Sara Berg’s book “Kissing Kevin: An American Nurse in the Vietnam War” was published by Cirque Press and came out in print in early June 2024. Berg passed away in January of 2024 but her husband, Edward Berg, talked to the Homer News about her inspiration to write, some of the challenges she faced both during in her time in military service and when she returned home, and some of her additional passions and pursuits in life.
Ed Berg shared some of his personal experiences and insights about Sara’s life, including her background as a nurse practitioner, both in the war and post service. He also discussed some of the general challenges faced by returning veterans after the Vietnam War, highlighting the need for support and understanding. Through his conversations, Berg demonstrated his admiration and respect for Sara’s dedication to her work and her community.
Sara Berg had strong encouragement to write her book from Diane Carpenter, a woman who she knew as the “matriarch” of Alamos, Mexico, who had also published a book, “In the Winter of Orange Snow” about some of her early teaching years in Nome.
Berg began the process of writing “Kissing Kevin” in the summer of 2023. She was in Madison, Wisconsin, for intense medical care and in the hospital bed is when she started writing these stories down.
“But she had been telling these stories, you know, for years, and she was a very good storyteller. The narratives were there, she just hadn’t processed them yet,” said Ed Berg.
Ed Berg defined Sara Berg’s writing style as “transcribed speech” so he was responsible for helping to edit the material into more of a formal book format, including punctuation components.
“I really tried to preserve her style. I mean, she has kind of what I always call, ‘straight from the gut style.’ She was a very outspoken person in general, and so not a diplomatic person and that comes through in the book,” he said.
Ed Berg described Sara’s early life as a “classic military brat” and grew up in many places in both the United States and Germany. “Her father was a career military person. He was a health physicist — in places where there was radiation, he was the guy that was being sure that everyone was wearing the radiation badge. It was a safety kind of job.”
In the forward to her book, Sara Berg wrote, “I loved living on Army bases and had no negative connotations about the armed forces. The Army nurse corps recruiters were relentless; they came to the nursing schools and focused on the senior class. They made it sound so patriotic and glorious.”
Even before she joined the military, she knew she wanted to go to midwifery school and that required two years of nursing experience, which she would gain with service in Vietnam, she wrote.
Ed Berg talked primarily of what it was like for Vietnam war veterans, their return to the U.S. after service and some of the difficulties they all faced.
“Many veterans had a really hard time coming back to the United States. It was an unpopular war. The GIs were considered ‘baby killers’ and people viewed the nurses as supporting the ghastly atrocity going on over there. I think the hardest part was that when you’ve been on duty in a place like that — where it’s a perpetual crisis situation, there’s always somebody’s heart failing and you’re working 12-hour shifts — it was totally demanding,” he said. Then when the veterans returned home it was very difficult to find post-war employment.
He also talked about the role of age in the military service at that time. When Sara was in Vietnam she 22 years old and she was one of the older ones on the ward.
“The boys that took care of were basically 18, so a good part of her time she was just putting 18-year-old boys in body bags. It’s hard to imagine such a terrible situation. Then you come back to the states and people don’t understand your situation at all, and they’re not giving you responsible positions,” he said.
The epilogue of Sara Berg’s book reflects this: “I spent a year and five days in Vietnam. You’d think that after such a horrendous year, I would be thrilled to be leaving Vietnam behind. I thought that, too…but it was not the case,” she wrote.
“It may seem strange, but I wanted to go back. I felt I needed to do more; that’s why nurses and corpsmen re-upped.
“I felt scorned upon my return to the States, even spit at. I never said the word ‘Vietnam’ for ten years without crying or being chastised,” she wrote.
When Sara returned from Vietnam her older sister was one of the first VISTA volunteers in Alaska and she was an unwed mother. So, Sara came up here to help her with the baby, according to Ed Berg.
Berg provided some of his own background related to military and career. His father was in World War II, but in high school, “I began having doubts about the military approach to foreign affairs. I was an anti-war activist and spent 10 years in that role, starting in 1964 until the end of the war.”
Jill Burnham at the Kenai Peninsula College has expressed some interest in a public reading, but there are none planned at this time. Berg said there probably will be, eventually, but he hasn’t determined if they’ll be specifically focused on Sara Berg as an author and the book material itself or a broader revisitation of the Vietnam War experience and the return home experience for veterans.
Books are available to purchase on Amazon and eventually Berg hopes to provide them to the Homer Bookstore, the Pratt Museum and other places in the community.
