American Notes WASHINGTON

Of the 58,156 American service members who died in the Viet Nam War, eight were women. Last week, despite the fact that the Viet Nam Veterans Memorial wall in Washington lists all the dead without regard to race, rank or gender, the U.S. Senate voted 96 to 1 to build another monument at the same site to honor the women who served in Viet Nam. The proposed addition, a statue of a female nurse, still requires House approval.

The Senate endorsed the plan over protests by Maya Lin, designer of the original monument, and Washington's Commission of Fine Arts. The statue of the nurse would not be the first one to compromise the somber dignity of Lin's wall of black granite. As a response to complaints from veterans' groups, "traditional" statues of infantrymen -- portraying one black, one white and one Native American soldier -- were added to the site in 1984, along with a flag standard.