Book Pick: A Piece of My Heart

It's fitting that I just finished this book this week as this time period marks 40 years since the fall of Saigon. PBS has a few programs this week, which I plan to watch and will probably report on later.

I saw the adapted version of this book on the stage back in the 1990's, and it really spoke to me even before I had delved into my self-education of the Vietnam War. The stories are so haunting that I had to walk away from the book at times and take breaks from my reading. Most of the women sharing their stories were nurses (as you would expect) but there are quite a few that were members of the Red Cross, USO and various other specialty services that would have been needed at the time including a commercial flight attendant that only flew in and around Vietnam and Southeast Asia.

I was most interested in what made the women choose to go and what their lives were like upon returning home. The stories in this book were compiled in the early 1980's and it sounds like PTSD was just beginning to be diagnosed and understood.

I thought a lot while reading this book of how someone might compare our more current warfare of the past 10-15 years to the 20 year long endeavor that was the Vietnam War. I wondered how different a woman's experience in the armed services is today compared to 40-45 years ago. I would love to learn more and maybe even possibly hear these women speak somewhere.

I found myself studying pictures of the Vietnam Women's War Memorial as well as the Vietnam Memorial Wall:

I'm ashamed to say I've never seen them in person and feel even more compelled to do so. But I mostly just want to give a hug to all those who served there.....not just the women. I think they're such a misunderstood group of veterans, and they still have so much to teach us. I hope one day we'll finally listen.

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