Visit the Wall…but not the one at the border or Pink Floyd’s

I visited the original Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC some years back. It’s an incredibly somber and humbling place. Amidst lots of hustle and bustle in a busy tourist area, people almost involuntarily hushed themselves and mostly stayed silent before the understated but ideally designed black form which stretched before them. It was eerily and impossibly quiet. I saw many tears in the eyes of those who were there to find the names of loved ones and also in the eyes of many who did not even recognize anyone in the seemingly endless inscriptions, my own such unexpected weeping included. Powerful stuff.
That’s why I’m sharing details of this area event which I hope tons of people will attend. It’s a way to honor and better understand the deaths of tens of thousands of men and women who often did not get the respect they deserved when their bodies (and their still living fellow soldiers) were returned home from the Vietnam War. I hope many will bring their children to see it, too, because we have become too insulated from the horrors of warfare which has been partly sanitized by our own government’s rules of coverage, engagement and access by journalists and by our own indifference to conflict thousands of miles away. My generation at least had daily reminders on the evening news as we gathered for family dinner most nights (which in itself is another nearly lost part of our culture). Talk to your kids/grandkids/nieces/nephews about it. Help them understand why there are the names of 57,939 American soldiers on the wall and that as many as three million North and South Vietnamese, Cambodian and Laotian soldiers and civilians also died in that senseless war of profit.
Thank you to Vietnam Veteran Association Chapter 731 and all those responsible for bringing this replica of the wall to our area and for your own service to our nation. And thanks to my friend Rob Voss for helping bring it to our attention.