By Cindy Loose The Washington Post
WASHINGTON
The unveiling of a bronze statue in a sun-dappled grove of beech and maple trees was the
official occasion. But that was a fraction of the point for the 25,000 people who came
from across the nation for the dedication of the Vietnam Women's Memorial.
They came to hug and laugh and cry; to remember and be remembered; to expose their pain
and perhaps help it go away.
"I couldn't afford to come here, but I just had to,'' said Sue Rowe, of Phoenix, who
in 1969 and 1970 served at Pleiku in the 71st Army Evacuation Hospital. "I'm
determined to cure myself today, to meet these women again, to come full circle and bring
things to a close.''
Florence Johnson, of Massachusetts, dressed in the all-white Gold Star Mothers uniform
that marked her as the parent of a soldier killed in battle, came to say thank you.
"They took care of our kids,'' she said. "Maybe somebody here today took care of
my boy before he died.''
Tim Davis, of California, a former Marine who lost both his legs in 1968 on Hill 55 about
six miles south of Da Nang, complained that the memorial to the women was too far -- 300
feet -- from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The names of the more than 58,000 Americans
killed in Vietnam are engraved on the black reflecting granite that has come to be known
as the Wall.
"I felt the women's monument should be closer to the Wall,'' said Davis, 45,
"because these women were the last people those guys saw or talked to before they
died.''
The dedication of the statue of three women tending a wounded soldier -- the first
national memorial to female veterans -- was the centerpiece of dozens of activities in the
area yesterday, including a women's march down Constitution Avenue and a wreath-laying at
the Tomb of the Unknowns at Arlington Cemetery. But every event was really about finding
old friends.
Two decades and more had sketched lines on many faces, making reunions difficult.
"Sue. Sue Rowe,'' Rowe said to Virginia Willard, of Florida. "We worked together
in the OR in `69.''
Willard screeched and wrapped her arms around Rowe. They laughed aloud for only a second,
then both began to cry.
"One of the OR scenes we worked on together flashed in my mind,'' Willard said later.
"It was one of the guys, hurt pretty bad. He had a lot of abdominal injuries. We just
couldn't save him. He was 18 years old.''
Willard was only four years older.
Their moment of recognition had triggered a scene in Rowe's mind too.
"Probably it was the same one Virginia remembered,'' she said, although it wasn't.
"He was fresh out of the bush; he must have stepped on a mine. He lost a leg and had
a lot of facial wounds. He was a young kid, blond hair, really young.''
The blond soldier died too. But why, of the thousands and thousands of patients she
treated in Vietnam, did Rowe think of this one?
"He's in my dreams all the time,'' she answered.
But her worst memory, she said, is of triage, in which patients were sorted according to
those needing immediate care, those who could wait and the "expectants'' -- those who
had no chance and were put off to the side to die.
"The hardest were the kids we had to put in the expectant room,'' Rowe said.
"Those are the ones I always remember, the ones I can never forget.''
An estimated 11,500 American women served in Vietnam, about 90 percent of them as medical
personnel. They saw and touched the awful wounds suffered by 300,000 American boys,
excluding those who were killed. Of the dead they saw, 29,000 were 17 or 18 years old.
The effect of so much exposure to so much pain was little understood for a long time. Like
their male counterparts, these women returned in the late 1960s and early 1970s to a
sometimes hostile and, at best, uncaring reception.
They took years to realize that, like the men who fought, they could suffer post traumatic
stress disorders and they too would have to come to grips with what they saw and felt.
"There is nothing more intimate than sharing someone's dying with them,'' a
Vietnam-era nurse named Dusty wrote in a collection of poems, "Visions of War, Dreams
of Peace.''
"It is more intimate than sex, it is more intimate than childbirth, and once you do
it, you can never be ordinary again.''
Copyright 1993 by The Tech. All rights reserved.
This story was published on Friday, November 12, 1993.
Volume 113, Number 57
The story was printed on page 2.
This article may be freely distributed electronically, provided it is distributed in its
entirety and includes this notice, but may not be reprinted without the express written
permission of The Tech. Write to archive@the-tech.mit.edu for additional details.
My Vietnam Related Websites:
Women in Vietnam
~ Not only nurses served . . .
Dusty's Home Page
~ Poetry and prose by a woman who was a nurse in Vietnam
Emily's
Poetry ~ By a Red Cross Donut Dolly
Battle Dressing ~ The Journey of a Nurse in Vietnam
Tim O'Brien's Home Page
~ National Book Award Winner and Americal Vet
Shrapnel in the Heart
~ The most moving book you will read on Vietnam
The
Irish on the Wall ~ An effort to locate the Irish who died in Vietnam
Project
Hearts and Minds ~ Help put Viet Nam back together
All About Vietnam
~ An annotated bibliography of books about Vietnam for sale thru Amazon
Worldwide!
Photos from a Holts' Military History Tour
~ My trip to
Vietnam, February 1998
Illinois
Vietnam Women's Memorial ~ Honoring all the Illinois women who served
My Other Websites:
Chicago
Theatre Z - A ~ This is the best theater town in the country!
Writers
Theatre of Chicago ~ And this is the best theater in town
Literature
of the Korean War ~ Don't let the literature be forgotten
Poetry
of the First World War ~ Owen, Hardy and others
Samuel
Pepys ~ One of my favorite authors
Gil
Thorp ~ THE Coach
Maybe
Later . . . ~ My Creative Nonfiction
Chi-COW-go
~ Cowz plus Commentary (this used to be a cow town)
Graham
Fulton, Scottish Poet ~ Charles Manson Auditions for the Monkees
Soccer
Literature ~ I'm a fan and I read
O'Leary
Lantern ~ Fire! Fire! Fire!
Other Important Websites:
PreviewPort.com
~ Connecting Authors and Writers Worldwide
Remember
Oklahoma City ~ Civil Service and Military Employees will never forget
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