[Submitted by: Gujral, Tanmeet (64Z)]

Dana Dusty Shuster

its the thought that counts!

Hello, David - my name is Dusty. I'm your night nurse. I will stay with you. I will check your vitals every 15 minutes. I will document inevitability( Palmer 127) According to the website History.com, almost ninety percent of the women who served in Vietnam were military nurses, though many others worked as physicians, air traffic controllers, intelligence officers, clerks and other positions in the U.S. Women's Army Corps, U.S. Navy, Air Force and Marines and the Army Medical Specialist Corps. While there were all of these incredible women who volunteered to help their country and its servicemen, there were others who never went to Vietnam but faked being Veterans. Dana Dusty Shuster, a famous war poet, was one such woman, who knowingly deceived many into believing that the sentiments she shared in her poems came from real wartime experiences. My interest in Shuster, for my research paper, came about when I read one of

her poems, Hello, David. The poem and the sentiments seemed real enough, but I wanted to know more about the story behind the fake. Combat nurses worked twelve hour shifts that turned into twenty-four or thirty-six hour shifts during major battles, like the Tet Offensive. The sheer number of casualties that these women treated on a daily basis, would be enough to stress someone to the breaking point. They were angry at seeing young men horribly wounded and traumatized, and felt guilty when they could not save all of them or make them whole again. They were witness to the traumas of war just like the soldiers that fought there, and many others such as journalists and media people who went there to tell the world the reality of the war. (Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation) The above written opening verse is from the poem, Hello, David, that has become one of the most renowned poems recognizing the sacrifices made by women in Vietnam, was left behind at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1987 by a woman named Dusty. The poem was discovered by Laura Palmer, a Vietnam War journalist and author, who was researching stories and letters of those who never made it back from Vietnam for her book Shrapnel in the Heart (1988). In addition to being in Palmers book, the poem was read on November 11, 1993, by Vice President Al Gore at the dedication of the Vietnam Womens Memorial, and is also on the Greater Rochester, New York Vietnam Memorial. (Parker, 12 June 2012) According to Diantha Parker, Palmer tracked down Dusty by comparing the poem (Hello, David) she left at the wall, written in green Magic Marker, to a photo of a woman

at a peace march carrying a green-markered sign. Dana Shuster was written on the back of the picture. Palmer spoke to Dana Shuster, aka Dusty, about her experiences of the war as a nurse wanting to include her poetry and story in her book. A self-identified war veteran, Shuster claimed to have been with the U. S. Army Nurse Corps in the Republic of Vietnam during two tours of duty between 1966 and 1968. Palmer tells the story of Shuster going to Vietnam to heal, but coming back so broken that she needed to change her name and her profession in an attempt to change her past. Shuster said that she had agreed to talk only on condition of anonymity (Palmer, 125). Shuster told Palmer stories of her time at the evacs, or evacuation hospitals, as a surgical, intensive-care, or emergency-room nurse. She talked of cutting through soldiers uniforms and having legs fall out, and of staying on her feet for seventy two hours during the Tet Offensive that she could not take her boots off for two days because of the selling in her feet. She tells of standing by the beds of dying soldiers knowing that they would not make it through the night and that she would be the last person they ever saw- I'm the last person/ you will see. / I'm the last person/ you will touch./ I'm the last person/ who will love you (128). In 1986, when Palmer's book was published, she read Shuster's poem Hello, David on NPR's Morning Edition show. The poem instantly struck a chord with a lot of veterans and their families. Hello David and a couple of other poems by Shuster were published in Palmers book and also in the first anthology of womens Vietnam war poetry, Visions of war, Dreams of Peace (1991) edited by Lynda Devanter and Joan A

Furey. Other poems of Shusters were also included in several other books, magazines, and journals. Shuster eventually went on to publish her own book Battle Dressing: Poems about the Journey of a Nurse in Vietnam in 2000. The book won her the 1999 Houston Writers League Poetry Chapbook contest. What do you pack/ To take to a war? Dana Shuster wrote in Battle Dressing. Yet thats a question Shuster never really had to answer for herself. For twenty years, Shuster had befriended Palmer and many activist U. S. Army nurses who had served in Vietnam during the war. She also made a trip to Vietnam with Palmer. In 2006, Palmer was asked if she could corroborate Shusters service claims because virtually no other nurses could remember being with her or seeing her in Vietnam during the war. Shuster was unable to satisfy Palmers questions with any specific proofs of her tenure in Vietnam. (S4 POW Network) It appeared Shuster had never served in Vietnam, or for that matter ever served in the military at all. Also, she had never been a nurse. Shuster had made up all her experiences about serving as a nurse in Vietnam and even the poem about how she was protested against during her homecoming because she had served in Vietnam, was all cooked up. She even assumed the air of anger and frustration felt by many nurse veterans towards the male veterans who did not understand the depth of their service. The community that had come to believe in her words and find a sense of healing in her poems, now felt betrayed and hurt by her fraud. They felt betrayed that the poet,

Shuster, was not authentic, that her history was not necessarily the same as that of the poet that they called Dusty. Palmer and other veterans felt deceived by Shuster, but it was Palmer who had inadvertently helped make Dusty what she had become, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Vietnam Womans Memorial provided an unintended platform for Dana Shuster to become both famous and infamous. Shuster became hugely popular following Palmers reading of her poem Hello, David at the NPR show. After her fraud came to light, Shuster apologized to the women Veterans community saying that she suffered from a dissociative personality disorder; PTSD; and an incompletely developed sense of self that that caused her to believe she actually had served in Vietnam as a nurse. She went on to say that she felt a deep sense of sorrow, embarrassment, anguish, guilt, and shame because of the hurt that she has caused to the many who believed in her. She said that she never tried to tell the truth about herself because she found that her poems had helped a lot of veterans to heal, and that she could not betray their hope, fearing that those who had written to her about suicidal thoughts would then make good on their promises. So, she never told the truth, until Palmer forced her to. Though Shuster is a fraud, and her impersonation of a Vietnam War Veteran is ground for distrust, her poetry resonates with a truth and emotions of a heartfelt tribute to these women. Shusters invented stories of hours spent working on wounded soldiers in

evac hospitals, have an emotional truth behind them that no one can refute. Her portrayal of the feelings of these women comes in heart wrenching detail. Sentiments similar to Dustys have been seen in other books, letters, and articles by veterans of the war, both in the US and Vietnam. Joan P Skibas poem In Memorium (1987) reads- The ER was so busy with the wounded-so damn young-/ the cries and smells were background, the push had just begun./ the day comes back so clearly, death is vivid in/ my eye; a memory that comes haunting me these/ many years gone by Dang Thuy Tram, a woman Vietnamese doctor who treated wounded soldiers on the Vietnamese side, writes in her diary, Last Night I Dreamed of Peace, about how she had to leave the luxuries of cities and towns to come and help the soldiers, and how each day she treats wounded men, with inadequate medical supplies- 8 April 1968, Operated on one case of appendicitis with inadequate anesthesia. I had only a few meager vials of Novocain to give the soldier, but he never groaned once... She also talks about the exhaustion of working endless hours, as do the American nurses in their narratives, -23 April 1968, A day of utter exhaustion: three seriously injured soldiers are brought in at the same time. All day I stand at the operating table, the tension in my head building toward the point of bursting. Since, Shusters stories bore a great resemblance to the many others that were written in the context of nurse veterans of Vietnam, Palmer and other authors who used her poems, never questioned her authenticity. Her poems were not based upon authentic experiences; yet they capture something about the war, nurses, and dying soldiers that

resonated with the many who have been brought to tears by her poetry. In one poem (I Went to Vietnam to Heal), Shuster talks about how women nurses went to Vietnam in hopes of healing the wounded, but came back scared by the psychological trauma of looking at devastating injuries, burning flesh, and young men dying- But I am not God, and so I go on/ seeing the wounded when I hear a/ chopper, washing your blood from my hands,/ hearing your screams in my sleep, scrubbing/ the smell of your burned bodies from my clothes,/ feeling your pain, which never eases,/ fighting a war that never ends. (Dusty, 1985) Despite the fact that Shuster never lived the life that her poems were born from, her poems ring with the truth about Nurses life in Vietnam. In her use of poetry as a means of telling her stories, Shuster gains the benefit of doubt with poetic license, a device used by poets to exaggerate and play with the facts to make them more real, more emotional, and more telling. Therefore, even though Shuster took on a persona, Dusty, from her poems, would her poems be any less effective had they been written by a non-veteran, who simply wanted to pay their respects to those who served in Vietnam, or would it be any more revered, if it was written by a certified nurse veteran of the Vietnam War? Dana Dusty Shuster, wrote some of the best and most memorable poetry relating to the nurses who served in Vietnam. Her poems, though not presented in the most truthful way as her true self, must nevertheless be regarded as an authentic tribute to those brave and wonderful nurses. In the closing lines to her poem Hello, David, Shuster writes-Goodbye, - David-my name is Dusty./ I'm the last person/ you will see./ I'm the last

person/ you will touch./ I'm the last person/ who will love you. These few simple lines capture the whole essence of the life and experiences of women veterans of Vietnam, especially those who served as nurses. Its the thought, and words, that matter, not the name that says them.

Works cited Shuster, Dana 'Dusty'. "Hello, David." Shrapnel in the Heart. By Laura Palmer. New York: n.p., 1987. 127-28. Writing Vietnam. SOUTH SEATTLE COMMUNITY COLLEGE. Web. 10 June 2012. <http://www.stg.brown.edu/projects/WritingVietnam/readings/lp_read_Dusty.html> . Parker, Diantha. "Celebrated Military Nurse, Poet Revealed as a Fraud." NPR. NPR, 30 Sept. 2006. Web. 12 June 2012. <http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php? storyId=6173681>. Leepson, Marc. "Welcome To Vietnam Veterans of America." Welcome To Vietnam Veterans of America. VVA, n.d. Web. 11 June 2012. <http://www.vva.org/veteran/1206/arts_of_war.html>. Acton, Carol. "Diverting the Gaze: The Unseen Text in Women's War Writing." (2004): n. pag. FPO. West Chester University. Web. 12 June 2012. <http://www.freepatentsonline.com/article/College-Literature/116518543.html>. "Heroes or Villains?" S 4. P.O.W. NETWORK, 24 Mar. 2007. Web. 15 June 2012. <http://www.pownetwork.org/phonies/phonies1268.htm>. "Women Who Served During the Vietnam War." Vietnam Women's Memorial Foundation. N.p., n.d. Web. 11 June 2012. <http://www.vietnamwomensmemorial.org/vwmf.php>. Dang, Thuy Tram. Last Night I Dreamed of Peace. Trans. Andrew X. Pham. Intro. Frances Fitzgerald. New York: Three Rivers, 2007. Print.