Arts of War on the Web

I had an email the other day from Laura Hammons, the founder of Daughters of Vietnam Veterans, a vibrant and talented group of daughters and sons of Vietnam veterans from all over the world. The group is made up of artists, musicians, playwrights, photographers, journalists and others from the United States, Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Puerto Rico, and Vietnam. They have an excellent web site, and are looking to expand their membership.

“Our mission,” Hammons says, “is to enable ’sisters’ to use this organization to network with other ’sisters and brothers’ with advocacy projects through artistic means.” Many of the advocacy projects are humanitarian and peace-making efforts throughout the world. Another of the group’s priorities is to bring awareness of secondary post-traumatic stress disorder.

The September issue of Armchair General magazine contains an article, “10 Essential Vietnam War Books” by James H. Willbanks, a retired Army colonel, who has written widely about the war, in which the author recommends ten “essential books that should be on every historian’s bookshelf.”

Here’s the list, in the order that Col. Willbanks has them in his article:

America’s Last Vietnam Battle: Halting Hanoi’s 1972 Easter Offensive by Dale Andrade

The Long Gray Line: The American Journey of West Point’s Class of 1966 by Rick Atkinson

The Big Story by Peter Braestrup

Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam by Bernard Edelman

America’s Longest War by George Herring

McNamara, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Lies That Led to Vietnam by H.R. McMaster

We Were Soldiers Once …and Young by Hal Moore and Joe Galloway

Tet! Turning Point in the War by Don Oberdorfer

A Viet Cong Memoir by Truong Nhu Tang

The Last Valley: Dien Bien Phu and the French Defeat in Vietnam by Martin Windrow

Not a bad list at all. Mine, would include, several others, though. To wit:

A Bright, Shining Lie by Neil Sheehan

Vietnam: A History by Stanley Karnow

Bloods by Wallace Terry

Winners and Losers by Gloria Emerson

The Marched Into Sunlight: War and Peace in Vietnam by David Maraniss

Street Without Joy by Bernard Fall

And the following memoirs:

If I Die in a Combat Zone by Tim O’Brien

Fortunate Son by Lew Puller

A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo

Brothers in Arms by William Broyles

Home Before Morning by Lynda Van Devanter

Patches of Fire by Albert French

Keep Your Head Down by Doug Anderson

A recent New York Times article reported on the controversy over adding a new monument to the Wichita, Kansas’ Veterans Memorial Park. Members of the city’s Vietnamese exile community proposed adding a bronze statue of an American solider with his arm around the shoulder of a South Vietnamese comrade soldier in the 3.5-acre park, which is owned city. The Vietnamese monument would symbolize the American-ARVN fight against the Vietnamese communists.

But the plan drew heavy criticism from some American veterans, and the monument will now be built away from the park’s other monuments. In fact, it will sit outside the park, and will be walled off by a six-foot earthen berm.

“The entire park was created solely for America’s veterans who fought America’s wars for America’s armed forces,” said Philip W. Blake, a World War II veteran who volunteers at the park. “The memorial they wanted was going to be dead center in the park.”

Another veteran, John Wilson, who created a group to oppose placing the memorial inside the park, told The Times that the reaction against the memorial is not anti-Vietnamese. “This doesn’t have anything to do with being Vietnamese,” he said. “This is about serving in the American military. That’s it.”

The Wichita City Council, The Times said, “approved the new plan — berm and all — on a 7-to-0 vote. The Council made it clear that Veterans Memorial Park was meant to honor American service members exclusively and gave veterans’ groups a role in deciding what types of memorials to include in the future.”

“Veterans of America,” an exhibit of the art work of a variety of veteran-artists, opened August 11 at the nonprofit Springs Art Gallery in El Dorado Springs, Missouri. The show, which will run through October 8, includes the paintings of Helen White (that’s her work, above), who served as a nurse in the Vietnam War, and whose work has been exhibited at the National Vietnam Veterans Art Museum in Chicago, among other places.

“The thing is, these artists have trouble finding places to display and sell their work,” White told the Nevada Daily Mail. “Art about war is nothing new; it’s been around for centuries; probably as long as there have been wars, there have been artists whose work had themes relating to war.”

The exhibit, which was supported by VVA Chapter 317 in Kansas City, Mo., contains an eclectic collection. “Many different media have been introduced, from paintings, vases, fiber art, books, slide shows, maps and woodwork,” said Ruth Cannady, the gallery’s coordinator. “The Springs Gallery has had a large amount of interest in the exhibition.”

You can read Le Ho Lan’s autobiographical Stories of a North Vietnamese Childhood—which deal with a girl growing up in North Vietnam and her family, neighbors, and friends before and during the American war—on the free website Scribd.com

Some of the stories are set in Hanoi; others are set in the village where the narrator
goes to live with her grandmother after the bombing of Hanoi starts.