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Army Lt. Sharon Lane was 25 when she was killed in Vietnam. (U.S. Army photo)

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1st Lt. Sharon Lane

Young Army Nurse Was The Only American Woman To Die Under Enemy Fire In Vietnam

By Bethanne Kelly Patrick
Military.com Columnist

On June 4, 1969, Army nurse Sharon Lane sent a letter to her parents in Ohio from the first lieutenant's assignment at the 312th Medical Evacuation Hospital in Chu Lai, Vietnam. Lane's unit, the 74th Medical Battalion, had just reached a milestone by treating its 10,000th patient since arriving in country. She wrote: "Start 'nights' tomorrow so don't have to get up early tomorrow. Nice thought. Still very quiet around here. Haven't gotten mortared for a couple of weeks now ..."

Four days later, Lane was dead.

During the early hours of June 8, a Soviet-built, 122-mm rocket slammed into Ward 4 of the hospital. A piece of shrapnel ripped through Lane's aorta, killing her instantly. She died just one month short of her 26th birthday.

Lane is the only American servicewoman killed as a direct result of hostile fire during the Vietnam War. Born in Zanesville, Ohio, she graduated from that state's Aultman Hospital School of Nursing in 1965 and joined the U.S. Army Nurse Corps Reserve in April 1968. She arrived in Vietnam one year later, less than two months before her death. Lane's awards include the Purple Heart, the Bronze Star with a "V" for gallantry, the National Defense Service Medal, The Nation of Vietnam Medal, and the South Vietnamese Gallantry Cross with Palm.

Lane's many honors include a statue at the Aultman School, buildings in her name there and at Fort Hood, Texas, and at Fort Belvoir, Va., the first Department of Defense installation road named after a woman.

Yet her mother says Lane would approve of none of this. "She wasn't that kind of person," Kay Lane has said. "She just thought she was ... an ordinary person."