"Were You There by My Son's Bed?" — Diane Carlson Evans and the 10-Year Fight to Honor the Forgotten Women of Vietnam

The Angels of the Battlefield No One Remembered

Between the mid-1960s and early 1970s, approximately 11,000 American women served in Vietnam. The vast majority were nurses. They never carried rifles into combat, yet they faced the war's most gruesome realities every single day — mangled nineteen-year-olds, faces melted beyond recognition by napalm burns, and young soldiers who breathed their last in a nurse's arms.

Diane Carlson Evans was a twenty-one-year-old Army nurse officer from Buffalo, Minnesota. In 1968, she was stationed at the 36th Evacuation Hospital in Vung Tau and later at the 71st Evacuation Hospital in Pleiku. The casualties were relentless. Mass-casualty events meant choosing who could be saved and who could not. She learned one rule above all others: "Focus on the ones you can save. And never let go of the hand of the ones who are leaving."

Coming Home to Silence

In 1969, Diane returned to the United States. But what awaited her was not gratitude. It was silence and hostility. Vietnam veterans in general were vilified by a conflicted society, but women who had served were treated as though they simply did not exist. "Women went to war?" people asked. "You weren't really in combat, were you?"

Diane suffered severe post-traumatic stress disorder. Nightmares, panic attacks, and crushing guilt followed her for years. The faces she could not save were more vivid than those she could. She tried to move on — she married, raised a family, built a life in Minnesota. But the war never truly left her.

Then, in 1982, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall was dedicated in Washington, D.C. The wall bore the names of over 58,000 Americans who died in the conflict. Diane stood before it and felt something crack open inside her. Those names — she had held some of those men as they died. She had written letters to their mothers. She had wept over their bodies in the middle of the night.

And yet nowhere in the nation's capital was there a single acknowledgment of the women who had been there beside them. Eight American military women died in Vietnam. Thousands more carried invisible wounds. There was no memorial, no recognition, nothing.

A New Kind of War

In 1984, Diane founded the Vietnam Women's Memorial Project. What followed was a battle nearly as grueling as the war itself. Government officials argued that the existing wall was sufficient. Some veterans' organizations opposed a separate women's memorial, claiming it would fragment the memory of the war. The National Capital Planning Commission and the Commission of Fine Arts raised aesthetic objections.

Diane crisscrossed the country, speaking at rallies, congressional hearings, and veterans' gatherings. She told her story — the nineteen-year-old Marine who called out "Mom, Mom" as he died in her arms; the night a mortar attack collapsed a hospital tent and she dragged patients to safety in the dark; the letter from a Gold Star mother that read: "Were you there by my son's bed? Please tell me he wasn't alone at the end."

Audiences wept. And slowly, the tide began to turn. Congressional sponsors emerged. Public support grew. After repeated setbacks, legislation authorizing the memorial was signed into law, and fundraising began in earnest.

November 11, 1993 — Veterans Day

After nearly a decade of advocacy, the Vietnam Women's Memorial was dedicated on Veterans Day, 1993, on the grounds of the National Mall, near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall.

Sculptor Glenna Goodacre created a bronze grouping of three women and one wounded soldier. One nurse cradles the injured man and looks skyward — in prayer, in anguish, in hope. A second kneels on the ground, exhausted and grief-stricken. A third stands apart, gazing down at an empty helmet, confronting the reality of loss. Every emotion of war lives in that bronze.

More than 25,000 people attended the dedication ceremony. Among them were hundreds of women veterans who had never before spoken publicly about their service. Many wore their uniforms for the first time in decades. They found each other. They embraced. They cried together. One former nurse knelt before the statue and whispered:

"Finally. Someone remembers we were there."

Healing Begins with Remembrance

In the years that followed, Diane Carlson Evans continued to advocate for women veterans' healthcare, PTSD treatment, and public recognition. Her work helped shift national consciousness about the role women played — and continue to play — in wartime.

She has often said:

"The memorial is made of stone and bronze, but its real meaning lives in the voices of the women who can finally stand before it and say, 'I was there too.'"

The lesson of Diane's story is deceptively simple. Remembering someone's sacrifice is where healing begins. And sometimes it takes one person's relentless determination to give a voice back to thousands of forgotten heroes.

If you ever visit Washington, D.C., walk past the Vietnam Wall and continue a short distance to the grove of trees where three bronze women stand. Pause. Think about the nights they endured. That moment of silence is exactly what Diane Carlson Evans fought ten years to make possible. So that we would not forget.

Diane Carlson Evans was inducted into the Minnesota Women's Hall of Fame in 2021 and continues her advocacy for women veterans to this day.