I grew up in a wonderful small Iowa farm town. My friend Nicole Tilley lived on the edge of town by the highway. Perhaps she used to look down that road, wondering how far it could take her, because upon graduating high school, she rushed off to the U.S. Navy. It’s easy to imagine the destructive power of those big warships and the aircraft aboard our carriers. But instead of spending her enlistment in a specialty designed to take lives, Petty Officer 3rd Class Tilley worked to save people and to welcome life into the world. She served as a Navy corpsman.
Navy boot camp was a shock to Tilley, as it is to most recruits. In addition to discipline and other elements of the service, Tilley, from a little town where she knew everyone, had to adapt to living and working among people from many different backgrounds. But she adapted and embraced her new environment quickly, and after boot camp, she went to corps school for medical training. Later, she was assigned to work in labor and delivery at Naval Medical Center in San Diego. She had hoped to work on a helicopter rescue team, but she was 5 feet, 1 inch tall and 89 pounds. Too small. So when a corpsman slot opened, she took it.
“I was 18,” she told me with pride. “I was working with babies.”
I asked her what she actually did. It sounded like there was very little she did not do. As soon as babies emerged, she kept them alive. She assisted doctors with surgeries. She even assisted one brilliant doctor with surgeries on preborn babies in utero. She provided vital care to a great many newborn children of Navy personnel. She saw a lot of happy tears.
She also sometimes witnessed difficult grief. She’s seen mothers die in labor. She’s seen babies die. She faced all of this at a relatively young age with remarkable poise and courage.
Tilley told me that when she served, the Navy had determined a baby was considered viable if born after at least 23 weeks and five days. One baby was born after only 23 weeks and four days. Perfect form. Blue eyes. Blonde hair. But one day early. Tilley thought there couldn’t be much difference and tried to resuscitate the baby. For ignoring the guidelines for viability of life, she was punished by being ordered to stay with the baby for the next eight hours as the baby slipped away. “After that moment, I think I understood what life was all about,” she told me through tears.
But of course, the overwhelming majority of her experiences were positive, helping babies and their mothers who ended up healthy. Incredibly rewarding work.
But a back injury brought her time in the service to an end, and after five years, she returned home to find the town the same. But her friends had moved on to jobs and families, and she struggled to begin again. But the Navy had refined her natural tenacity, and so she took her skills to an Iowa hospital, hoping to pick up the same work on the civilian side. But when hospital officials read what Tilley had been doing in the Navy they were shocked. She’d have to be a doctor to do, in the civilian world, what she had been doing in the Navy.
She was disappointed but not defeated, and soon enough, she went to work in education and as a paramedic. “You saw more blood than almost all service members,” I told her. “Did it ever bother you?”
“No,” she said. “I could eat a steak while someone was having an amputation.”
Nicole Tilley is ever optimistic and eager to help others. “I loved it,” she said of her Navy service. It was the biggest time of growth in her life. “I’m so happy I did it.”
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Trent Reedy, author of several books including Enduring Freedom, served as a combat engineer in the Iowa National Guard from 1999 to 2005, including a tour of duty in Afghanistan.
*Some names and call signs in this story may have been changed due to operational security or privacy concerns.