Diane Carlson Evans went to war, and then she really went to war.
As a 21-year-old, Carlson Evans volunteered and enlisted for a tour of duty as a combat nurse in Vietnam, joining many other women who stepped up to support the men who were drafted into military service for the conflict in Southeast Asia.
Thrown into the firestorm of an unpopular war, she concentrated on nursing the wounded, comforting the dying and simply surviving while working in mobile hospitals near the front.
Carrying a load of memories from what she’d witnessed, she came home a year later to a country that had vocally and sometimes violently protested the war and disrespected the military service of the Vietnam veterans.
Carlson Evans gives an honest account about all of it in “Healing Wounds,” her memoir that was a primary source used by historical fiction author Kristin Hannah in her bestselling novel, “The Women.”
She will talk about her story and how she worked to honor her fellow veterans at an event hosted by Henderson County Public Library on March 11 that’s the final event of the library’s “Resilient Voices” project. At 5 p.m. Carlson Evans will participate via Zoom from her home in Montana.
Through “Resilient Voices,” late last year the library provided 100 free copies of “The Women” for the community to read, share with someone else and discuss at book club-style discussions in January.
Other events, including the presentation with Carlson Evans, have taken place.
In addition to telling her personal story as a combat nurse, Carlson Evans said she will speak for her fellow military nurses, including those from previous eras.
“We stood on their shoulders,” she said in a recent interview for The Hendersonian. “They opened doors for us. (And) we proved ourselves in combat when we were in peril. We did our jobs and we did them well.”
She will also talk about what happened in her second “war” after she returned home and became the leader of the effort to place the Vietnam Women’s Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C., alongside The Wall that lists Vietnam War casualties and an accompanying memorial to soldiers that was added in 1984.
She said that for years after her tour of duty she kept her personal story about Vietnam and her experience coming home to negativity to herself.
But a visit to The Wall in the early 1980s unleashed something.
At that visit, she went to section listing the names of the deceased from her time of service. She had reached up to touch the name of a soldier she remembered when someone lightly tapped her on the shoulder. It was a man in a faded field jacket.
“Ma’am, were you a nurse in Vietnam?” he asked, which she said was a question she’d never heard. With hesitation she nodded.
“I’ve waited 14 years,” he said, “to say this … to a nurse … but I never came across one. Until now.”
Carlson Evans said he took a deep breath and exhaled then said two more words she’d never heard since getting off the plane at Travis Air Force Base on the way home from Vietnam.
“Thank you,” he said. “I can never thank you nurses enough. I love you. Thank you for being there for me. You’re all we had.”
Knowing that her fellow nurses had never felt appreciated for their sacrifice, the next year Carlson Evans started working on the memorial that would give her sister vets—the 11,000 women who served in the combat zone—that recognition.
“My vision was so clear and it’s never changed,” Carlson Evans said. “We needed to honor women equally.”
It came with much political sparring and many discussions about whether women were worthy of having their own recognition.
But despite naysayers and setbacks, Carlson Evans kept pushing forward. The Vietnam Women’s Memorial with three women and a wounded soldier was unveiled in 1993, and earlier this year at the very end of President Joe Biden’s term, she received a Presidential Citizens Medal.
“I could endure rocket attacks, but I couldn’t endure mean-spirited words telling me that my generation and I were not worthy,” Carlson Evans writes in the preface to “Healing Wounds.” “I had been warned not to wear my uniform home. But I did. I was proud of the Army Nurse Corps uniform and of our contribution to the war.
“As in Vietnam, it took time to become brave, to face what was in front of us,” she added. “I found my courage again. Part of that comes from the inspiration of so many extraordinary women veterans who have preceded me. I salute them …”
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On Thursday, Feb. 27, at 6 p.m., the library will also host “Resilient Voices: A Panel Discussion” with Marcia Martin (who worked in Vietnam with the Red Cross), Marjorie Biliker (a combat nurse in Vietnam) and Lt. Col. Heather R. Crooks (a retired Air Force officer and pilot who served in Afghanistan.) They will share their experience, reflections on resilience and perspectives on the portrayal of servicewomen in “The Women.”
