The Women by Kristen Hannah

A Good Listen!

This is an excellent book to listen to while driving long distance.  It is a book about Frankie McGrath, who chose to follow her older brother to Vietnam during the 60s, serving in the Army Nurse Corps. It explores the expected roles of men and women during the 60s-70s.  Men went to war and served their country while women stayed home and were wives and mothers.

It is a story about women and friendship.  Sometimes family refuses to understand or listen but girlfriends listen.  And girlfriends care enough to show up and save you when no one else does.

Have you ever seen the television show M.A.S.H.?  The lights flickering, the rains, the cocktails and parties, the bombs going off?  This book makes that show come to life.  What the show does not discuss, however, is what this book does.  The aftermath of coming home and trying to assimilate to a society that was not proud of their service, calling them “baby killers”, and spitting on those in uniform.  This was certainly not how people were treated returning from WWII.

“Forget it.” If I heard that line one more time while listening to The Women, I think I would cry.  It seemed to be the standard refrain given to all the men and women who went to Vietnam to serve and returned home broken and confused.

Those women who enlisted to go to Vietnam, the Draft only extended to men not to women in the U.S., saw much the same carnage as those men who went.  No, they didn’t carry guns or fly helicopters.  But in the capacity as nurses they saw the destruction of war.  They saw blood, Napalm burns, and people with lost limbs.

Hannah's vivid descriptions of men, women and children coming into the ER paints a vivid picture for the listener or reader.  Doctors and nurses patching up those that they could.  Determining which casualties were too far gone and were not worth trying to save. 

The women stood by each other.  Picking up the pieces after a loved one was killed, helping each other through the explosions and blood soaked days in the ER.  Navigating life after they all returned home to a country and life that refused to recognize what they all went through when they served.

“Women didn’t serve in ‘Nam.”  Returning home from her time in country, Frankie was constantly told she could not use the services of the VA because she had not seen combat.  What she experienced there was not recognized even by the very people she went to Vietnam to save!  She experienced PTSD.  She became an alcoholic and took valium pills that her mother gave her to feel better.  No one would recognize the pain and trauma she had gone through.

I don’t want to give away the book, but you can probably tell by reading this, that the book really hit me.  Vietnam happened during my lifetime but I was very young.  It was a time that people tried to cover up.  But men and women served in that war and came home broken and hated by many Americans.  The next time I visit the Vietnam Veterans wall in D.C. and see someone who served in Vietnam, I plan to thank them for their time there.  They went because our government sent them there and they deserve to be thanked.  I can thank Kristen Hannah for my newfound knowledge.