Esther Segler served as an army nurse for 30 years

Pictured: Esther Segler when she held the position of Chief, Nursing Division at HQS US Army Medical Command at Ft. Sam Houston. This was her final assignment in the army; she retired July 31, 1990. When she retired, Esther received a Legion of Merit Medal like the one pictured on the right.

By Jill Fennema –

Esther (Tinklenberg) Segler was born to Jacob and Clara Tinklenberg on a farm near Woodstock. She is the oldest of five children. Her siblings are Darrel, Eileen (Rogers), Elmer, and Keith. 

After grade school, Esther went to Southwest Christian High School for two years and then, because SWCH only had two grades at that time, she went to Edgerton Public School for the last two years of high school.  She graduated in 1952 when she was 17 years old. 

After high school, she went to work at Bethesda Institution in Denver for a year to see if she wanted to pursue a career in nursing. She did. So she came back home and went to the Sioux Valley School of Nursing in Sioux Falls, S.D., becoming a registered nurse in 1956. 

When she finished that three year program, she went to South Dakota State University to finish her degree, achieving her bachelor’s degree in nursing. 

When she was a junior at SDSU, things were getting expensive. Looking at her senior year, she was not sure how she was going to work enough hours to pay her way. She went to a state nurses convention and there was an army nurse recruiter there. The army had a program for RN’s that would allow her to be commissioned as a 2nd lieutenant and finish school. She was paid $235 a month as a salary. After that year, she was obligated to give them two years of active duty. 

After she graduated from SDSU, Esther went to basic officer training at Ft. Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas.  This training was much like everyone’s basic training. They learned how to march, how to salute, how to dress in uniform, and how to fire a rifle and take it apart. 

Esther recalls that they went on a night compass course where they had to stay in a tent in the field. When it got dark, they were sent out in pairs with a compass to orienteer in the field. She and her partner did just fine. 

After this, she was sent to the Department of Nursing at the Army Hospital at Ft. Belvoir, Virginia. It was much like a civilian hospital, however all the patients were military personnel. Her floor was primarily officers, which meant it was mostly men. 

She was assigned there a couple of years and then in 1960, was sent back to Ft. Sam Houston. The powers-that-be decided she would make a good instructor. They wanted her to teach the corpsmen how to do basic patient care. She did this for about two years before being sent to an Advanced Officer Course and then deployed to Germany. 

She had already given Uncle Sam two years, but she was enjoying her work. “I decided I liked it,” Esther recalls. Her family back home was supportive of her decision to continue on active duty. 

The trip across the Atlantic Ocean was very turbulent. Many were sick, including family members of servicemen who were traveling together. Esther was traveling with three other nurses. She herself did not suffer from sea sickness, but was close at times. 

Esther was assigned to an Army hospital in Stuttgart, Germany. She was there doing typical nursing duties of a medical ward. Six months later her branch decided they wanted her in Heidelberg. 

“Heidelberg was a dream assignment,” Esther said. “It’s a beautiful old city. It’s not large, so I could get around easily.”

By this time, Esther had reached the rank of captain. She was the chief nurse/training nurse at the 5th Mobile Army Surgical Hospital (MASH). There were two big operating rooms under tents with all the necessary equipment.  There were only five other officers and 95 enlisted men. She was the only female. 

This was during the Cold War. Both the Soviets and the U.S.-led Western powers were prepared for war.  Esther said that alerts were called every month, typically between 4 and 5 a.m. The hospital equipment had to be loaded on the trucks and driven to a specified point, usually about 10 miles away. There they would wait for the “all clear” and then return to the compound and unload.

In January and February, they would set up the hospital in the country to support war training exercises for the U.S. troops and equipment flown in from the United States. The ground would be frozen and steel pegs had to be used to anchor the tents. They did this training in the winter so that the tanks would not tear up the German fields and countryside. 

During this time, Esther’s commander decided that she should take the Chemical, Biological, and Radiological (CBR) training. “I attended the CBR course, and to my knowledge, was the first female and the first nurse to do so,” she said.

CBR training involved becoming familiar with the various chemical, biological, and radiological agents used in warfare and how to treat patients if they were exposed. She became familiar with geiger counters and tear gas. Part of the training involved going into a sealed tent filled with tear gas. Inside, they had to take off their masks and recite their name.  Then they were permitted to leave. “People were coughing and our eyes watered. Some people got sick,” Esther recalled. 

Thankfully, she never had to decontaminate anyone. She did find it interesting that they were instructed to use Tide laundry detergent to wash any contaminated casualties. 

Esther’s job at this MASH unit was not so much teaching, but more about making sure that the men were maintaining the equipment, making sure that people were coordinating with the hospital for training, and that sort of thing. She never had a problem with people not wanting to take orders from a female. 

“They would call me Captain T,” she said. “I always had a good rapport with the people.” 

While in Germany, Esther was able to visit the Berlin Wall. It was an experience she will remember forever. They took a train through the night across East Germany, into West Berlin. The train had blackout curtains and they were not allowed to look out the window. She stood on the platform at Check Point Charlie – one hundred yards in front of her was barbed wire blocking the way from East to West Berlin. Esther looked through a pair of binoculars at an East German guard who was looking at her through binoculars. 

Buildings and homes that were in the way of the wall were just incorporated into the wall. They heard the stories of those who had tried to escape into West Berlin but were killed. She stood at the fence where a young German man had been shot when climbing the fence in an escape attempt and was left hanging on the fence until he died.

About midway through her assignment in Germany, she and a nurse friend took a two-week leave to travel around Europe using military “hops” on Air Force planes. The flight they were supposed to take was canceled. Another pilot offered them a ride to Naples on an eight-hour flight on a cargo plane with no bathroom.  When they landed, they stuck with the crew to their hotel as they had no idea where to go.

The hotel where they spent the first night had only a tiny room, so the next day they looked for another hotel. That evening there were two men at the hotel who said they were going to the NATO officer’s club and invited the two girlfriends to join them for dinner. One of those two men was Lester Segler, a naval officer with the Navy Cryptologic Branch. 

He ended up joining them on their bus tour the next day. Les was able to assist the girlfriends in catching a military “hop”  to Beirut, Lebanon, the next day. The flight stopped in Cyprus where Les departed, but not before they had exchanged contact information. Esther did not think she would hear from him again, but a few weeks later received a letter. Their courtship continued via letters and phone calls. 

They were married in December 1966. The Navy Cryptologic Branch works with secret military communications, and Les was stationed on the east coast. Much of his work remained a secret from Esther. 

Prior to their wedding, in 1965, Esther was assigned to the 6th Army Recruiting Command in San Francisco, California, where she was the Chief of the Nursing Division. Her job was to travel through the six western states and talk to recruiters. 

Les and Esther were married in San Francisco. After their wedding, they came back to the Midwest so Les could meet Esther’s family. Shortly after their wedding, Les was sent to Japan. Esther stayed in California and requested a transfer to Japan. Six months after their wedding, the couple was finally able to make a home together in a village called Sagamihara, Japan. Esther was assigned to the hospital at Camp Zama. 

The Vietnam War was going full force. When a soldier was wounded he would go to a MASAH or another army hospital there in Vietnam. There he would be stabilized and receive treatment, which usually required surgery. Once the wounded were stable enough to tolerate a flight, they were flown to from Saigon to an Air Force base near Tokyo for further surgery or treatment. Esther was an assigned to one of three hospitals that received these wounded. Some men were wounded only 18 hours earlier. 

Esther recalls that during the Tet Offensive they were especially busy and short staffed. While the nurses took care of medications, preparing patients for surgery, monitoring those returning from surgery, etc., they relied heavily on the corpsmen to give the basic nursing care. At one point the  patients census reached to 95 patients with only six nurses (including Esther) to cover 24/7 on 12-hour shifts, 6 days a week. 

Not long after this, Esther became pregnant. While the couple was glad to be having a baby, the Army was not in support of pregnant women or mothers being in the military, regardless of how short-staffed the nursing departments were. Esther did not want to resign her position and after she and Les had many discussions, she decided she would request a leave of absence to have her baby, but be retained on active duty. 

However, her request to remain on active duty was denied a few weeks before the birth of her daughter and she received her discharge notice. 

“One day I was a major on active duty and the next day a civilian,” Esther said. “Our daughter was born fifteen days later.”

Suzanne was born March 22, 1969. About fourteen months later Les received orders for Bangkok. Prior to going, he was required to attend some specialized training in Washington, D.C., so they were able to introduce Suzanne to her grandparents for the first time.When his training was done, they moved to Bangkok.

About 16 months into their tour in Bangkok, the military newspaper carried an article that the army regulation regarding pregnancy had changed, as the result of a lawsuit brought by a pregnant military nurse in the states. Upon contacting the Army Nurse Corps branch, Esther was urged to apply for return to active duty. She returned to active duty in 1972, toward the goal of a military retirement pension at 20 years.

“I was reinstated in the Army Nurse Corps, in my previous rank of Major, with orders for Ft. Meade, Maryland, which was my husband’s approaching assignment,” she recalls.

In Ft. Meade, they found excellent childcare for Suzanne. Esther was assigned to the Kimbrough Army Hospital as a supervisor to the hospital’s outpatient clinics. 

In 1974, Esther was chosen to attend the U.S. Army Baylor University Hospital Administration Program at Ft. Sam Houston. Les was also still on active duty, but nearing retirement. Suzanne stayed in Ft. Meade with him while Esther returned to Texas. 

She was there for a year and then had to complete a year of residency training at Fitzsimmons Army Medical Center in Denver, Colorado. Completing the program awarded her with a Masters in Hospital Administration. While in Colorado, Suzanne was with her. Les retired and lived in Wichita Falls, Texas, working on an old mansion they had purchased together that needed a lot of work. 

After gaining her Masters, Esther was assigned to Ft. Leonard Wood, Missouri, in 1976. The army hospital at Ft. Leonard Wood was undergoing a million dollar addition. Esther was assigned as the Nursing Methods Analyst for the project. 

Two years later she was ordered to relocate – once again back to Ft. Sam Houston, where she was assigned to the Army Medical Command as a staff officer in the nursing division, to support the division chief. 

The next year she was sent to Ft. Sill, Oklahoma, where she was assigned the position of Assistant Chief Nurse at Reynolds Army Hospital. She was also assigned as the mobilization chief for the 47th Field Hospital, which was located on the base. That field hospital was called into active duty in May 1980 during the Cuban Refugee Crisis. Thousands of Cubans were allowed to leave Castro’s Cuba. They sought refuge in the United States and were sent to three locations to be processed and where medical care was provided. 

The mobile field hospital was set up at Ft. Chaffee, Ark. Within two and a half days, the unit drove several hundred miles and set up tents to receive patients. At one point there were 25,000 refugees in the camp. Esther recalls that most of the refugees were very grateful. The hospital unit remained at Ft. Chaffee almost two months and then the U.S. Public Health Service took over. 

From July 1982 through June 1986, the Seglers lived in Germany. Esther was assigned to two different U.S. Army hospitals – first in Wuerzburg, Germany, and later in Nuremberg. At each hospital she was assigned as Chief, Department of Nursing.