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7.5.2001
Part 2: Nurse was 'always
in the right place'
• Maureen Holland rose from grinding poverty in Central
Falls to supervised 2,000 nurses during Operation Desert Storm.
BY ELIZABETH ABBOTT
Journal Staff Writer
SMITHFIELD
—
There's a story behind the chicken. And somehow you know that the retired Army
colonel sitting across from you, a woman with fluffy white hair, kind blue eyes,
and a manner that is wise-cracking and gentle at the same time, is about to
tell it.
"His original name was 'Runway' ," Maureen Holland begins.
"Runway" was supposed to serve as a chemical detector for the men and women
stationed in the Saudi desert during the Persian Gulf war, a real-life canary
in the coal mine, if you will. But a farmer-turned-soldier had other ideas.
He renamed the chicken "Geraldine," put her on a leash, and kept her as a pet.
"Only Americans would do that," Holland chuckles.
Holland supervised 2,000 nurses during Operation Desert Storm. Chief nurse with
the 803rd Medical Group out of Boston, she fought blinding sandstorms, searing
heat, and a culture that doesn't let women drive, let alone fight, earning a
Bronze Star by the time she came home.
She was no kid at the time her unit was called up. That was in December 1990,
four months after Iraq's hostile annexation of Kuwait, setting the stage for
a conflict that would bring more than 500,000 American troops to the Persian
Gulf, 35,000 of them women.
"I kept saying, 'I'm 54-years-old, what am I doing here?' " Holland recalls
with a laugh.
But, in fact, everything in
Holland's life had conspired to place her in the Saudi desert that winter; the
crushing poverty of her youth, her "party hearty" days in nursing school, her
nearly 30 years of duty in the Army reserves. At least this is what she tells
you on a warm, still afternoon in early June, as a sprinkler softly waters her
back yard in the village of Esmond.
"I'm always at the right place at the right time, didn't you know that?" she
asks, a glint of mischief in her eyes.
But, in the beginning, life
was hard for the future Army colonel. Holland's father died when she was 14
months old, leaving her mother to raise three children alone. The place was
Central Falls; the time, the late 1930s. While her mother worked the second
shift in a local mill, young Maureen shined shoes and collected rags to help
make ends meet. She was too poor to dream of a future, she said, especially
one that would include a Bronze Star.
"I never thought I could get out of the bowels of Central Falls," she says.
But then she found nursing. Taking the suggestion of a wealthy woman for whom
she worked as a nanny while she was in high school, Holland enrolled in Sturdy
Memorial Hospital's School of Nursing after graduating from Central Falls High
School in 1955.
"Nursing was a gift to me," says Holland.
It gave her direction, the prospect of financial security and, last but not
least, regular hot showers, welcome relief to a kid who grew up in a cold-water
flat, she notes.
To help pay the bills, Holland joined the Army student nurse program. She pledged
two years of her life to Uncle Sam in exchange for one year of financial support.
Sooner than she expected, Uncle Sam came calling; from 1959 to 1961, Holland
was assigned to Fort Devens, Mass. But she didn't mind.
"I always said I joined the Army because I needed the money, but along the way
I fell in love with the flag," says Holland.
To this day, she raises the Stars and Stripes outside her home every morning.
She would have stayed in the military, when her two years were up, but her ailing
mother needed her at home, Holland says. Thus began a civilian nursing career
that spanned four decades. At the same time, she served in the Army Reserves,
eventually compiling 34 years of service and earning the rank of colonel.
"I'd rather be in combat boots than [in] the kitchen, I guess," Holland says.
She was married once, briefly, but her husband wasn't keen on her Army career,
she said.
The selflessness of the men and women in uniform still amazes Holland. They
make extraordinary sacrifices, she says, adding, "No one realizes this unless
you've been in war."
The Persian Gulf war began in the summer of 1990, when Iraq invaded the tiny
kingdom of Kuwait. Soon after, President George Bush activated the reserves
and, by Christmas, Holland found herself in a hot, mean environment more than
7,000 miles from home.
Her first stop was a place dubbed "Cement City," a holding ground for some 10,000
American troops that became so overcrowded, men and women had to share tents
and other facilities. Such togetherness came to distinguish the Persian Gulf
war from previous conflicts. As a result, advising women about birth control
became one of Holland's duties.
"You're going into war. You've got to stay on your birth-control pills," she
remembers telling her nurses.
Conditions in Cement City were awful. Holland remembers water that was unsafe
to drink, temperatures that soared to 120 degrees and the constant fear that
Saddam Hussein would unleash chemical weapons.
"You had to take your gas mask with you everywhere," she says.
For female troops, these hardships were exacerbated by a strict Muslim culture
that disapproved of women in uniform. Off base, women could not be sleeveless,
Holland remembers. They also could not drive and were charged more for basic
necessities than men.
An unusually high number of reservists were called up, many of them women who
never expected to be in a war zone, Holland noted. Among these were several
new mothers who were still nursing their babies when they reported for duty
overseas.
"It was very difficult," Holland recalls.
Eventually, Holland was stationed at King Khalid Military City, a massive Saudi
base 10 miles from the Iraqi border. In time, she and the other women who served
in the Persian Gulf won over their Saudi skeptics; one of Holland's proudest
possessions is a certificate of commendation from her male counterpart in the
Saudi Army.
The certificate confirms that women can make a valuable contribution during
war, Holland says. It also validates her philosophy of life, a philosophy that
is grounded in gratitude and a firm belief that she isn't calling the shots
in this world.
"For someone who shined shoes to be given this reaffirms to me that we're all
on our path and no matter what we do, God will put us back on the path," she
says.
Holland's path today includes working as a consultant for the state Department
of Human Services, serving as an advocate for female veterans with the Division
of Veteran Affairs and trying to raise money for a memorial to Rhode Island's
female veterans. She is 64 now and a cancer survivor, but neither age nor illness
have slowed her down. When asked about all the work she is doing, much of it
volunteer, she simply shrugs.
"Again, I'm at the right place at the right time," she says.
Donations for the women's memorial may be sent to the Rhode Island Women
Veterans Memorial Project, 645 New London Ave., Cranston, R.I. 02920.
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