Ceremony Held for Women in Vietnam War

WASHINGTON —  Gen. Colin L. Powell, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, helped break ground Thursday for the Vietnam Women’s Memorial and said it was “nine years in the making and more than 20 years in the needing.”

“When this monument is finished, it will be for all time a testament to a group of American women who made extraordinary sacrifice at an extraordinary time in our nation’s history,” he said.

The ceremony was attended by members of Congress, former Defense Secretary Melvin R. Laird and scores of men and women from the armed forces.

The monument, which will be built near the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, will honor the 11,500 military women who served in Vietnam during the war, as well as the 265,000 women who were in uniform during the conflict.

The women’s monument--a bronze statue of three women soldiers helping a wounded male GI--is to be dedicated on Veterans Day.

Rear Adm. Maryann Ibach, a naval reservist who was an active duty nurse in Vietnam, said the tragedy of the war was the divisiveness back home that prevented the women who served from telling their story.

“Few women who served in Vietnam were physically injured. Most were emotionally and spiritually changed,” she said. “This memorial validates the experience of all women of that era and gives them the ability to speak of it.”