‘Wall’ visit leads to Iraq thoughts

By Dave Churchill (Contact) | The Daily Journal

Published Friday, March 30, 2007

Before our family left for a visit to Washington, D.C., last week, several friends urged me to visit the Holocaust Museum. I chose to ignore their advice because I feared the experience would be simply too powerful and disturbing.

Hey, it was a vacation. If I had wanted to be upset and disturbed I could have stayed at the office.

So while others in the family increased their knowledge about the horrors of the Holocaust, I toured the National Portrait Gallery. If you’re ever in Washington, it’s worth a visit.

But my plans to have a cheerful, happy-happy vacation went a bit off the rails when I took a detour past the Vietnam War Memorial — The Wall.

It will give you some idea of my age that the last time I was in Washington, the Vietnam Memorial had not yet been built.

The long, polished granite wall, inscribed with the names of those who died or went missing during their service in Vietnam has been described so many times that I will not go into details here.

It is worth saying, though, that everything you have read or heard about the monument’s thought- and emotion-provoking power is accurate.

Even surrounded by chattering hordes of Washington-area school kids enjoying a field trip, the Wall speaks eloquently of the toll of war.

More powerful, though, were the testimonials left at the monument’s base by friends and family of those who died in Vietnam.

Although Park Service workers remove the testimonials on a regular basis, more are always being placed. Often, the notes gave a brief account of the service person’s life — brief because they died so young.

To my amazement, one of those who died serving our country was only 15. It was not clear how he had talked his way into the Army at that age.

More common were those who died at 18 or 19, draftees who often enough barely would have had time to figure out what was up before they were shot, shot down or blown up.

The testimonials from loved ones too often included a sentence like, “Killed two days after arriving in Vietnam.” Or, “Joined Marine Corps June 15, killed in action December 22.”

Although a few of my friends lost older brothers in that war, I was too young — and, I suppose, too lucky — to have really known anybody who died in Vietnam.

So I was not looking for any particular name, just wandering along and absorbing the immensity of the price our country had paid.

Afterward, I sat on a park bench, my back to Constitution Avenue as evening rush hour traffic rumbled past, government employees making their nightly pilgrimage home from the so-called Federal Triangle.

As trite as it may sound, the Vietnam Memorial inevitably leads to thoughts about our country’s current involvement in Iraq.

While the Iraq conflict has been far less deadly — so far — than Vietnam, it does seem to be another of those wars where many Americans are left scratching their heads about the reasons. Meanwhile, our young men and women are in harm’s way.

Someday, almost inevitably, the Iraq War will add its own monument or memorial to the pantheon in downtown Washington.

We can only hope that, if it is inscribed with the names of the fallen, the list will be much shorter.