We got off the 11th Street bus in downtown Washington and headed toward the people gathering on the 10th Street overpass. A man in his early 40s fell into step with us. As we approached the crowd, his breath caught. He began to cry. I reached over and held his shoulder, asking if he was all right. "No," he shook.
"There are so many people up there. I’m the only one I know...." He moved off under a tree, weeping.
The day was crisp, clear. November 11th. The crying man is a Vietnam veteran—G.I., officer, medic—a vet. My companion, Lorna, a visiting friend of my sister’s, is also a vet. A retired Army colonel, a nurse, she served in the 2nd Surgical MASH unit near Ahn Khe from 1966 to 1967. A slight woman in her mid 50s, she has silvering hair, a low melodious voice, sensible shoes, and a worn cable-knit sweater. We walked together toward the parade.
This particular Veterans Day brought nearly 50,000 people to Washington, D.C., for the installation of the Women’s Vietnam Memorial, the first memorial in the United States for women serving in war. Approximately 11,500 American military women served in country. Eight were killed on duty.
LORNA DIDN’T WANT to march in the parade. Just observe. Hand-drawn signs called units together: 85th Evac./Phu Bai ’70-’71; 3rd Field Hospital/Saigon ’72. A group of Navajo women vets in traditional dress wore their medals pinned to brightly ribboned blouses. Many women were in uniform, bush jackets with bits and pieces of the camouflage grays and greens. Some had the old phrase "Donut Dolly" taped to the back of their jackets.
Throughout the day a number of women called to Lorna from the crowd. They hugged. Exchanged stories. The women introduced husbands, showed pictures of children.
Along the parade route, men openly cried and saluted as the face of a woman they thought they might know suddenly crystallized with a long forgotten memory.
While the women are quick to say that it was the male soldiers who took the brunt of the war, the men are equally quick to say that for the nurses the war never stopped. The men went on maneuvers and came back to camp (or did not). But for the women who served as nurses, the wounded just came and came, an unending requiem of choppers and triage.
Lorna joined the Navy for two years in the early ’60s, then got out. When the war started she felt like the Navy wasn’t doing enough for the guys on the front lines, so she joined the Army.
"I guess I was always just adventurous," she says. There is much she does not tell, but I see the shadow and the steel of it in her eyes.
I took Lorna back to the airport early Sunday morning. Returning to the city just before dawn, I stopped at the women’s memorial, hoping to be there before the crowds. Mist rose slowly off the field, dawn coming gracefully behind.
The statue is of three women and a wounded soldier. The women are strong, with flat ache and fire in their faces. The soldier’s face is hidden. He could be anyone. The women are without rank or insignia. One looks down into the empty helmet held in her hands. One looks up for the chopper, her hand resting on the shoulder of the nurse holding the G.I. The statue is already covered with poems from mothers to daughters, with photos of young women in front of barracks, with ID bracelets, with flowers.
Three women stood to one side of the statue, speaking in low voices. Their breath wreathed them in the cold air. One by one they carefully placed their medals in the empty helmet. Tears streamed down their faces as they held each other and whispered, "Welcome home."
A man approached. He looked like an English professor—longish graying hair, a pipe; he was wearing a bush jacket and only had one leg. As the women finished, he hugged each one, murmuring "Thanks" in a gruff voice.
AS A PEACE ACTIVIST from a family of peace activists, I felt uncomfortable in the military atmosphere of the Veterans Day celebration, aware of the legacy I brought. Lorna remembered anti-war demonstrators spitting at her in her uniform. At times I have distinguished very poorly between war and the people who go.
When the Roman commander in Matthew’s gospel asked for healing for one of his G.I.s, Jesus did not rebuke him for being a soldier, did not rebuke him for being part of the oppressor class. Instead, Jesus was astonished at the man’s faith and healed the soldier with a word.
Through all of this I am led back to my belief that, for Christians, there are things worth dying for, but not worth killing for. There were 30,000 civilian women in Vietnam. Many were journalists, Red Cross volunteers, and workers for Catholic relief agencies and the American Friends Service Committee. Fifty-five of them died in the war.
Yet, there was healing in this Veterans Day, a healing that carried for me both the purifying edge of Jimi Hendrix’s rendition of the national anthem and the daily, bittersweet beauty of a daisy stuck in the laces of a worn, muddy Army boot. The Christian call to love is ever more mysterious and complexly woven.
Rose Marie Berger, a Sojourners senior associate editor, is a Catholic peace activist and poet.
Got something to say about what you're reading? We value your feedback!