Give the Women Vets Their Due

As a Vietnam War historian, I was amazed by Christopher Knight’s lack of sensitivity for American servicewomen killed in action during the Vietnam War and lack of support for the Women’s Vietnam War Memorial (“More Is Not Better,” Calendar, Oct. 17).

As a non-veteran who supports Vietnam War veterans, I took part in the nationwide Vietnam Veterans Memorial design competition in 1981 and I traveled from South Pasadena to Washington to be present when the memorial was dedicated on Nov. 13, 1982. Returning time and again, I’ve visited the memorial at high noon and at midnight, seen the statue of the three warriors next to the flagpole, and shed tears for the American warriors who, as Vietnam War KIAs and MIAs, have their names etched on the Wall.

Therefore, I can say with some degree of firsthand experience that the addition of the statue honoring all women Vietnam War veterans located across from the Wall will neither alter nor erode the beautiful design created by then 21-year-old Yale University architectural student Maya Ying Lin.

The message of the Women’s Vietnam Memorial will not be, as Knight contends, to change the nonpolitical message of the Vietnam War Memorial and instead to say it was a “good and noble cause.” Rather, it simply sets out to say that despite the hundreds of military memorials that grace America’s landscape, the suffering and death endured by American women in uniform have been historically overlooked and it’s time to change America’s way.

The Women’s Vietnam Memorial, which will be dedicated Thursday on Veterans Day, will commemorate the sacrifice of the eight American servicewomen killed in action or who died of illness during the Vietnam War: Capt. Eleanor Grace Alexander, 2nd Lt. Pamela Dorothy Donovan, 2nd Lt. Carol Ann Drazba, Lt. Col. Annie Ruth Graham, 2nd Lt. Elizabeth Ann Jones, Capt. Mary Therese Klinker, 1st Lt. Sharon Ann Lane and 1st Lt. Hedwig Diane Orlowski.

There is no doubt that the design, construction, funding and operation of the Wall was and, to some degree remains, full of controversy and pain--much like the war itself. One simply can read “To Heal a Nation” by Jan Scruggs, the Vietnam Veteran who conceived the idea for the Wall, and “The Long Grey Line” by Rick Atkinson to fully understand the details of such controversy.

Between 1959 and 1975, more than 265,000 women served in the armed forces of the United States with 90% serving in the health-care services performing one of war’s most difficult duties--nursing the sick, wounded and dying. More than 10,000 servicewomen and an equal number of women civilian employees, correspondents and volunteers served in Southeast Asia during the Vietnam War, enduring trauma and danger alongside American servicemen.

Additionally, 58,132 American military personnel, including the eight women, were killed in action or remain missing in action during the Vietnam War (not the 57,692 listed). It should also be noted that this official figure does not include American military personnel killed in action while fighting Viet Minh forces as early as 1944 nor the many American civilians who were also killed, including more than 50 women civilians.

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Knight compares the women’s memorial to a “Vietnam Pieta.” No part of the Vietnam Memorial, the three-warrior statue or the proposed women’s statue is intended as religious. The only religious connection, if any, is the hope that those who were killed in action are now “resting in peace” and that those who remain missing in action may someday, “by the grace of God,” be returned to their families.

I can only hope that someday, perhaps on this Veterans Day, critics of the proposed memorial will spend some time learning the story of the women who were killed in action or died of illness during the Vietnam War. They placed their lives in harm’s way and died in that “dirty little war” called Vietnam.