DIANE CARLSON STORY

Diane Carlson grew up, one of six children, on a dairy farm in Minnesota.
Diane’s mother, a working nurse, was her north star and inspired her to also help others and become a nurse.

At that time, the country was embarking on the Vietnam War and young men all over the nation were being drafted. The horrors of war with the wounded, sick and dying were playing out every evening on the six o’clock news in living rooms across America. Diane heard an Army recruiter say that nurses were needed, and feeling a sense of duty and responsibility to help those in need, she immediately enlisted and volunteered to go to Vietnam. At just 21-years-old, Diane had been a nurse in hospitals and ERs, but nothing could have prepared her for what she was about to encounter in a war zone.

In the summer of 1968, Diane arrived at the 36th Evacuation Hospital in Vung Tau, about seventy-seven miles east of Saigon. The hospital was filled to capacity with soldiers being treated for wounds from bullets, shrapnel, grenades, helicopter crashes, burns, malaria and more. There was no time for adjustment – Diane immediately jumped into action to save as many lives as possible.

Six months into her tour, Diane transferred to the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku where she become head nurse of a surgical unit. Being a more intense combat zone, doctors and nurses operated in helmets and flack-jackets as the sky rained enemy fire. Fighting had escalated and the hospital had a constant stream of mutilated and dying men, screaming patients with arms and legs blown away, and faces scarred beyond recognition. Diane and her fellow nurses worked 6 days a week, 12 or more hours a day, sometimes on duty for 24-36 hour shifts.

As the flow of mass casualties continued, they were forced to make gut-wrenching decisions on who could be saved and who could not. With those decisions came the heavy burden of knowing they were probably going to be the last person a dying soldier may ever see, hear or touch. Diane would tenderly comfort dying servicemen, holding their hands in their last moments, she would become whomever they longed for – their mother, wife, girl back home.

Diane became close with some of the nurses. They bolstered each other, forging deep bonds, but rarely discussing the horrors they were witnessing. In order to survive the chaos around them, they had to shut down, remain cool and detached on the outside, while on the inside they were being torn apart.

As Diane’s tour came to an end, she grew desperate to leave Vietnam, but not the soldiers she knew needed her help and support. Her last patient, whom she’d nursed for weeks and was probably not going to survive his injuries, pleaded with her, “Don’t leave me, please don’t go!”

Physically and emotionally exhausted, Diane finally returned home only to be encountered by the hostility and rage from Americans who opposed the war. She came home looking for some relief and comfort to the horrors she’d seen and the lives she’d saved. Diane was proud of how she served her country and helped her fellow man – Yet now, some were telling her it was shameful. All she could manage was to move on with her life, keep her head down, stay busy, and never, ever, talk about Vietnam.

Diane continued her work as a civilian nurse in military hospitals, but then decided to officially re-enlist. It was at Fort Sam Houston, where she met her husband, Mike, a military surgeon. She soon left the Army to start a family and had four children. Outwardly, Diane seemed fine, but inside she was becoming untethered.

It soon became increasingly difficult to tamper down the vivid imagery she had bore witness to in Vietnam, leading to nightmares and insomnia. Those haunting images soon became triggered in other unexpected ways: the blood in an operating room she’d always been able to handle, the smell of a dirty diaper, the sound of fireworks on the Fourth of July. She found herself getting angry and bitter, and couldn’t explain her emotions. She loved her family so deeply, but secretly she considered ending it all.

Then, in November of 1982, at the dedication of the Vietnam Memorial Wall, Diane found herself surrounded by other Vietnam vets who too carryied the physical and invisible wounds of The War. There amongst the men she may have nursed back to health, and the names of the men whose hands she may have held as they died, Diane finally felt like she belonged.

A veteran next to her asked if she had been a nurse in Vietnam, when she replied “yes,” he said, “I’ve waited fourteen years to say…Thank You. Thank you for being there for us. You’re all we had.” She was overcome with emotion. She had never shed a tear over her time in Vietnam, and for the first time, she cried. In that moment Diane began her path to healing and soon after sought treatment at a Vet Center.

Diane felt that the women who served beside the men in Vietnam should also be represented with memorials standing side-by-side in Washington, D.C. As she said, “Were it not for the nurses caring for the men, The Wall would be much higher and much wider.”

It took almost 10 years to get through obstacles and opposition, but Diane’s driving force brought together her generation of veterans, and in 1993 the Vietnam Women’s Memorial was unveiled.

A poignant and moving statue of two nurses and a wounded soldier now stood in symmetry to the names of all those men who lost their lives.

A burden had finally been lifted. As one veteran shared with Diane, “Thank you. Now, I can come home.” More than 25-years later, the memorial remains as a legacy of healing and hope for all Vietnam Veterans.

Diane has continued to serve her country as an advocate for veterans, especially the women who paved the way for a new generatison serving today.