What is the price of honor? It took ten years for Vietnam War nurse
Diane Carlson Evans to answer that question--and the answer was a heavy
one.
In 1983, when Evans came up with the vision for the first-ever memorial
on the National Mall to honor women who'd worn a military uniform, she
wouldn't be deterred. She remembered not only her sister veterans, but
also the hundreds of young wounded men she had cared for, as she
expressed during a Congressional hearing in Washington, D.C.: "Women
didn't have to enter military service, but we stepped up to serve
believing we belonged with our brothers-in-arms and now we belong with
them at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. If they belong there, we belong
there. We were there for them then. We mattered."
In the end, those wounded soldiers who had survived proved to be there
for their sisters-in-arms, joining their fight for honor in Evans'
journey of combating unforeseen bureaucratic obstacles and facing
mean-spirited opposition. Her impassioned story of serving in Vietnam is
a crucial backstory to her fight to honor the women she served beside.
She details the gritty and high-intensity experience of being a nurse in
the midst of combat and becomes an unlikely hero who ultimately serves
her country again as a formidable force in her daunting quest for honor
and justice.