All across America and around the world, this is Veterans Radio.
And now, your host for today's program, Dale Throneberry.
And welcome to Veterans Radio.
Today's program is about two Army nurses, one fictional and one real.
Our good friend, Mark Leapson from the Vietnam Veterans of America's magazine, The Veteran,
interviewed author, Kristen Hannah, author of the number one bestseller, The Women, and
Diane Carlson Evans, an Army nurse in Vietnam, 1968 to 69.
Today we are only using part of Diane's interview about her time in Vietnam.
For her complete interview, go to vvavetrin.org slash videos.
Mark is a Vietnam veteran.
He is also the veterans art editor for the veteran magazine and the book reviewer does
an excellent job with all of his interviews and we're hoping that we can use more of them
in the future.
We've also got our monthly National Veterans Business Development Council highlight.
This month it is Jim Calper, who is on the advisory board of NBVDC.
Okay, before we get into Mark's interview with Kristen Hannah, we need to thank our
sponsors beginning with legal help for veterans specializing in veterans disability claims
call legal help for veterans at 800-69-348-00 or go to their website at legalhelpforveterans.com.
The National Veterans Business Development Council, better known as NBVDC, is the nation's
leading third party authority for certification of a veteran-owned business.
For more information, go to their website, nvvdc.org, or give them a call at 888-237-8433.
The Charles S. Kettles VA Medical Center in Ann Arbor, Michigan, for more information
about them, go to va.gov.
The Vietnam Veterans of America never again will one generation of veterans abandon another.
For more information, go to their website, vva.org.
Their Erwin Presscorn, American Legion Post-46 and the Charles S. Kettles Vietnam Veterans
of America Chapter 310, both of Ann Arbor, Michigan.
All right, let's get right into our program today with women nurses in Vietnam.
So here's Mark Leapson with Kristen Hannah.
Welcome to Dispatches, a production of the VVA Veteran Magazine and Vietnam Veterans
of America, hosted by arts editor Mark Leapson.
Each episode is a one-on-one interview with a writer, novelist, actor, director, or other
artist whose work is influenced by the Vietnam War.
In addition to appearing on the VVA Veterans Facebook page, archived episodes can be found
on the magazine's webpage and on VVA's website.
And now let's begin.
Welcome everyone to Episode 23 of Dispatches, a production of the VVA Veteran Magazine,
coming to you live and on tape, as always, from Vietnam Veterans of America's National
Headquarters right here in downtown Silver Spring, Maryland.
Our special guest today is Kristen Hannah, the prolific bestselling, as in number one
bestselling author of, and I think I counted right, 19 novels, including The Nightingale
and The Four Winds.
And her books have been translated into 43 languages and counting.
Her new novel, The Women, which shot to the top of all the bestseller lists the minute
it came out on February 6, is the story of Frankie McGrath, who joins the Army Nurse Corps
at 20 years old and within months finds herself in South Vietnam working in an evac hospital
hip deep and just about the worst that war can offer.
The Women is a great, fast-moving, plot-twisting, compelling novel that tells Frankie's story
during and after her service in Vietnam, and it's what we'll be focusing on here today
on Dispatches.
Very quickly, Kristen was in elementary and junior high school during the Vietnam War.
She grew up in California in the Pacific Northwest.
She went to law school and was a practicing attorney before turning to writing full-time.
She comes to us today from her book tour on the road somewhere in the western part of
the United States.
Kristen, it's great to see you.
Congratulations on your amazing book and welcome to Dispatches.
Thank you so much.
It's really an honor to be here.
Well, it's our pleasure and let's just dive in here.
It struck me that you were an attorney, which we're not going to hold anything against you
for being an attorney.
I know there are attorneys who've turned to writing, but can you just tell us a little
bit about that?
Why did you give up the law, turn to writing briefly?
Sure.
Well, as you point out, I was a lawyer and this path for me really started when I was
in law school.
I was young and my mother was dying of breast cancer.
I was visiting her in the hospital and there was some point where I was complaining about
something in my life and she said, don't worry.
You're going to be a writer anyway.
That somehow led us to have a conversation where she said, you know what, we should write
a book together.
That was sort of the very beginning.
We started planning this historical romance novel, which is what she read back in those
days.
I would go to the library and get all of these documents and Xerox everything and bring it
to her.
For the last couple of months of her life, we just sort of imagined this novel together.
I wrote actually the first page the day she died.
She didn't get to ever read me, but I did get to tell her that I had started on this
road.
That was really the beginning.
Then ultimately, when I had my son, I really just wanted to be an at-home mom.
That was really important to me.
Probably because I had lost my own mom not that much before.
When I was pregnant, that's when I thought, well, maybe I'll try this writing thing and
see if I can make that work.
You mentioned historical fiction.
Was that the only reason?
Had you always been interested in history?
Would you characterize your book as historical fiction?
I pushed back a little on the Vietnam War being called historical fiction.
I wrote a book set in 1970s Alaska, which they also call historical fiction.
I pushed back a little bit on the idea that my own life is actually historical fiction
at this point.
I do think that in the last probably 15 years, I have really been focused on sort of shining
a light on women's lost historical stories.
Stories where women were doing something that I think is amazing that was not taught in
school, that was not passed along to people.
I'm trying to sort of recapture some of our own history.
Yeah.
Well, which you do extremely well, by the way, in the women.
I wanted to say that it is a little bit weird as someone who's a Vietnam War veteran to
think that we're now history.
I know.
It was 55 years ago, but nevertheless, but we move on.
I know that you were thinking about this subject for a long time.
I read it, I think, on your website.
Tell me, tell us about that.
What brought you, in other words, the typical question, what brought you to writing about
this?
How come it took so long to gestate and fill us in on that part, please?
Well, as you point out, I was a child during the Vietnam War, and it obviously cast a huge
shadow across my life.
My best girlfriend in third grade, her father was an Air Force pilot, and he was shot down.
In those days, we wore the prisoner of war bracelet.
I put that on in remembrance, and the idea, of course, was to take it off when he came
home.
The fact was that I wore it for decades.
It was his name and his loss, even when I moved away and went on to college and went
on with my life, his name and that memory was with me all the time.
Of course, even as a child, by the time I was in junior high, I saw how the vets were
treated when they came home, because a lot of them were my friends' dads.
We lived in a community that had a lot of military service.
It just really stuck with me.
I've written about it several times, veterans and PTSD.
I think I've just been fascinated for a long time.
In fact, I first pitched this A novel about the Vietnam era to my editor in 1997.
She said, honey, you aren't old enough and you aren't good enough.
Come back to me when you are.
I really took that to heart and actually it's one of the best pieces of advice I ever got
because I wasn't a good enough writer.
I wasn't old enough and I didn't have enough, I guess, life experience to dial into this.
Of course, as you well know, there was a long period where nobody wanted to talk about Vietnam.
Nobody wanted to hear about it.
There certainly weren't writing books about it.
I just put it aside and thought, okay, this is something I want to do.
Every couple of years, I would check in and think, am I ready?
Is the world ready?
I kept saying no.
I knew this was going to be an important book and it would take everything I had and I wanted
to be ready.
It wasn't until March of 2020.
I live in Seattle and we were on full lockdown and actually I live on an island so we were
really locked down.
I was watching the news again, of course, and the anger, the political division, the chaos
that was going on, I think it all made me think of that era, the late 60s again.
Then I was watching the nurses who were on the front line of the pandemic, the nurses
and doctors who were sacrificing so much for us and not in a lot of instances getting the
support and the respect that I felt that they deserved.
This all came together and made me think about the Vietnam era and the nurses.
I started doing some research and once I uncovered their stories, there was no question.
I thought this story needs to be told.
Let's talk a little bit.
That was going to be my next question.
Let's talk a little bit about your research.
I know you also...
Well, you explained it in the acknowledges section of the book, but I think it's worth
going over because one of the things that Vietnam War veterans, when we read books about
our experience, we're looking for authenticity.
We're looking for verisimilitude in a novel.
I'm guessing that you had that near the top of your mind.
Could you just go over that?
Of course, we'll talk about Diane Carlson.
Right.
Yeah.
Well, yes.
I mean, it was a daunting task.
A daunting task for a woman who isn't a vet, isn't a nurse, wasn't in Vietnam, wasn't even
grown up during this period to take on something that I felt so strongly about and that I felt
so needed to be told.
One of the ways that I cut down on the amount of research I had to do because I realized
very quickly, I can't do it all.
I can only do a piece of this story and leave the rest of other pieces to other people.
Fortunately, there are several, well, many amazing memoirs written about Vietnam and
several of them are from nurses.
That was really the pay dirt.
Once I found Diane Carlson Evans' Healing Wounds and Linda Van DeVanters' Home Before
Morning and Winnie Smith wrote, I mean, there's just these amazing, amazing memoirs.
I used those as research and I actually wrote the entire first draft of the book.
Of course, this was COVID, so I couldn't go to Vietnam either.
It all had to be done remotely.
Once I finished the first draft and I knew what the book was theoretically going to be
about, what my story was and where I was going, that's when I realized, okay, now I need
some help from somebody, not so much to create the book, but to look for authenticity for
the kind of verisimilitude that you're talking about because one of the things that was really
important to me, I had written a book called Home Front about a female Black Hawk pilot
who deployed a few years ago.
I remember in writing that, having the conversation with her that she was not technically in combat.
She was not in combat.
She was flying Blackhawks to pick up soldiers who were being fired on, but somehow she wasn't.
It was really important to me that I show that in my opinion, being a nurse in one of
these hospitals in New York, in Vietnam, was combat.
It had to be really visceral.
Diane was a huge help and a mentor.
As you know, she does not hold her opinions lightly or quietly.
She was getting in there and telling me.
Then she put me in touch with Doug Moore, who was a helicopter Medevac pilot, and Beth
Parks, who was a surgical nurse.
She just kept giving me to other people to check other parts of the book.
Their help was just invaluable.
By the way, Diane read her memoir and reviewed it in The Veteran.
We're going to review your book, too, in the next issue.
It's going to be in the May-June issue.
March-April is going to press tomorrow.
Also, Diane, she was on dispatch.
Her memoir was great.
I totally understand why you went to her and why she was so valuable to you.
Linda VanDeVanter, through her novel, I just parenthetically, just in case you don't know,
Vietnam Veterans of America, we're a little bit different than the old line veteran service
organizations in many ways.
We started in 1978.
From the beginning, we have had active women members.
In fact, Linda VanDeVanter, Bobby Muller, who started VVA, he was a Marine Vietnam and
became a veteran's advocate big time.
Anyway, Bobby tells a story that back in 1978, he was in his office and we started at very
humble beginnings in Washington, D.C. Linda walked in and said, oh, Bobby, my name is Linda
VanDeVanter.
There were women who served in Vietnam.
This goes right to your book, of course.
I'll never forget Bobby.
When he recounted that story, he said, oh, my God, we forgot the women.
I thought of that when I was reading your book.
Linda became active in leadership in VVA.
We had the first national women veterans committee.
We still do.
Diane, of course, has been a member since the early 80s and accredited to Vietnam Veterans
of America for helping her with her post-traumatic stress.
Of course, the memorial.
I wanted to ask you, through your research with the memoirs and talking to Diane and
others, was there anything that stood out to you that you didn't know or surprised you
of what they told you about their experiences in Vietnam and after?
Of course, it surprised me even though it shouldn't have, but really understanding how
young they were.
Reading at this from my age and thinking about doing this at 20 or 21, that was the first
thing that hit me really hard.
I think the most interesting thing is I kept reading in the memoirs that early on, just
post, right when they got home, they would go to help or to go to a group or seek something
as veterans and they kept being told there were no women in Vietnam.
In reading that, I kept thinking to myself, that simply cannot be true.
It just cannot be.
We've seen MASH.
We know there have been women in every war since forever.
I was really shocked at the level at which the women had been marginalized and forgotten.
I kept thinking it can't be true.
Last Veterans Day, Diane invited me to join her in DC for the 30th anniversary of the
memorial, the women's memorial.
That was one of my questions to all of the women.
Like really, did you experience this?
They did.
I think that's the thing that stays with me the most is the extent to which their service
was forgotten.
I'm reading the book.
I saw that you got that in there.
Fair man.
I did.
I totally agree with you.
By the way, I was at that Veterans Day 30th anniversary.
It was really moving.
A few commemorations there.
It was one of the better ones.
Here's another thing.
I have a friend who is a novelist, a screenwriter.
One day we were discussing something about plot or whatever.
I'll never forget what he told me, which came to me as I was reading the book.
He said, we're talking about characters.
He said, never make it easy for them.
I wanted to ask you about that because you did not make it easy for poor Frankie and the
others.
Can you explain that a little bit?
What your process was on that?
It's interesting.
I actually wrote the first draft of this novel, which was substantial.
It was exactly the same up through her coming home from her tours of duty.
It was much easier for her.
In that version, she was married.
There was all kinds of different things.
She had a lot of support system.
The bottom line was, when I finished that, I felt that it was doing a disservice to all
the Vietnam vets and that it wasn't being fair in not addressing PTSD, in not addressing
their invisibility, in not addressing the lack of help that they received when they
came home.
That's when I leaned into what so many of the memoirs had talked about from male and female
vets about the difficulties coming home.
When I started really looking at what it was like for so many of them, it really was one
bad thing after another trying to become healthy and whole again.
Absolutely.
It happened to men too.
Not to belittle what happened to women because it happened to all of us, but women had it
worse because, just like you point out and you said, people didn't compute for some reason.
Also, can you just continue that a little bit with her tour of duty?
Well, you spilled the beans.
There's a second tour.
I did.
I gave it away.
Slight spoiler alert.
Especially when she got there.
Man, you put her through hell.
Tell me about that.
Was that again, don't make it easy for her or just?
Yeah.
Again, I think, yes, it was the whole fish out of water and the horror of coming into
a place where you're entirely unprepared.
But I think more, it was simply a reflection of what a vast number of the women and the
men probably felt when they landed in country.
One of the things I discovered you were asking me about research that surprised me was in
one of my research books or whatever, they were talking about how one of the differences
in Vietnam were men were essentially sent over individually as opposed to in platoons.
The women experienced that same, okay, I'm dropped in alone.
You don't have any support system when you get there and you don't have enough training
to be there.
There isn't necessarily time to get you up to speed.
It was just really important for me to show that arc, that human arc of Frankie going
from a nurse who has no business being here to a nurse that is so good that she can't
imagine leaving.
You hit something really big there and that was the rotation system.
It wasn't platoon.
The first few units that came over when the buildup started in 1965, they came over on
ships like the World War II guys did.
But then for most of the war, there were 2.8 million who served.
So I'd say probably two and a half million of us.
Just like Frank, just like the nurses, we came over individually and there were so many
things wrong with that.
One was what they call unit cohesion.
Here, you're plopped into a unit where some guys have been there for 11 months, 10 months,
6 months, 5 months, and there you are, then you go and it keeps on continuing.
I think you showed that very, very well with Frankie.
This is the first day when she got to the unit.
Good grief.
Yeah.
So let me have just a couple more questions.
Tell me about the editorial experience with you.
Finished product.
How did that work?
I'm a very collaborative writer.
I listen to people very well and I pivot and change a lot.
And so like I said, this first draft that I gave to Diane and that I gave to my editor
was a very different second half of the novel.
And it was my editor who upon reading it said, this Vietnam, this section of her at war is
so powerful and so visceral.
And you have to have a second half that feels as important, as dangerous, as difficult,
or the book like peaks at the halfway mark.
And so, and that's when I really kind of, my knee jerk reaction initially was that I
didn't want to do PTSD again to this extent.
I didn't want to do self-medicating.
I didn't want to do any of the kinds of issues.
I felt at first that it would be disrespectful.
And ultimately, I realized that it was not only not disrespectful, it was important to
be honest about how deep this trouble was and how deeply we as a nation and as a government
did not help the warriors that we had sent off.
Well said, and that's exactly what happened.
And let me ask you the usual final question, or maybe a little bit of a twist.
So I'm not going to give away the ending, but could we see more of Frankie in the future?
You know, I have to say, Mark, I hear that question with every book.
I don't know.
I don't at this moment, see more story for her, but we'll have to wait and see.
As you and I were talking sort of in the green room before this, I've been so surprised
at the level of response and support that this book has gotten.
And I would say an awful lot from the children of Vietnam vets.
I'm really hearing from them.
And what they're saying is, you know, my dad never talked about this.
You know, a few say my mom, but mostly it's my dad.
And I had no idea what this was like.
And you know, thank you for forgiving me a way to talk to my dad.
And that's just been, it's just been a remarkable thing.
Well, I'll just tell you one thing.
Last time I'd look about the Vietnam War was the number one bestseller.
You know what's going to happen two years from now?
It's going to be everywhere.
You think?
Oh, yeah.
Well, I think so, because you know, what's what's so interesting is like, especially
these millennials, they're they're like, I didn't know any of this happened.
Yeah.
Because this is yet another thing.
And it's not just a female thing.
This is a Vietnam War thing.
It just has been taboo to talk about, you know, for so long.
Well, you've written a remarkable book.
We thank you very much for being on dispatches today.
Thanks for the book and thanks for really illuminating the women who served, especially
as nurses in the Vietnam War.
Well, thank you, Mark.
Thank you.
Your service, of course.
And thanks for having me on.
You bet.
See you.
Bye-bye.
And with our theme of our nurses today, here's Mark talking with Diane Carlson Evans.
Our special guest today is Diane Carlson Evans, who is best known for conceiving of the idea
of a national memorial near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington to honor American women
who served in the Vietnam War and for leading that effort to fruition after a long, hard
fought battle to do so.
Diane is a member of one of Vietnam Veterans of America's oldest chapters, Chapter 5 in
Eau Claire, Wisconsin, which she joined in 1983.
Since then, she has been an active, forceful, and extremely successful advocate for her
fellow Vietnam War veterans.
When she was still in nursing school, Diane signed up for a two-year hitch in the Army
Nurse Corps.
After getting her degree, she went on active duty, arriving in Vietnam on July 31, 1968,
on the four nurses on a flight with 250 men.
She then underwent a life-changing year as a nurse in the operating and recovery rooms
of the Army's 36th evacuation hospital in Vung Tau and the 71st evac in Playa Coup.
That experience, along with a difficult readjustment after coming home, led to the idea of a memorial
at the Wall in Washington to honor the American women who served in the Vietnam War.
That effort came to fruition in 1993 with the dedication of the great Vietnam Women's
Memorial.
We'll be talking about that amazing accomplishment, as well as Diane's tour of duty in Vietnam
and what she faced coming home, as well as her brilliant 2020 memoir, Healing Wounds,
a Vietnam War combat nurse's 10-year fight to win women a place of honor.
And I wanted to say one more thing, and I'm very happy to tell you that Diane received
the Vietnam Veterans of America Lifetime Achievement Award last year at our National
Leadership Conference in Greenville, South Carolina.
She comes to us today from her home in the Midwest, so Diane, welcome to dispatches.
Well, thank you, Mark.
First, I want to thank VVA.
I want to thank you and VVA for having me on this interview.
I'm always thrilled to be with my VVA brother and sisters, who from 1983 really did help
to change my life and put it on a very positive track with the kind of support that I received
as a woman from day one in VVA.
And that always true in the other veterans organizations.
But I'm proud of VVA for the fact that women were very much a part of the founding and our
first woman president, Mary Stout.
So with that, I'm thanking you and happy to be here.
Great, yeah.
And Mary was the first woman president of any national Veterans Service Organization,
for those of you who don't know.
Also VVA was the first VSO to have a national women veterans committee, which I'd like people
to know, we're proud of that fact.
So well, Diane, let's go back to those ancient years.
And if you wouldn't mind telling us a little bit about growing up on a dairy farm in Minnesota,
and then your decision to go to nursing school and join the Army.
Thank you, Mark.
Good beginning.
But first, I have a correction.
People would consider Montana the Midwest.
Oh, okay.
I live in Montana, and it's definitely West, but I grew up in the Midwest, so Minnesota.
My dad was a dairy farmer.
My mom was a registered nurse.
I had four brothers.
I had a sister.
My two older brothers, one got drafted, one joined the Army.
All my 4-H buddies and country school buddies that I'd had, and then high school buddies
around my hometown of Buffalo, Minnesota, small community, were getting drafted.
Why?
Because they were farm boys.
They weren't going to college.
They did not have deferments.
My 4-H buddy, Danny Boudine, was killed.
And it was just very much a part of the farm community worrying about their sons going
off to war.
Now, they didn't have to worry about their daughters, and they were grateful, except
for my dad, when I came home to tell my dad and mom that I had gone downtown Minneapolis.
I was going to school in Minneapolis, nursing school, that I wanted to go to Vietnam as
a nurse.
My brothers and 4-H buddies and all the men around me had to go, why shouldn't I as a
nurse?
They must need nurses.
And she basically said, sign on the dotted line.
Well, my dad did not take it well, and he had come up from the milking.
It was late in the evening when mom wasn't at work at the hospital, and I broke the
news to them.
And my dad pounded his fist on the kitchen table and walked out of the house and probably
went down to the barn to be with his cows.
He was not happy.
He couldn't even speak.
He was a stoic man and not real affectionate, but we all knew how much he loved us.
But mom, being a nurse, she understood.
And on the day I left after nine months at Fort Lee, Virginia, before I went to Vietnam
after basic training, got in the car, passed the barn, dad came out and his overalls.
It was a muggy, hot Minnesota day where the corn grows fast and needs lots of rain.
It was about to rain, and dad said, I've got to get the hay in.
Well, a farm girl understands that.
So he didn't go to the airport with mom and me and my sister.
And he gave me a hug like he's never given me before.
And he said, I have four sons, and I send my daughter off to war.
Wow.
I never forgot those words, Mark, because I was young and naive, and I never thought
about how this would affect my parents and a daughter going off to war and a father who
had lived through the World War II era.
And he was deeply worried.
He was deeply concerned, as fathers and mothers would be, but I never forgot those words.
So now I'm off to Vietnam.
When you got in country and you saw what your job was, what situation was there, how different
was it from what you thought it was going to be?
Could you elaborate on that a little bit?
Yeah, I'd love to.
And I think that's a really good question, Mark.
And that is, of course, none of us knew what we were getting into.
What was Vietnam?
We knew it was across the Pacific Ocean.
That was about it.
And I don't even remember going to the library to read about Vietnam.
All I saw was six o'clock news, so I knew what it looked like.
So we didn't know what to expect.
And I had been warned by my roommate at Fort Lee, Virginia, who had just come back from
Vietnam as an operating room nurse at Coochee.
She was there for Tet.
And she warned me.
And she asked me how I liked working at Fort Lee.
And I said, it's great.
I'm learning what it's like to take care of Vietnam vets.
And it's preparing me for Vietnam.
And I never forget, she said, Diane, nothing prepares you for Vietnam.
And then she said her final words, don't get close to anybody over there.
They just die.
I found out later when she told me her fiancee at the 25th Intangible Division where she
was serving at Coochee.
He was killed and brought into her hospital and to her ER.
She was working in the OR.
She came out, she saw him.
And that was her fiancee.
She escorted his body home.
So I was warned.
Now, remember, you don't know this, but in Minnesota, I had excellent training.
The hospital where I trained.
I went to the emergency room at Hennepin County General, which had all the stabbings and gunshot
wounds, and you name it, I saw it.
I saw trauma.
I saw trauma in the Buffalo Memorial Hospital with my mother.
I was working with her.
And she spared me nothing.
She took me to the emergency room.
She had me helping her deliver babies.
I saw drownings.
I saw tractor accidents.
I saw death, car accidents, train accidents.
There was a train track right across from the hospital.
But so I was honest, and a farm girl, I have gutted chickens.
I had watched calves be born.
I watched dead cows that were killed with lightning strikes.
I watched my dad take out his pocket knife and shove it in one of the four bellies of
the dairy cows.
So it would get up and breathe and it was bloating.
Anyway, long story short, I was not afraid to see death or traumatized bodies.
But what I was not prepared for was traumatized bodies of 18, 19, 20, 21-year-old, all-ages,
young boys and men from warfare, and so many of them.
So that sense of horror, what these young men were enduring.
And I didn't see how they were wounded.
We nurses saw the results of the wounds.
We saw them all day long.
Our shifts were 12 or more hours.
And another little correction, I was not an operating room nurse.
I was a surgical nurse.
And so that meant I was on a surgical unit, which was pre-op and post-op.
Six months at Vongtao and part of that on the Burr unit, I saw napalm and white phosphorus
injuries.
Nothing prepares you for that.
Nothing prepares you for the amount of pain you're witnessing and the inability to, um,
you know, help with the pain so that there was no such thing as pain-free.
The morphine waxed and waned.
There was the highs and the lows.
You know, in an hour, you felt great.
In two hours, you were begging for more.
So it was learn as you go, starting lots of IVs, which I'd already learned to do, thankfully.
But also I'm caring for snake bites.
All different kinds of snakes in Vietnam for your listeners.
They will relate to that in Vongtao.
It was sea snakes and they were deadly and they were poisonous.
And water buffalo attacks and gorges attacking a soldier and ripping apart his body.
I saw that.
I saw leeches, patients, men coming in with practically the lower half of their body,
miserably covered with leeches and the men took care of pulling those out.
But we nurses saw things.
We never saw at home.
So that to answer your question is the difference.
And then I went to Placo, 71st Evac after six months in country and I saw war on another
level.
Just a few kilometers from the Cambodian border, 4th Infantry Division was being hit
hard in the spring of 69.
We had mass casualties.
We called it a push.
They were coming in.
It was like a conveyor belt and they came.
Those dust off choppers now are getting rocketed and mortar to top it off.
Because they were trying to hit the radar which was placed right next to the hospital
and the air base which was on the other side of the hospital.
So they were trying to wipe out, we thought, the radar and the air base.
But the Geneva Convention goes out the window.
Those red crosses didn't mean anything to the enemy.
They were probably targeting us to the morale of the war, they're hitting hospitals.
So that was the difference.
And then the next difference was the feeling now on my second year here in Placo was knowing
what's happening back home and the non-support of the war.
And then really figuring out, it didn't take me long to figure out we were being lied to.
The lies from Washington were coming fast and furious.
And those of us in Vietnam, we knew what the truth of the war was because we were on the
ground and we saw the truth.
You know, from reading your terrific book, which I recommend to everybody by the way,
I know that your homecoming was not exactly smooth.
Would you tell lightness a little bit about that?
What was it like for you when you got home?
I'd like to mark because I don't think a lot of people don't realize, especially non-veterans,
that women, now remember nurses were men and women and we honor all of them, the Vietnam
Women's Memorial honors nurses and all women.
We didn't do it to exclude male nurses, but the men are honored at the statue of the three
servicemen, that's their memorial.
Now when I'm talking about nurses, it's not to exclude men or forget about them, but we're
talking about female nurses.
And so we came home, we took off our uniforms, we didn't look like vets, in no way.
We could hide very easily.
We didn't have the haircut, we weren't wearing combat boots, most of us probably weren't,
like a lot of the guys were still wearing fragments, they were wearing their field jackets, whatever.
They looked like vets or they were suspected to be vets and they went through hell.
The hostility, the degrading words directed to, we were a bunch of drug crazed, glassy
eyed baby killers.
Well I know a Navy nurse who told me when she got off the ship coming home, there was
a gang of anti-war protesters to meet them wherever it was in California, I forget.
She was in her white nurses uniform.
When she came down to get off, I don't know the exact physical location, she had glasses
on and once they got out the gate, this man pushed her down, pushed her.
Her glasses went flying and called her, you're a fascist pig.
That's a female nurse in a white uniform.
Now what I was called was something like, I had to wrap my, it's like, what did he just
say?
He told me I was no better over there as a nurse than those baby killers because I was
just oiling the war machine.
And I thought, wait a minute, what did he just say?
And then he walked away, the coward.
And I thought, what did he just say to me?
I'm oily, oh okay, I'm saving these guys so they can go back and kill more babies and
be the warmongers and things like that.
So then we know how we reacted to survive, we shut down and didn't talk about it.
And if I opened my mouth that I was a vet, I was opening myself to hostility or like
one guy said when he found out, he said, well, would you go there for the first place?
Like to save lives, maybe?
So it was painful.
It took 1982 for the dedication of the wall to finally help me open up and recognize and
feel the pride I'd never felt before when I looked at that wall of names and knew that
those men there, we were there with them and that we mattered.
Yeah, that was my next question actually, Diane.
And because you write so movingly about that trip to the wall, a little bit, a little more
detail and then talk about joining VVA.
Yeah, because it transformed my life and it saved my life.
I was like other vets, I thought about it, but I had four kids and a husband, how could
I leave them?
But there were days that I just didn't, I didn't think I could do another day.
But when I found out that there was this memorial that was going to have the names, I would
have crawled over broken pot bottles to get there.
But I told my husband, I'm going, I have to go, but I'm sorry, I don't want you to go
with me.
I went to Vietnam alone.
I came home alone.
I have to do this alone.
I ended up going with some other vets who I'd met and they were going to go in a van and
they invited me and I thought, well, I'll be safe with other vets and their spouses.
But when I looked up at 68 and 69 and saw all those names, after five years of, well,
I don't know how many years I came home in 69 and now it's 1982 added up, I never cried
once during those years.
I couldn't cry.
I had no tears left and tears would admit tears.
I just, I had put it away so deeply in my conscience.
I didn't cry or anything.
I never cried.
I stood there and I touched the two names I went to find and I stood there and I cried
and it changed my life.
I, some vets came up to me and hugged me and I had my boony cap on and they said, were
you a nurse in Vietnam?
And I said, yes.
And there's one vet, many vets, this one in particular hugged me and he said, thank you.
Thank you for being there for us.
You were all we had.
He turned around and left and I burst into tears.
I had never been thanked.
Never.
His thank you was the first.
And then I realized, didn't take me long to realize the people who thanked us and loved
us were the wounded and the men who came into our hospitals to see what we were doing to
help them save their buddies.
And, you know, they, they appreciated us, but there was never a place for them to tell
us that where we could connect and come together.
Well, I came home and I, these other vets I'd been with, they said, Diane, I mean, it
was like an hour to get to Eau Claire from where I live.
They said, you have to come and, and join this newer, you can help us found this new
chapter and I said, what's BBA?
And they said, well, you know, we're not happy.
We're not accepted in the other VSOs.
We're starting our own organization.
Well, I was all for that.
And so I drove an hour to get to Eau Claire and I was one of the founding members and
I couldn't believe how accepted I was.
I didn't know what to expect.
Are they going to sling epitets at me too?
Or tell me I'm not a real vet?
But no, they embraced me.
They wanted me there and they wanted me to get involved, which I did.
So VBA helped me get a, you know, a springboard to being an advocate for ourselves and, and
other veterans.
And then I met all these wonderful vets in Wisconsin.
And when I decided that if there's going to be a statue to three men, there has to be
one to women.
And I came back to my chapter and I said, I, I have an idea, but I'm going to need help.
And I think there should be a statue by the, by the wall, right by the statue of the three
men.
And they said, well, that's a great idea.
And then of course the rest is all in the bookmark and, you know, I could talk for hours
about all of this, but I've got my start in Wisconsin with VBA and I will always be grateful
for that.
Thank you, Mark for those great interviews with Kristen and Diane.
For more of Mark's interviews, you can go to VBAVetron.org slash videos.
In our final segment today, my partner, Jim Faustone talks with Jim Culper, who is on
the advisory board of the national veterans business development council.
Jim.
Welcome.
I am Jim Faustone and this is veterans radio spotlight on national veteran business development
council, better known as nvbdc.org.
Veterans radio has a partnership with NVBDC, which is the nation's leading third party
authority for certification of veteran owned businesses of all sizes.
It's a 501c3 nonprofit established in 2013.
It addresses the growing need to identify and certify both service disabled and veteran
owned businesses for commercial or corporate marketplaces, as well as government contracts.
NVDC administers a rigorous certification process designed to withstand the scrutiny
of those corporate entities.
And we want to welcome today to veterans radio Jim Culper, who is on the advisory board for
NVBDC.
Jim, welcome to veterans radio.
Thank you, Jim.
I'm thrilled to be here on behalf of NVBDC.
I'm happy to talk about anything that helps our nation's veterans.
Well we appreciate that and you have a long and impressive history in the business world,
a career that's 30 plus years of the making.
The sales you've generated are in the billions.
You are deep and wide in areas of commercial, defense, government, automotive areas.
And actually nationwide, not only nationwide, internationally you have experience.
And we're going to get to talk about it a little bit a little later.
But where I want to start is how did you get involved with NVBDC on its advisory board?
Well we always tease all great things that are invented in Detroit.
And NVBDC is just another one of those.
So when I was the president of a local Detroit technical staffing company, we were veteran
owned.
And one of the things that all of the DOD contracts and the United States government
is always looking for is how do you prove that you're a certified owned business?
And rollback 10 years ago when NVBDC was launched, it was an extreme gray area.
There was really no gold standard for how a company would be deemed certified.
So I went looking for that.
In the business we were running, we needed this credibility for our DOD clients to grow
the business, to gain more DOD clients.
And I came across Keith King in NVBDC.
And Keith was year one into the process of getting NVBDC approved as the certification
entity for veteran owned businesses.
And I saw the value for our company and I saw the value for all the veterans across
the nation.
So I immediately said, how can I be involved?
And can I volunteer my time?
Can I volunteer my staff's time to help drive veteran business?
And Keith was gracious enough to let me be involved.
I did not serve.
So my hat and heart is off to everyone who served, both active duty now and those that
have served in the past.
And I'm, as a technical staffing professional, I've employed thousands and thousands of veterans
in both the public space, you know, convinced the automotive industry here in Detroit that
veterans have a unique talent that they should hire and thankfully they have.
And then obviously it goes hand in hand with DOD contracts.
So I sought NVBDC out.
I was looking for that gold standard to be able to go to my customers and say, we are
veteran owned.
We are certified veteran owned.
And it has helped us win business.
It has helped us maintain and retain business.
And of course, the greatest gift is being able to employ veterans and seeing them do all
the things that all of us do once we're employed and take care of our families.
And of course pay taxes in this wonderful state of the United States.
So short story, that's how I got there.
And I'm thrilled.
10 years later, I'm still involved.
No, it's a great story and it gives you a unique perspective.
You're been on both sides of it.
You've been on the side of, hey, I got to get my company certified.
And then what the value of that certification is.
And now also being on the advisory board, being able to talk with NVBDC about how business
owners think, how customers think.
Tell us a little bit about the value you saw in and continue to see in certification.
Well, it's kind of, I've got kind of three buckets here.
So first off, thank you to all the corporations, 185 plus that send funding to NVBDC so we
can keep doing what we're doing.
And as you can imagine, those are the who's who of America.
You can go to NVBDC.org and look at all the Corpse that sponsor us.
So the Corpse see the value.
The veterans to veterans see value.
So when we have our national meeting in November, or we have a lot of matchmaker meetings throughout
the year, veterans can come into the room and talk to other veterans.
A small business that might be two or three people to a multi, to a billion dollar business.
And the veterans can learn from one another.
And then for me, as a guy running a business and always looking to recruit veterans to employ
them, that networking is just invaluable.
And I'll say to all the veteran owned businesses out there, stay with it.
You'll get certified at NVBDC.
It is the beginning, not the end.
You have to work with corporations.
It takes time to win business, whether it's in the veteran space or not in the veteran
space.
So once you get your NVBDC certification, stick with it.
Renew it every year.
Keep coming to the meetings.
Keep networking.
That's where the value is.
And I don't know if anybody saw the Tom Brady Hall of Fame induction speech the other day.
He talked about it's hard work.
Success is hard work.
And I can't emphasize that enough to these veteran owned businesses.
Many are small and I recognize they're small.
Stick with it.
You will be successful.
The nation is interested in honors veterans and wants to employ them.
But it's hard work.
Well that's a great capsule of what NVBDC can do for you if you stick with it and do
the networking because they're there to help you do that kind of connection to corporations
that want veteran owned businesses involved.
Thank you all for listening to Veterans Radio.
Let us know what you think about today's program.
Please send us an email at info at veteransradio.org.
And if you'd like to support Veterans Radio, go to our website veteransradio.org and click
on the donate button.
Until next time, this is Dale Thromary for all of us here at Veterans Radio.
You are dismissed.