Remembering U.S. Army Second Lt. Carol Ann Drazba.

Born on December 11, 1943, in Waterbury, Connecticut. She grew up in Dunmore, Pennsylvania, where she dreamed of becoming a nurse. After graduating from high school in 1961, she enrolled and was trained as a nurse at Scranton State Hospital of Nursing, graduating in 1964. She realized it was her mission to go over to Vietnam to minister to sick, wounded, and dying soldiers.

On October 13, 1965, Drazba began her tour of duty in Vietnam and worked tirelessly for the next six months, fulfilling what she believed to be her life’s mission.
It was when she was on her way for her first rest period after arriving in Vietnam that she and another nurse, Army 2nd Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones, RN, were killed on that day, of February 18, 1966, when the helicopter crashed when it hit high tension wires about seven miles northeast of Bien Hoa Airfield, about 20 miles away from Tan Son Nhut Airbase, which is where the flight took off from.

Drazba and Jones were the first two American women nurses killed in the Vietnam War. Their remains were returned to the United States and buried at Sacred Heart in Scranton, Pennsylvania.