THE ECHOES OF THE VIETNAM War are heard in these gripping accounts of women from around the world who were, in various ways, deeply and passionately involved with the war. These disparate voices span three decades, illuminating the feminine face of war and adding to the undeniable legacy of women’s involvement in its perils. First, author Kathryn Atwood gives us an important lesson in Southeast Asian history, beginning with 1945. She provides a historical chronology of the Vietnam War while directing a spotlight on the bravery and achievements of not only the risk-taking women who participated in the war but also those who suffered gravely from its consequences. Their recollections paint pictures for us, unforgettable portraits.
For me, there is something different about this book. When I finished the last page, engrossed in the lives of these featured women, I contemplated why I felt awe and remorse. I was shaken. The author takes us on a journey back more than a half century to a time of unspeakable brutality, exemplary heroism, loss, and hope. It was a time when most women who had stepped up to serve humbly declared, like the French nurse Geneviève de Galard, serving in Vietnam in the 1950s, “I only did my duty.” Under harrowing conditions with dying men all around her, she, the lone woman, dressed wounds and kept up morale in the face of mounting casualties. We read her story here and know she is an indisputable hero.
We read Dr. Dang Thuy Tram’s diary entry about her patients: “Your blood has crimsoned our native land…. Your heart has stopped so that the heart of the nation can beat forever.” Dr. Tram was dedicated to saving lives of the Communist guerrilla forces in underground hospitals very near to where my fellow nurses and I were saving lives of American soldiers in the 71st Evacuation Hospital, Pleiku, in 1969. She and I could not have been very far from each other. In her diary, she wrote of “hatred for the invaders.” That was me! I was the invader. We were women on different sides of the war, yet we both were passionate about our work, we both loved our countries, we both loved our patients, and we both fought despair in watching young men suffer and die. She was killed in June 1970. She died for her country, a hero to her people; she was buried on her sacred ground. US military women (eight nurses) died in Vietnam too, their bodies shipped home. Each one a hero.
I was shaken because I was taken back to a time and place where my colleagues and I didn’t know if the Vietnamese women working in our hospital wards were friend or foe. We did know they were stealing from us—our drugs, IV tubing and bottles, field dressings. They would do anything to save their husbands, brothers, fathers, and sons. Dr. Tram fought her war the same way I fought mine—ignoring the thuds of rockets and mortars landing around us, we saved lives the best we could with what we had. Only she was facing the stark terrors of the ravages of war in the country she loved, while I could fly home at the end of my tour.
I felt remorse in not taking the time to grasp or truly feel what it felt like for these women on the other side. That is not something we do when others are the enemy. We put distance between ourselves and them. Later, we look for understanding and reconciliation.
This book is not about proving the rightness or wrongness of the Vietnam War. This is a galvanizing chronicle of women who were caught up in the hellishness of war. Yet each of them found the spirit and stamina to overcome trauma and heartbreak with the endurance needed to survive and move forward. Some women drawn to the war chose their battles—US military nurses, civilian women in support of the US Armed Forces, civilian women from neighboring countries, journalists who brought the war’s grim realities to the world’s attention. These women who, despite naysayers proclaiming they didn’t belong in a war zone, volunteered to serve in the jungles, rice paddies, and villages of Vietnam. Others had their battles chosen for them—children burned by napalm who faced a lifetime of recovery and political persecution in their own country; Vietnamese women furtively protecting their families, homes, and livelihood from destruction. We hear too from those on safer shores—the war protestors.
In revealing war’s inhumanity, Courageous Women of the Vietnam War illuminates our shared humanity by bringing us these compelling voices from both sides of the conflict. We find their truths in their remembrances. Their inspiring stories deepen our understanding of war’s exacting toll and leave us with remarkable insights into that turbulent era.
We need to look further, however, and see the personal cost for these daring women’s devotion to duty. After years of suffering in silence, there is now a name, and treatment, for the lingering emotional trauma from war—post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD). War may be as close to hell as we ever get, leaving nightmares, memories, and emotional wounds that require the healing powers of a lifetime. Sorrows can be borne if we unburden our stories. Yes, even for most of us who believe “I only did my duty.”
DIANE CARLSON EVANS was a captain in the US Army Nurse Corps from 1966 to 1972, serving in Vietnam in 1968 and 1969. Founder and president of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation, she spearheaded a campaign to place in the nation’s capital a national monument that recognized the contributions of military women to their country as well as civilian women’s patriotic service. These efforts were rewarded when a bronze monument portraying three women and a wounded soldier was dedicated on November 11, 1993, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, DC.