Editor’s Note: Diane Carlson Evans served in the Army Nurse Corps in 1968 and 1969 in Vũng Tàu and Pleiku provinces, and is the author of Healing Wounds: A Vietnam War Combat Nurse’s 10-Year Fight to Win Women a Place of Honor in Washington, DC. She is the founder and president of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial Foundation, and has received many honors for her long, difficult campaign to create the memorial to the 11,000 military women who served in Vietnam and the 265,000 who served around the world during the Vietnam era.
All photographs courtesy of the author unless otherwise credited.