University Dailv Kansan / Mondav. August 27, 1990
11b
Horrors of war still haunt Vietnam veteran
Nurse returns to battlefields 20 years later
By George Esper
Associated Press writer
NORWOOD, Mass. — The Vietnam War left Cherie Rankin a legacy of sadness denied and tears delayed.
"When you're in a war," she said, "you have to turn off the feelings in order to do the work."
As a 24-year old Red Cross worker confronted every day by death and suffering, she was unable to cry.
For more than a decade after she came home in September 1971, just thinking about Vietnam produced headaches, and she would become sick to her stomach. At a reunion of Red Cross workers in 1984, she flew up. Until then, she said, she had no idea how Vietnam had affected her.
Now, 20 years later, she is making a sentimental journey back to help restore some of what the United States destroyed, and to shed her tears.
Rankin is part of a group of nine Americans paying their own way over to help rebuild a medical clinic Hanoi destroyed by U.S. bombs.
The team, which is leaving in early September, is the third to return to build badly needed medical facilities under the auspices of the Veterans Vietnam Restoration Project in Garrison. During September and October, the team will former Vietnamese enemies who now are comrades in peace.
Rankin, 44, will revisit the fields where the men she knew died and
will walk the grounds of the Da Nang area orphanage where she fed, clothed and played with the maimed children of war.
"While I was there, I never felt the sadness, and I carry around some pain for those children." she said. "Being able to do the crying on the spot would be helpful — being near firebases where many men who died I knew, whose faces I see in my mind, to do some crying for them."
The images of suffering
She remembers flying in helicopters to the U.S. firebases to boost the soldiers' morale. She is in field hospitals holding the hands of mortally wounded GIs. They clutch her tightly. She is their last link to life.
The baby-face of a young GI she met in Da Nang while he was awaiting his assignment is forever fixed in her mind. He was so new his boots still were spit-shinned. A few days later, he him in a field hospital with his sticking out of him and the right side of his face blown away.
Within minutes, he was dead.
"That was my first death experience.
I marked that as the period of time where I numbed out. When I saw that
"I went over to him and held his hand," she said. "I reminded him I had seen him the other day, and I think I said to him, 'I'm sorry.' He flicked his eyes. He couldn't talk. But he gripped my hand."
kid there. I really wanted to run. I wanted to go home. I wanted my mother."
Sometimes, she still can hear the familiar whirring sounds of the helicopters and her mind drifts back. She has been in this place for a while, and she shakes at the thought of it.
of an orphan, an Americana boy born to a Vietnamese mother and American father. He sits for lonely. A fly caught on his skin causes him missing, blown away by a mine.
"He represents Vietnam to me," Rankin said. "This is the child of the war, and it says it all to me."
But there were rare moments of joy amid the poverty and pain. A reminder is another photo, this one of
'While I was there, I never felt the sadness, and I carry around some pain for those (maimed) children. Being able to do the crying on the spot would be helpful — being near firebases where many men who died I knew, whose faces I see in my mind, to do some crying for them.'
— Cherie Rankin Vietnam war veteran
Dreams of Vietnam invade her sleep. If she doesn't remember them, there always are the pillows across her body to remind her. During the war, Red Cross workers pulled木桶 from her bed to protect themselves during rocket attacks.
"I will wake up startled . . . and all of my bed pillows are lined up the length of the bed," she said. "Even if I don't have a clear memory of the dream, I'm acting as though I were experiencing it."
three grinning orphan boys throwing their arms around her. One is blind, one is missing part of his leg and one is retarded.
Other images are of the children she cared for. They are scorched by napalm, blinded by bombs. Their arms and legs are missing.
"I love it," Ms. Rankin said. "Just look at how happy I am to see those kids and how happy they are to see them with physical touch is being shared."
Among her poignant photos is one
Doubts and harassment
Rankin, originally from West Palm Beach, Fla., went to Vietnam in September 1970, just out of Florida and Tallahassee She did not believe in God or faith in the men who were fighting, like her younger brother, Doug, a
"I went to visit my brother," she said. "Even though I had questions about the war, I really understood why the guys were there, and I wanted to what I could to help them. I also wanted the adventure and to find out what we were there, see for myself."
Marine
Despite her reservations, and the sexism and sexual harassment she sometimes encountered, she didn't understand the government's morality or motivation.
"I was so red, white and blue my blood was lavender," Rankin said. "I think we fell into two categories in their mind. We were either virgin or whores, their favorite girlfriend or we were there to be propositioned.
"I feel I was a pawn of our government, coercing soldiers to fight. Red Cross women were held up as home and apple pie. "This is what you're fighting for. The way the military works is that you resist sexist We were there . . . to be their deception . . . We're flying in helicopters in dresses."
The journey back to life
When she returned home a yean later, the formerly gregarious woman withdrew into herself, seeking solace in solitude.
"For many years, I would be afraid to be in crowds. I did not like going to social events," she said.
(long to the center), she said.
But that has "improved through counseling at a veterans center."
"I've had therapy off and on for 10
years," she said. "I figure it's the rest of my life, not necessarily more because I have impairment for any level of functioning, but it’s a level of growth, knowing yourself, learning about yourself. It's an ongoing process."
She first went into therapy for help with some marital and childhood issues.
"I had no idea Vietnam affected me until around six years ago," she said.
She and her husband divorced in 1983, partly because of the war.
"I closed the book on Vietnam when I got back like everybody else did," she said. "My husband had been a war protester, and we never came to see him. We don't comfortable talk about it. Neither was anybody else in the country."
Then she went to a Vietnam reunion in New York City six years ago.
"The whole thing started opening up," she said. "Everything started coming to the surface."
Just after she arrived, she got a throbbing headache that lasted for a day and a half until she threw up.
"I felt better after I did that," she said. "It taken me a long time. I would have physical responses to thinking about Vietnam or talking about Vietnam that would last some time or a couple of weeks. Now I have a bit of an emotional response after I talk about Vietnam."
Rankin is a psychotherapist. While n Vietnam, she will do some construction work, but she also will serve as the team shrink.
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