Honoring all who serve

THE Vietnam war has for Americans been antithetical. Patriotic American theses for war - belief in the invincibility of the United States abroad, in the pure rightness of its causes, pride in military technology - were turned upside down during a decade of fighting when many American sociological tenets were also inverted. It has taken a long time for the Vietnam veterans to find their place back home. The bureaucracy at first put out its welcome in the measure of meager public and political support. Young men and women had given their lives. Others, injured in body and psyche, returned to a society that itself did not know how to cope with them. It took a long time for a fitting memorial to those veterans to be erected in Washington - the long dark marble ribbon of names.

Last weekend the Vietnam Veterans of America, an organization of 35,000 members formed in 1978, turned another American war convention on its head - that war is chiefly a male undertaking. The Vietnam Veterans elected a woman, Mary Stout, a former Army surgical nurse, as its president.

Too much can be made of the first woman this and the first woman that. Yet women go to war, too. They find themselves in combat. They serve the war effort at home. Their lives as daughter, girlfriend, wife, mother, are affected by war, too.

The costs of war know no gender.

Let's hear it for Mary Stout!

You've read 3 of 3 free articles. Subscribe to continue.
QR Code to Honoring all who serve
Read this article in
https://www.csmonitor.com/1987/0805/estout.html
QR Code to Subscription page
Start your subscription today
https://www.csmonitor.com/subscribe
CSM logo

Why is Christian Science in our name?

Our name is about honesty. The Monitor is owned by The Christian Science Church, and we’ve always been transparent about that.

The Church publishes the Monitor because it sees good journalism as vital to progress in the world. Since 1908, we’ve aimed “to injure no man, but to bless all mankind,” as our founder, Mary Baker Eddy, put it.

Here, you’ll find award-winning journalism not driven by commercial influences – a news organization that takes seriously its mission to uplift the world by seeking solutions and finding reasons for credible hope.

Explore values journalism About us