58,272

The cold, drizzly evening of the day Bob Crosby died, Linda, Tass and I were in Washington, DC, stopping on our way from Harrisburg to Apalachicola. Instead of our usual beeline route home we were in the capital because I had insisted on visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The Wall. Over the years since childhood, having been to Washington any number of times, lived there through two Navy tours years apart, and been in every memorial and monument over and over again, all were a tribute to our national history; but none had ever had anything to do with me personally. Until now, this. The Vietnam Wall was getting a lot of press and publicity. And it was mine, I had to go.

Other than personal events with Linda and my children, that evening, that brief stopover, was the most stunning and moving moment of my life. Was, is. If the Wall belongs to you personally, if the memories are yours, you cannot stroll by. You stop, freeze, stare, overwhelmed. Stunned. Face stony, jaw tight, teeth clinched, eyes full. Unable to speak. Magnitude. Remembering.

Many who returned and many who waited have many memories. My two years in USS TRIPOLI came flooding back. Time away from Linda, Malinda and Joe. On board ship we were never allowed ashore during port calls in Saigon. Calls when the ship would be docked pierside and Navy divers would swim, patrol round and under the ship constantly as precaution against sappers. High in the nearby mountains, miles away, American warplanes bombing targets all night long. Flash, long pause, muffled explosion. Flash, pause, kaboom. Flash, pause ... all night. The day at sea the teenage sailor tried foolishly to leap from one high place to another, slipped, fell and died that evening. Beside ship's company, TRIPOLI was crowded with Marine Corps ground troops, officers and men, huge USMC CH-53 and banana-shaped CH-46 helicopters, maintenance crews and pilots. Four months into that eight month WestPac deployment, home for a month at Hunters Point Naval Shipyard, San Francisco to replace the ship's cracked screw. Back to Vietnam. At sea offshore, mangled Vietnamese children flown aboard for weeks of surgical repair with the plastic surgeons in our ship's hospital. Eventually, home to stay and the overwhelming emotions of reunion. Flooding, flooding. A chill, drizzling night.

58,272 dead are remembered, named, honored on the Wall. In the wet cold people were there with paper and pen or pencil, finding the name and rubbing it for a memory to take home, a keepsake as real as the memories, concluding what once had been. A veteran staring at a name transfixed, transported thousands of miles away. Family members crying softly when they found the name. Flowers and folded notes. Flags. Love.

It was not a popular war. It was intensely unpopular. The cost was enormous, enormous in many, many ways. Blood, body bags, casualty assistance calls teams knocking, MIA, KIA, young men moving to Canada, resources; long, long grievous national introspection. Ingratitude. Contempt, even hatred, that veterans experienced at home was ugly at times. In my first Washington, DC tour, during Vietnam, we were cautioned and careful about going out on the streets wearing the uniform because of being harassed, spit upon by strangers. But it was not our war, it was their war. U.S military forces are an instrument of national foreign policy. Vietnam was not our war. Vietnam was your war, prosecuted by those you elected to office.

It is now forty years and more,

Biblical language for a very long time.

Anger, dismay, bitterness, hurt, grief -- 

but not memories -- are faded, fading.

Memories, nor pride.

58,272. Our Honored Dead. Our Memorial. Our Wall.

It honors not only the dead, but all who served, 

all who remember. 

TW+