Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse's 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, D.C.
By: Diane Carlson Evans / Contributor: Bob Welch / Foreword By: Joseph Galloway / Narrated By: Janet Metzger
Length: 9 hrs and 35 mins
So sobering; so very good
We do not serve our Veterans well, we here in the United States. Oh sure, we love to tout them, to give a shoutout every now and again. And civilians as well as politicians think a Thank You For Your Service is nice and easily done: I support the troops. I say this because the Toxic Exposure Bill was just shot down in the Senate, leaving those who served capably and in good faith high and dry from the devastation wrought by Agent Orange, the Burn Pits.
Okay, I see that this review is starting on a bitter note, and that’s NOT as it should be; but I’m kinda in that mood because it took Diane Carlson Evans yeeears, and fights of the most extraordinary kind to get a memorial of the women who served in various capacities included nearby Maya Lin’s iconic wall. At first, it was to be a memorial commemorating the sacrifices and fortitude of the nurses who didn’t have to serve, but who voluntarily traveled and endured to be side-by-side with their brothers-in-arms. But naturally, THAT wouldn’t do, and so the statue was modified to honor the thousands of women who performed any number of services that supported the young men (Boys!) who were fighting and dying.
While Healing Wounds is indeed about the determination to get the monument made, it has its greatest impact when it’s just Evans contemplating her service. Beware all with weak stomachs or who faint at the sight of blood blisters because this is as honest and open an account of war as is possible. Whether it was Evans initially working in the burn unit and treating children who were burned beyond recognition by napalm, or it was of watching (And hearing) a newly-orphaned little girl as she screamed herself to death in terror during a particularly nightmarish mortar attack, from the start it’s beYONd brave of just how much, just how closely, Evans was willing to Go There.
Initially upon her return, her year in Vietnam, the fact that she was a nurse there, is kept under wraps. Vietnam was a harsh, brutal, unforgiving place, but Stateside? Even more unforgiving. Even when she meets and marries her husband, it’s Hands Off Vietnam. He knows never to ask; she knows she never will tell.
Until the Wall is unveiled and Evans finds herself back among the living but grieving, those whose pain has long been held silent, where she’s able to find the names of two of the people whose deaths have haunted her, images of them waking her up in the night. She is ready, and it’s Step One. Tho’ the Wall has brought her a sense of Home and Acceptance, it has also whispered: Remember.
Two steps forward, one step back, on a long and painful road.
The image she has motivates her to find a sculptor willing to create it. This, she knows, will be healing for all the women who can see for themselves that they’ve not been forgotten, that their nightmares are real and that all that caused them had meaning. All who see the monument will be able to find bits and pieces that they’ve either hidden away or that were killed off entirely. At first the sculptor Boos her down because Evans is unable to access her feelings to give him an idea of, truly, how it Was. A challenge: Evans must go back and live it again so that he’ll see just what it was like, who the women were, what life was like among the maimed, the dying, the dead.
Gripping listening, absolutely unstoppable. For a woman who spent so much time shut down, as she gets in touch with her experiences, Evans gives the horror show of the day-to-day, of finding veins for IVs for dozens of young men, all in the dark, and of letting go of such terrible events by swiping ingredients from the kitchens and baking cinnamon rolls for her corpsman (Who steadily held the flashlight for hours) and the boys. Cinnamon, its spiciness, the warmth of its fragrance will bring her back to those days.
If war tales are not your cup of tea, avoid this and move on. It’s not all war, however; it’s many a battle as well. She doesn’t know, when all has been said, when all has finally been done, if she would’ve even started the push, would’ve even let herself go a single step beyond initial idea. Because she meets challenges and pushback every step of the way, derision, dismissive attitudes, harsh words. And even getting women onboard is difficult as most have been desperately trying to find lives worth living, ways to NOT think about their service.
Janet Metzger is no slouch when it comes to Vietnam memoirs, and here she shines as well. As Evans begins to thaw at the Wall, meeting people, her brothers-in-arms, those who finally, after so many years of silence, have the chance to say Thank You; we didn’t have anybody Over There. Nurses were There for us. Nurses saved our lives, kept us hanging on. Metzger delivers the sense of overwhelm as Evans looks for particular names, a finger skipping past so very many young men she may’ve worked with, may’ve been unable to save. And when it comes to a sunny day in 1993 when the memorial can finally be dedicated, Metzger sounds out the speech Evans gave, words ringing, pride full-force and joyous. What better narration is there? When you find yourself crying because you can picture, so very clearly, women, men, touching the soldier in the woman’s arms, knowing that they’re remembering maybe one in particular, or maybe all of them? That, my friend, is well-narrated understatement; nothing fraught, but gosh does it hit you hard. Brava!
Now I don’t know how to end this. Bitterness to round it all off and tie everything up, all nice and neat bookends? Or pride in my gender, a heartfelt thanks to women who were there, who did all they could and then some for the young men I think of as My Guys (Thanks televised war when you’re a little kid…)?
Oh damn; it’s creeping into my thoughts, moving my fingers along the keyboard. It’s just not right; our Veterans shouldn’t have to fight every step of the way to be remembered, to have all their work acknowledged in just that slightest of ways.
They should not have to write their own Welcome Home.
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