2014 Notes from Vietnam Women's Memorial
Straight from my notebook, very lightly edited
Saturday, August 2, 2014
I sit now at the Women's memorial and look across to the Wall. There are crowds of people making their way to and fro ... one of the women of the statue is looking perpetually to the sky and in search of the rescue, that rescue helicopter.
Another stares at an unseen body, the unseen soldier's helmet on her knee. A third holding a dying soldier forever in death — in pain them all. The women are helpless witnesses to this all. No, not helpless, help mates but helpless before the tide of war.
At least there is a monument to them, in their boots and fatigues, in their caps and floppy hats.
We are all like them now, bearing witness, helping as the inevitable takes its toll ~ wishing for something different.
A little girl in a purple frock looks at the woman kneeling and she says, “Here is a girl that is very sad.” A few minutes later she draws her two little brothers near, “Do you want to see the dead person?” she says. Her voice is kind and tutorial.
Later she would tell them to stop fooling around, to stop playing Ring Around the Rosie. “Remember what I said?” she said. “People might think that you don't know about the war.”
She was only about seven years old.
One mother had her children stand in front of the statue for a picture. But suddenly—was it because she saw me looking curiously at her—she said, “Oh maybe we shouldn't do this, take a photo in front of dead people.”
(I wasn't offended that she was going to do it but I guess I did feel curious and wondered if I would do such a thing. Would I? It seems so long ago since I had kids, since I had anyone.)
I overheard the park ranger: “In the 16th century Michaelangelo sculpted the Pietà, which was the Virgin Mary holding the crucified Jesus. This nurse holding the wounded U.S. soldier is the exact same configuration. The exact configuration.”
“There are eight yellowwood trees planted in honor of the eight official women who died in the war. “Official,” he added with emphasis.
“The one woman looking to the sky...see her hand? If it were limp that might mean she was fruitlessly searching. But you see how the fingers are raised, as if at attention? She sees something. Her whole body is saying, ‘Hang on! Here comes the helicopter!’
“In these three women, we have represented faith, hope, and charity.
“This is the most spiritual statue in the city.”
A little bit about me:
In addition to curating “Stories of Vietnam” I am the author of For the Love of Vietnam: a war, a family, a CIA official, and the best evacuation story never heard.
how my father ended up in Vietnam running a propaganda radio station beginning in 1972,
our family life blended with historical context from July 1974-April 1975, and
the incredible evacuation of 1000 South Vietnamese that my father orchestrated in late April 1975.
