The Guadalajara Reporter

Veteran couple stands pat in love and war

Bernice was an U.S. Army nurse stationed at Ft. Benning, Georgia. Mark was a Combat Platoon Leader, also stationed at Fr. Benning. From the beginning of their romance, Mark Scott knew he would be deployed to Vietnam. It was 1969 and Bernice, who had received orders for Japan, knew that when they separated the chances were that they would never see each other again. Instead of taking advantage of the easier stretch in an Army hospital in Japan, she asked for a change in her orders. She was told in no uncertain terms, “This is the Army. You go where you are told.”

Undaunted, Bernice wrote to President Lyndon Baines Johnson, remarking that his daughters were about her age and how he would feel if they were separated from their husbands. She received a letter back from the Surgeon General of the United States under orders from the president that she should be sent to Vietnam instead of Japan. They were married in February 1969 (after all, she had told the president that he was her husband) and both left for Vietnam on the same flight.

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