In Washington D.C. it is impossible not to recognize the many buildings and statues and memorials celebrating the lives of Americans long past but never forgotten. The symbols are there to remind us that the only values we can truly glean from the past are the lessons that accompany it. Such a seminal lesson is taught every day at an isolated and sorrowful sight near the National Mall. They call it the Viet Nam Memorial, but members of our generation know it simply as the Wall. The Wall represents the errors and follies of the past. That war is long gone, but it lingers still and forever will in the names on the Wall. It has fallen to us, the living, to honor these brave people with our respect and our undying gratitude, especially from those of us who were fortunate enough not to become participants in a war that made no good sense. Theirs was a war of futility, of frustration and betrayal. Their country let them down and many did not come home. Many of those who did return did not go back to the farms and towns and cities of their childhood. They returned to a new home. They do not live with their families, they do not reside in the homes where they grew up. They no longer cruise Main Street with their girlfriends or go to ballgames with their buddies. They have a new home. They have taken up permanent residence on the Wall; their names are etched and shall forever remain on a massive slab of Gabbro rock. That beautiful, horrible Wall.
You can stand at the Wall in the quiet softness of the early D.C. morning, with trees in full bloom, and the soft breeze at your back, along that vast, beautiful expanse of lawn and grass which is the National Mall. You can hang your head in prayer at the Wall and listen closely, for the ghosts of our generation will speak to you, will share with you the horror and futility of an unwelcome combat war. You will hear the whispers of all 58,318 American men and women who perished or disappeared in that war. You will see their faces in the rice paddies and jungles of Viet Nam, reflected in that black, Gabbro Wall. You will see that faraway, thousand mile stare so common among combat soldiers. You will see all that, feel all that, but you can never know, unless you were there, what terrible, unforgettable horrors our boys encountered in the full bloom of their youth. You can weep, and your tears will fall to the Earth, where so many tears have fallen before, but they, too, will fall in vain. For those tears, and all the many millions that have been shed at the foot of the Wall, can irrigate nothing but regret. For nothing but regret can bloom in the shadow of the Wall.
Seize the Truth!
Carpeveritas.org