Evans Carlson Quotes

Only, I felt, by some such attempt to write history in terms of personal life could I rescue something that might be of value, some element of truth and hope and usefulness, from the smashing up of my own youth by the War. It is true that to do it meant looking back into a past of which many of us, preferring to contemplate tomorrow rather than yesterday, believe ourselves to be tired. But it is only in the light of the past that we, the depleted generation now coming into the control of public affairs, the generation which has to make the present and endeavor to mould the future, can understand ourselves or hope to be understood by our successors. —Vera Brittain, Testament of Youth

I didn’t lose the war, nor did the men who fought it. The high command lost the war. And after the war was over, they didn’t stand up for us. Veterans had to build their own memorial—with their own initiative, time, and money. Congress had to pass a bill so we could have this memorial; all they had to do was lift a pen to their fingers. But almost three million men and women who served in Vietnam lifted things far heavier—and carried those things every day, long after the war was over.

Keep your eyes open to see the beauty all around you,” he once closed a letter to me. “Take time to count your blessings. The light can soften some of the shadows of the past.

Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Collin Powell, a Vietnam Vet, then offered one of the most beautiful tributes I've ever heard. "You went, you served, you suffered. The names of eight of your sisters are etched on the wall for having made the supreme sacrifice and yet your service and your sacrifice have been mostly invisible for all these intervening years. When you finished what you had to do, you came quietly home, you stepped back into the background from which you had modestly come. You melted back into a society which for too long now had ignored the vital and endless work that falls to women and is not appreciated as it should be....

He knew we were wounded. Wounded by war, wounded by the betrayal of our nation. Wounded twice, once in Vietnam, and again at home.

As my time in Vietnam continued, I saw the best of America in our hospital beds while working side by side with hundreds of our brave men and women. Fate chose this battleground for my generation. It did not distinguish between combatants and noncombatants or innocent children who were machine-gunned, bombed, or tortured. Our fate, I was starting to realize, was being determined by the stroke of a pen by senators and congressmen in Washington, D.C., most of them who knew nothing of war.

While we don’t know the exact numbers, we know that many American women serving in Vietnam were sexually harassed, and some raped, but afraid to report it to higher military authorities for fear of retribution. We were vulnerable and knew the Army Nurse Corps could not, or in some cases would not, protect us. Women who did report were often transferred, lost promotions, or were marked as troublemakers. Our surviving Vietnam meant keeping secrets and watching our backs.

It was now September 1983. The ten months between when I stood at the Wall on November 13, 1982, and when Rodger Brodin handed me the ball of clay and told me to “tell your story” became a catalyst that totally changed my life. What transpired in that year would send me on a trajectory I never could have imagined. And it all seemed to have happened so fast:

When he handed me the ball of clay and asked me to take it home and mold it into something signifying my experience in Vietnam, he was speaking as much figuratively as literally. He wanted me to come back and tell him of my experiences and the stories of other women who had served in Vietnam; he wanted me to tell him what was in the Pleiku clay. I later learned he thought I’d be so overwhelmed with the challenge that he’d never see me or that ball of clay again. But I came back, carrying that clay, and if I didn’t tell him my story with art, I told him with words. He, meanwhile, started imagining what the nurse he was to sculpt might look like. We had a handshake agreement to forge ahead with the project.

On August 12, 1984, we held a special event in St. Paul, Minnesota, to unveil Rodger Brodin’s statue, which

By February 1984, Rodger Brodin had finished a thirty-six-inch bronze statue replica. As a Marine, he was passionate about this. He was one of those rare individuals with genuine empathy for others. “Keep your eyes open to see the beauty all around you,” he once closed a letter to me. “Take time to count your blessings. The light can soften some of the shadows of the past.

Healing Wounds, Diane Carlson Evans, with Bob Welch, Permuted Press, 2020; American Daughter Gone to War, Winnie Smith, William Morrow, 1992; Home Before Morning, Lynda Van Devanter, University of Massachusetts Press, 2001 (originally published 1983); Women in Vietnam: The Oral History, Ron Steinman, TV Books, 2000; A Piece of My Heart, Keith Walker, Presidio Press, 1986. See also: After the Hero’s Welcome, Dorothy H. McDaniel, WND Books, 2014; The League of Wives, Heath Hardage Lee, St. Martin’s Press, 2019; In Love and War, Jim and Sybil Stockdale, Naval Institute Press, 1990; and The Turning: A History of Vietnam Veterans Against the War, Andrew E. Hunt, New York University Press, 1999.

It is all well and good us condemning the journalism of Ward Price or Tucker Carlson or praising the determination of journalists like John Segrue or Norman Ebbutt. But ultimately, it is those of us who consume journalism and social media who have unwittingly created a media environment where proximity to power is valued more highly than the holding of it to account. It is us, as a society, who again and again have responded to the exposure of populists’ lies and contradictions with little more than a collective shrug. The truth is that there will always be George Ward Prices – journalists who have extreme political beliefs, who are prepared to put their careers over the public interest, or both. Until we learn the lesson of the dark path down which Ward Price’s brand of journalism can lead, we will continue to see journalism that divides us by appealing to our worst instincts have precedence over journalism that does the difficult and complex work of shining a light that helps us better understand our world.