight.
[00:06:34] Daylight and 2 hours of nighttime.
[00:06:39] So it was October, and it was starting to get to the point of darkness most of the time. So we get on the bus, and by the time we got to the base, it was dark, and I think it was like, 04:00 in the afternoon. I'm like, ugh.
[00:06:58] They said, you're gonna go into the intake area, where they greet new people coming over, and you'll get instructions on what your next steps are gonna be. So they drop us off at the intake area, and they met us there and brought us in, and they said, the first thing that you're gonna get issued is a parka. I'm like, a parka? You mean they're actually gonna give us a coat. They said the winters are very cold here, even partly because it's dark all the time, but partly because we really don't have a lot of trees here, and the wind blows off the water, and it's very, very cold. So we want to make sure that you are going to be kept warm if you have to be outdoors. I'm thinking, oh, what does that even mean, if you have to be outdoors, right? So they're like, okay, let's try a parka on you.
[00:08:08] All right. You already know I'm short, right? This is gonna be a challenge. So they try the first park on me, way too big. They try the second Parker on me. I feel like the three little bears, right? The first one was too big. The second one was okay, but the third one was the one that fit the best, even though it still came down to my knees and my hand, my fingertips barely showed from underneath the sleeves. But they said, this is going to be. This is as small as we get, so this is going to be the best we can do for you. And I'm like, that's fine, you know, whatever. I'm not going to complain about it.
[00:08:56] So everybody gets fitted. They give us extra uniforms, too, that they thought we were going to need while we were there. And then they gave us our room assignments because we were all going to the barracks. Now, I'd been living in San Diego for two years, and if you listen to the beginning of my podcast, then you're aware of the fact that I never actually made it inside the barracks. I was stationed in the basement because they didn't have any rooms. And then I ended up being able to live off base in an apartment. So for the last two years, I've been living in an apartment.
[00:09:40] Now I come here, and I'm gonna have to live in the barracks. The barracks is nothing more than a dormitory.
[00:09:49] And. And fine, really. But it's just not something I was used to. I had been living completely independently, almost like I wasn't even in the military. So now here I am. I gotta go have a roommate.
[00:10:04] So I haul my sea bag over to the barracks, where they tell me to go, and my room number. I have my room number, and I knock on the door. I have a roommate. Nobody answers, so I get the key, I get in there, I bring my sea bag in, and I was trying to get unpacked, but I wanted to meet her first, just to make sure that I wasn't taking up space. Or you know, what she thought, because she had been living there. Finally, she did show up. I'd been there for about an hour, and she came in. She said her name was Kim. She was about as unhappy to see me as I was to see her. And I think she was upset because I was a grade lower than her. She was a petty officer e five, and I was a petty officer e four e, meaning enlisted. So she's like, why am I. Why do I have to be with somebody like you? And she had been telling everybody that she knew who I was, that I was stationed with her in San Diego. I'm like, I don't know you. I don't ever remember working with you or seeing you anywhere. And so, as you can imagine, we didn't exactly get off on the right foot. It was not good.
[00:11:31] Then the second thing that happened is she wanted me to be on the top bunk. Another hilarious thing, because here I am, the short one. But she'd been living in that room by herself, so she just opted for the bottom bunk. So I'm like, okay, yes, I'm not going to complain. How could I complain? I was basically invading her space.
[00:11:54] So I started out in the barracks on the top bunk with a roommate that really didn't want a roommate. And I was just hoping and praying that it was all gonna turn out for the best.
[00:12:09] She was helpful, though. She got used to me. And after a couple days, she started giving me tips. And she actually walked me to the clinic the first day that I was due to show up. So I was going to be working in an outpatient clinic. This was a whole new setup for me. I had been working inpatient for the last two years, and I had no idea how to be in an outpatient clinic. So I was definitely nervous about that, thinking, what the heck? Don't forget, I know I always say this, but I only had ten weeks of actual education, written education, and the rest of it is really just on the job training.
[00:13:04] So I was nervous, but I get to the outpatient clinic, and I discovered right out of the gate that we had one medical doctor, so an internist. We had one ob doctor, a female physician. We had a pediatrician who, the pediatrician and the obstetrician were married. Both of them were fabulous. And I loved the internist, too. They were all great.
[00:13:41] So those were basically the specialties that we had for the clinic.
[00:13:46] And what my job was going to be was doing sick call. So that was usually most of the time that was the enlisted patients. I mean, enlisted staff, but there were times when the spouses would come in of the enlisted staff, and it was a naval air station, so we were stationed with the air force there. So I would also have people coming in from the air force, and the. A lot of the enlisted people that were there or the officers were married. And that's why we needed an ob doctor. Cause there were a lot of pregnancies up there, and we also needed the pediatrician. So it was pretty full service for what we thought we would need up there, because most of us were healthy that went up there.
[00:14:48] So they said, don, you're gonna start sick call. You're gonna learn how to do sick call. Sick call? What does that even mean? Okay, so how it worked was, you got a form for each person that you would see, and I would screen them when they came in for sick call. They'd come up to the front desk, just like you're in a doctor's office. They would check in, and they would let you know the reason why they were there. Like, somebody might come in and say, I've had a fever for 24 hours.
[00:15:23] I've had a. I have a bad cold, and I don't seem to be getting over it. I'm having problems with my urine. It's burning when I go to the bathroom, that kind of thing. So then I would get the problem sheet and the patient and I would bring them back to the room, the examination room, and then it was up to me to go over all the systems with them, do a full checkout, check up on them of everything. So I get their vital signs, I get their weight, I get their height. Then I would listen to their lungs, I would listen to their heart. I would look at their hands and feet to see if there was any swelling. I would look inside their mouth and make sure they didn't have a red throat or white spots on their throat or tongue.
[00:16:24] I looked in their ears, even though I did not know what I was doing when I looked in their ears. Really. I mean, I'm good at it now, but at that point, I really did not know, so. And I would listen to their belly to see if there was any problems with that, and I'd go through every system with them on that sheet. Then I would get done, and the very next thing I would do is just run down the hall to the internist. The internist name was Doctor Bjornsson, and Doctor Bjornsson was icelandic. He was in the air force, but he was an internist, so he was there to help us. And so I would give him the sheet. I would tell him about the patient. And then I would go over the head to toe assessment that I had just done on the patient, and he would go, Don, it doesn't seem like there's anything wrong with them. I said, I know, but they're here because they say there's something wrong with them. So he told me so many times, Don, they're probably depressed. We have so many people that are depressed on this base. It's unbelievable. And he said a lot of it was because it was dark most of the time in the winter. And he said that we're just ramping up right now, so you're going to see a lot of this kind of stuff. So I'm like, okay. You know, so I would do sick call in the morning and then in the afternoon. A lot of times I might get staged or pulled to go over and work in the pediatric well or well baby and pediatric clinic, or I might go over and do labor and delivery with the female physician. So I was just learning so much while I was there, an incredible amount. It's. It's just so hard to believe. The on the job training that I got there, it was unbelievable.
[00:18:29] So then I had been doing that probably. I did it all through the winter months, and it really wasn't so bad. And I was learning, and I was starting to really like the physicians a lot. I mean, it was just such a big change from San Diego, as you can imagine.
[00:18:47] But I signed up on my off days for every Uso tour that I could, and that's really what kept me going. I absolutely explored everything I could possibly see in Iceland. There was not 1 st unturned, I'm telling you. So I actually went to the whale plant, where they would break down the whales after they got them. And I saw the blubber, and I saw them scalping it, skinning it. I mean, that was one of the most fascinating things I've ever seen. When I first got there, Hekla, the volcano, was erupting. So I took a bus tour. Not close to it, but close enough where you could actually see the lava flowing down. I went to more than one natural waterfall in the country, and the one I loved the best was called opher foss. It had a natural bridge, and there was a waterfall on the top, and then there was a waterfall on the bottom, and you could walk across the natural bridge. I still have all my pictures from that. In Reykjavik, they had what they called a ditch, and it was just a big swimming hole from the geothermal water plant, so the water was naturally warm. From geothermal, which is underground. And that's how they had all of their electricity and everything. It was. All their power was generated through geothermal. And I would take the buses out to just out into the country.
[00:20:37] It was such a fascinating country, I'm telling you. It was so fascinating. And you would see the old wooden racks with. They would have fish drying on it, just hanging up. I went to thing velour, which is their parliament, and when I was there, they actually had a female president. So all of that was so great.
[00:21:00] I would go into Reykjavik on the weekends, and they had like, a big, huge farmers market. And so we. I would spend a lot of time there. I bought a lot of souvenirs there. I mean, it was. It was just so great. It was really great. And I still have a lot of things from there, and it really was one of the best things that I ever did in my life. I'm so glad I got stationed over there, really.
[00:21:30] But after I had been working in the clinic for about six months, they came to me and they said, okay, we got other people coming in, and you've mastered the clinic. We're gonna put you inpatient. I go, really?
[00:21:46] Not that I cared, but the inpatient was like, twelve beds, I think. And we did minor surgery up there, you know, hemorrhoid, that kind of thing. And, um, we didn't do anything like tonsillectomies or anything like that. We did small procedures, minor. So I could go into the operating room sometimes and I could just take care of the patients, you know, start iv's, hang iv fluids, take vital signs, change their beds. I was kind of bored because I was used to being in the clinic was actually pretty busy, but I was really busy when I worked in the hospital, at Balboa Naval Hospital in San Diego. So this was kind of like a cakewalk for me. It was so boring that I finally decided I got to do something else here. So I reorganized the whole entire clean utility room with all the supplies. It was awesome. And they're like, we want you to be the senior corpsman here, which is like the charge nurse. I'm like, no, I don't want to do that. I'm not interested in that. I'm just here to work, get the experience. That's all I really care about. They're like a brother, dawn. They kept trying to nominate me to be the senior corpsman, and then they nominated me to be corpsman of the month while I was up there, too. I'm like, ugh, I hate all that kind of stuff. I'm not a big in the spotlight kind of gal. I'm more of a behind the scenes kind of gal. I don't mind helping. I don't mind working. I feel satisfied with the work I do. I don't need to get the attention for it. So I struggled with that.
[00:23:39] But when I was working inpatient, my on call part, because you're always on call.
[00:23:48] My on call part was being in the emergency room. So I was like, okay. And it really wasn't so bad. That was kind of exciting. In the emergency room, I could order all the tests because the doctors weren't there. So if somebody came in complaining of burning when they urinate, I'd run a urine on them. If somebody came in saying that they were tired all the time, I'd run a hematocrit on. I was doing all this kind of stuff.
[00:24:18] Somebody came in complaining of shortness of breath, and I ordered a chest x ray on her, and it actually came back, not pneumonia, but it showed that she actually had a bleb on her lung. So I was so excited about that that I got to call the doctor and tell him, hey, there's something really weird about this one. You're gonna have to come and see it. So that was, you know, that's awful that I'm excited about something like that.
[00:24:45] Everything was going okay.
[00:24:47] I was getting used to it. We're getting into the spring and summer, where all of us used to go for entertainment was the chief petty officer club, and in the chief petty officer club were slot machines, which I absolutely loved. Loved them. And the other thing was the best restaurant. And on the island, as far as I was concerned, the food was amazing there. So a lot of times, people would go in, they'd go to the chief petty Officers club, they'd have dinner, they'd have drinks, they'd go to the slot machines, and they'd continue to drink.
[00:25:32] And it was the spring. I think it was March. Now it's still dark out. It's not starting to get light. That doesn't come until later on June and July and August, where it's light all the time. It's icy because it's cold out. And they're big, huge boulders. They're not just rocks on the side of the road like gravel. No, you're walking over these big, huge boulders. Most of the time, the enlisted staff had been imbibing or drinking at the chief petty officer club, and so when they left the club, they were intoxicated.
[00:26:21] I cannot tell you how many people slipped on those rocks and ended up with a broken leg? Many of them. But one particular night when I was on call, the same thing happened. The man had slipped on the rocks and fallen. And he couldn't even make it back to the base. So we had to get people over there to get him up to bring him in. And we get him in, and we take an x ray of his lower leg and ankle. And the doctor called me and said, don, he's gonna have to go to Reykjavik. I go, what? He says he's broken his ankle in two different places. And he's gonna have to go to surgery. I'm gonna call the surgeon over there, and they're gonna be expecting you. But you're gonna have to drive the ambulance to the hospital in Reykjavik. I'm like, no, this cannot be happening. I shouldn't even be laughing. But if you could have seen that ambulance. I mean, it was an old time ambulance, okay? It was not anything like our modern ambulances now. It was a square box.
[00:27:45] And I needed a, like, a step stool to get up into the driver's seat of the ambulance. And I had to have a pillow behind my back. And I had to sit on a pillow in order to drive. And it's dark out. I had two other corpsmen with me, but they were in the back with the patient.
[00:28:08] I had no idea how to get to the hospital in Reykjavik. But both of them had been there before. So they were gonna just keep an eye out for me and let me know. And so there I go, driving down that long two lane highway. So the highway from Reykjavik to Keflavik was just a two lane highway. It was not anything with exits on it. It was not anything with entrance ramps, with bridges. There weren't four lanes. It was one lane coming towards you and you going the other way. So, as you can imagine, I'm like, oh, my God. I'm driving an ambulance in the pure dark night to Reykjavik hospital. Where nobody speaks any English. This is a scary business.
[00:29:06] But the guys behind me were like, don, you can do it. It's going to be fine. Just keep going. Just keep going straight. It's just a straight shot into Reykjavik. And we'll tell you when to turn and how to get to the erde. So I'm like, okay, there I go, straight down the road. I will never forget it for as long as I live. No way. It's so funny when I think about it now. Because my youngest daughter is actually in the middle of paramedic training.
[00:29:37] And she's in an ambulance all the time. She drives the ambulance like there's nobody's business, right, but. And she loves it. But I really was not an emergency kind of gal. And me driving that old ambulance into Reykjavik was a bit traumatic for me. But nonetheless, we made it in there. Took me about 45 minutes. We get to the hospital, and we went right straight to the emergency room. They were expecting them. They came out with the.
[00:30:11] We called it Gurney. So the stretcher. And we put the patient on the stretcher, and then they took him away. And it was the weirdest thing, because not one person could communicate to each other. Not one person could communicate. They were icelandic, and we were american, and there were no words between any of us. And I felt kind of sorry for that guy because he was going into a foreign hospital, you know.
[00:30:40] But the doctor had called ahead and spoken with the surgeon. Our internist, Doctor Bjornsson, was from Iceland, and so he could speak both English and Icelandic. And so that worked to our advantage. And we were very lucky to have him there. And he had already done all the preliminary calling to when we were driving back. They made me drive the ambulance back, too, even though the patient was gone. They're like, this is good for you. You need to know how to handle the ambulance. This isn't going to be the first time and only time you ever have to drive the ambulance. But I'm happy to report it really was the first and only time I ever had to drive that ambulance.
[00:31:31] But, wow, what an experience Iceland was. What an amazing experience.
[00:31:39] And the last note I'll just make about Iceland is the Aurora borealis, or the northern lights.
[00:31:50] I got to see them the whole time I was up there, and they were spectacular. Spectacular. They were so spectacular.
[00:32:03] And it was just one of the best, best things. And traveling all over that country and just meeting the people and seeing everything that was about that country made that whole year worth it for me.
[00:32:22] Originally, I had thought that I was going to be there until January. That would have been the end of my tour. But they said, since you only have three months left, Don, we're gonna give you an early out.
[00:32:38] So I got to get out of the navy in October of 1981, after being in Iceland for a whole year.
[00:32:49] And it was bittersweet. It was bittersweet, but it was great, and it's a great memory to look back on.
[00:33:04] Thank you for listening to my story today. I hope you enjoyed it.
[00:33:10] It's a really happy memory for me. And so it was kind of fun to be able to look back on that again in it's August 1 today, so I am going to be starting the one to one interviews in the studio. I don't know if I'll be able to get on YouTube right away, but at least I will be interviewing people so it won't just be me talking on here. Coming up, I'm hoping to start on August 15. I think that's a good date to get started. And I would love to hear from any one of you. If you would like to be interviewed or even if you just have a story that you would like me to share, please go on my website, milkmon.com. that's milkmon.com. all one word at the very bottom. There's a section that you can fill out or you can also find my contact information and you could either email me or call me. Me. I would love to hear from you.
[00:34:23] Until the next time. Bye.
