‘Healing wounds’

The Vietnam War was raging as Diane Carlson Evans neared the end of nursing school. Seeing the war-wounded on TV news each night after class, and with two brothers in uniform, she knew where she wanted to take her training: the U.S. Army Nurse Corps.

Her time in country – 1968 and 1969 – was a relentless torrent of incoming wounded and enemy attacks. She first treated U.S. troops and civilians in a steamy evacuation hospital at Vũng Tàu. Then she asked for a transfer to Pleiku so she could be closer to the fighting. Her tour of duty – and years of struggle that followed – ultimately put her at the wheel of a decade-long movement to install the Vietnam Women’s Memorial in Washington, D.C. No step in the journey was uncomplicated.

The American Legion played an important support role. When other veterans associations were cold to her idea of adding a memorial specific to women who served in the Vietnam War, American Legion Past National Commander Daniel Foley advised her to start with a resolution from her local post in River Falls, Wis. She shepherded the idea through the 1985 American Legion National Convention and the National Executive Committee’s Fall Meetings that year. The national resolution proved vital as she overcame critics and unexpected obstacles between that time and the dedication on Veterans Day 1993.

“Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C.” – published by Permuted Press and distributed by Simon & Schuster – goes on sale nationwide this month in bookstores and through online sellers.

More than the story of how a former nurse and American Legion member fought to get the memorial designed and installed on federal property, “Healing Wounds” is a vivid memoir – written with Oregon author Bob Welch – of the Vietnam War experience, its aftermath and reconciliation.

Of one moment during the war, she writes:

It was March 7, 1969: a mushrooming nightmare for our medical team. Mass casualties. A “push.” In came the wounded and sick. Out went our generator – not an uncommon occurrence but the first time it had happened during a mass-casualty situation, or “mass-cas” like the one we were facing. Ventilators can’t pump oxygen into lungs when the generator dies. Pleiku’s dust turned the chopper’s landing zone into a whirl of crimson fog. Litter-bearers shielded their eyes from the blowing reddish-orange grit as they ferried their wounded buddies into our heavily bunkered emergency room for triage ... Then came the final indignation: the sky began raining enemy fire ... Rockets pounded. Officers shouted instructions diffused by the noise. Chaos laughed in the face of whatever sanity was left. 

After discharge from nearly nonstop combat, Carlson Evans was not the same. Caring for civilians at home did not compare to saving the lives of wounded soldiers. She re-enlisted and returned to military nursing until it became clear she had an issue of her own to address: post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD).

“Healing Wounds” recounts her resolve, after leaving nursing, to simply lock the Vietnam War away. The first major exception was attendance at the dedication of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, where she was inspired to lead a campaign to specifically remember the more than 10,000 uniformed American women who served in the war, along with the other 265,000 women veterans of that time. That hard-fought accomplishment proved to be essential therapy, she explains in the book:

Life for me changed after the dedication of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial. I had more time for my family. I started sleeping through the night. I exchanged letters with new friends and reacquainted with old friends. But as life relaxed, I was fighting my own old demons ... Vietnam would not go away. I went to the VA for help. And found it. I was not ashamed to be diagnosed with PTSD. For me, healing has meant remembering and honoring not just human beings but also memories. I look at them now without fear but a quiet reverence; they are a part of me and are what inspired me to continue to serve my country as an advocate for veterans.