Do not forget the women who served in Viet Nam...

[llmart]

[link:https://time.com/6051363/vietnam-war-women-memorial/?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=editorial&utm_term=history_conflict&linkId=119838349&fbclid=IwAR0N-kLRsSuhQ1xb_mIEiQWeg-Hr20M-DoEa38O7rWewb_ZoLavIaU-_rZI|

My sister volunteered to serve, not as military but with the Red Cross. Fortunately she did not die and just turned eighty this year. As far as I'm concerned, it was a selfless and courageous act on her part and she and the other Red Cross women who volunteered to go deserve some recognition also. I am very proud of her.

[FailureToCommunicate]

1. My mother was also Red Cross. I stand with you in pride for their selfless service.

[llmart]

2. +1

That's wonderful!

[Texaswitchy]

3. My mother had a cousin that was a Army nurse in WW2.

Was in the Pacific before Pearl Harbor and barely escaped being a POW when the Japanese Army attacked.

She was on the last boat out.

Then she went to England and landed in Normandy about DD 3 or 4.

She was a combat nurse and was almost killed in her field hospital.

She got a purple heart.

My mother said she was never the same.

She drank a lot after the war.

I met her several times.

Always seem sad.

[llmart]

5. Wow! What a story.

They paid a price in other ways also, not just the ones who died. My sister drank a lot for many years after the war, didn't really know how to adjust to "normal" life once again. She got a nice apartment but the entire time she lived there she never bothered to get any furniture. Just a small twin bed. She sat on boxes in her living room. She dreaded holidays where there was fireworks. She really was never the same again either. As a woman I can see how she probably had very little in common with most American women her age. She didn't quit drinking until she was in her early sixties.

[Texaswitchy]

6. They saw things.

Things hard to forget.

My mother's cousin died from liver problems.

She buried at a veterans cemetery, full military burial.

She earned it.

I have her purple heart.

[llmart]

7. I got really choked up watching tonight's PBS Memorial Day program.

They did quite a long piece on the women who served, especially in Viet Nam. They talked about how brave these women were who volunteered to go to a war zone. They showed about a dozen women who were invited to be there, including the woman who spearheaded getting a memorial built in DC to the women who served. I am once again so proud of my sister but I doubt I ever really told her that, so I made it a point to call her and tell her that I never realized how brave she was at 27 years old to do what she did.

[Texaswitchy]

8. Both my brother's were in Vietnam.

One was a medic.

He came back messed up.

You can die many ways.

Doesn't always show.

I was just a kid so I really didn't notice at first.

[bluecollar2]

4. My father's cousin recieved an OBEfor her work

On behalf of those British servicemen...

She was in her late nineties when she passed.

She joined the WRENs when she was just 17 during WW2. Spent the rest of her life serving.


So proud of her.