Army major considers return to Afghanistan as a civilian nurse

When U.S. Army Reserve Maj. Maureen Nolen returned from her year in Afghanistan, her unit first landed in Bangor, Maine, where the famed Maine Troop Greeters welcomed them, as they do for every returning military flight.

Her unit is based in Los Angeles, so Nolen, a Las Vegas nurse, headed home on commercial flights. She and another reservist wore their fatigues and looked like any other reservists coming home with rucksacks and duffel bags.

In the Dallas airport, people stood up, cheered and applauded the two reservists and asked questions about their deployment.

In the Las Vegas airport, there was no recognition, no questions, no interest.

Welcome home, soldier.

Nolen is back home after a duty that started as a nursing assignment and ended as a teaching assignment, albeit a teaching assignment interrupted by a rocket attack or two.

Although she belongs to the 349th Combat Support Hospital unit based in Los Angeles, two months after arriving in Afghanistan, she was assigned a new duty. For the next 10 months, she worked at the Bagram Air Base teaching two-week medical mentorship classes to six students at a time. When she left, 50 Afghani doctors and nurses, all male, had gone through the classes with her, all part of a plan to help them establish a health care system for Afghanistan.

This was her last deployment. After 37 years as a reservist, Nolen, who celebrated her 60th birthday in Afghanistan, faces mandatory retirement because of her age, an age the former Los Angeles Rams cheerleader doesn't look, act or feel.

This wasn't her first overseas deployment. During Operation Iraqi Freedom her hospital unit was assigned to Germany for 13 months to care for those injured in Iraq and Afghanistan. "Germany changed me," she said. "It gave me a strength. You could step up to a job and people would see you as a self-reliant person."

She's still sorting out how Afghanistan has changed her, and admitted that since coming home in late August, "I've had a little post-deployment depression, a sense of worthlessness." Back to being a civilian housewife, she's doing tasks "that don't seem to have much value, and that devalues me."

Married and with two adult sons, she still has another month before returning to work with a long-term care company where she had a management job. That same job may no longer exist.

Her first day teaching trauma-based hospital management to Afghans was memorable. Her students wandered in whenever they felt like it. None spoke English. Many didn't read or write their own language. Then, for some unfathomable reason, all six men walked out on her.

They needed a smoke break.

After the first two-week class, Nolen realized she had to be more assertive. Then she learned she had a power and she could use it to get her students to focus, to stay in class, to not wander off when they felt like it.

The weapon she used without mercy was the certificate of completion. "They lived for the certificate, because they could use it for a promotion or a pay raise," she said.

The training included treating local patients at Korean and Egyptian hospitals on the base. Repeatedly, Nolen saw Afghanis treated and released, only to return or even die, because there was no care for them at home.

What kind of a future is there for the baker who lost both his arms when there is no rehab and no prosthesis?

In the United States, the philosophy is that if the mind is still there, then there is potential, Nolen said. In Afghanistan, if someone dies, it's the will of God.

"What's our moral obligation?" Nolen asked. "We save them, but for what?"

She still wrestles with these questions, yet feels she made enough of a difference that she's seriously considering going back to Afghanistan as a civilian, perhaps with a group such as the Red Cross for a year. "These people need a help up in the world," she said.

Maureen Nolen gave them that help because she was ordered to, and she also thought it was the right thing to do.

The fact she's even considering going back of her own accord shows that she is an altruist, and deserves to be cheered in her hometown where altruism isn't exactly common.

Jane Ann Morrison's column appears Monday, Thursday and Saturday. E-mail her at Jane@reviewjournal.com or call (702) 383-0275. She also blogs at lvrj.com/blogs/morrison.