The Vietnam Memorial Wall

On 31 May 2004 18:45:49 GMT, Ian MacLure wrote:

wrote in
:

The Vietnam Memorial Wall

The what?

IBM

Seriously though unless this posting was aimed at bore Eurotrash
its kind of pointless and/or redundant.

Actually that would be the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. And, it shows
the names of US military that were killed in that war. Not those from
other services.

Here's an excerpt from "Phantom Flights, Bangkok Nights" coming out in
Feb '05 that's my take on the wall:

"Washington D. C. is a city of beautiful buildings and soaring
monuments. The capital dominates with its majestic dome and broad
stairways. The Supreme Court similarly rises among the stately trees
with strength in its columns and classic façade. The memorials to the
greats of our nations are white, broad and tall befitting the stature
of the military and political leaders which they honor. But, the Wall
is black and buried, a depression in the ground symbolizing the
depression of the nation that did not win the war or respect the men
who fought it. You can see the Washington Monument from miles away and
you won't need a map to find Lincoln or Jefferson or the World War II
memorial, but you could walk within a hundred yards of the Wall and
never see it. We seem to want to hide it, maybe hoping that an
obligation has been fulfilled but no one wants to admit that the
obligation existed in the first place.

"The names are listed in a paper directory, dog-eared and dirty from
thousands of hands searching through it for a name of a friend or
family member who was lost. It's chained to a plywood pedestal like a
small town phone book at a gas station pay-phone, almost as an
afterthought by the government that maybe some visitor might want to
know where on the wall among the 58,000 names their special person is
memorialized. But, they do want to know. They come from across the
country to see and to feel and to remember. Some say they come for
closure or to heal, but that is only a few. More come for respect and
to belatedly honor the fallen. And some come out of guilt that they
hadn't gone or hadn't done the right thing at the time.

"The sidewalk along the brooding black marble wall slopes gradually,
there are no steps along the way. It's almost a metaphor for the
gradualism that led us to failure. It marks the descent into the
immorality of sending men to die for a cause that the nation wants to
ignore. But when you reach the deepest point, the walk rises again and
gradually, over time returns to the level of the street and the city.
All things pass and maybe this represents a return to normalcy and
patriotism and honor; belief in your country's might and the
principles that the other soaring white monuments of Washington
commemorate. Maybe.

"Children visiting the Wall from the inner cities of America laugh and
tussle on the grass, showing little of the solemnity that we might
wish for this spot. They don't know these many years later exactly
what this is all about. They don't make a great distinction between
Verdun and Vietnam. But, that guy over there, the one in the dark suit
with the sunglasses, he knows the difference. The gray-haired fellow
coming down the walk with his grand-son holding his hand, he knows
many of these names. The heavy-set fellow in the West Point
sweatshirt, sitting on the park bench with the cane by his side was
there. The one in the tattered field jacket, with the beard and dirty
matted long hair? No, probably not. Odds are he's ten years too young
and simply another poseur and "wannabe." There are a lot of them these
days. You can buy the jacket in any town and the medals can be found
on eBay. But, that's the stereotype; the homeless, drug or alcohol
addicted hulk destroyed by the war. The reality is that the great
majority of the survivors of the war are just quiet old men, living
out their lives and remembering."



Ed Rasimus
Fighter Pilot (USAF-Ret)
"When Thunder Rolled"
Smithsonian Institution Press
ISBN #1-58834-103-8