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VIETNAM 3/16/2013 7:01:20 AM
I was just ten when Pearl Harbor was bombed in 1941 and we had no choice but to enter World War II. The war ended fours years later. At the age of eighteen, the Korean War was going strong, and upon finishing high school I immediately registered for the draft.
I was never called up. This was years before computers, so I can only assume my records at Draft Board No. 75 in Rochester became lost forever. The boy who registered with me that day was called up, went in the Army, and fought on the 49th Parallel.
By the time of Iraq, I was too old to be of much use — but in 1998, I happened to be in Washington for a few days on business, so I spent a considerable amount of time looking at the Vietnam Wall. I soon began to see the faces, feel the pain that the names on that wall created. Those names haunt me still, because they represent our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters.
Let us be honest. This years before I acquired PLS and was permantly addicted to left-handedness, let alone had ever heard the phrase uncontrolled emotional stability; but as I stared at the Wall I became misty-eyed, accepting sentimentality for indifference. After all, there are no noble wars, just noble warriors.
As a historian, Vietnam was as alien to me as World War 1, the copyright notice at the end of this piece notwithstanding; my research, however, produced this: there are 58,267 names listed on that polished black marble, including those I did not see that were added in 2010.
The names are arranged by date, and within each date the names are alphabetized. It is hard to believe so many years have gone by since the last name was added.
The first known casualty was Richard B. Fitzgibbon, of North Weymouth, Mass, listed by the U.S. Department of Defense as having been killed on June 8, 1956. His name is engraved on the Wall with that of his son, USMC Lance Cpl. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965, nine years after his dad.
I noticed there are three sets of fathers and sons on the Wall. 39,996 were age 22 or younger. 8,283 were just 19 years old. The largest age group, 33,103, was 18 years old.
12 soldiers on the Wall were 17 years old. Five were 16 years old. One soldier, PFC Dan Bullock, was a mere child, just 15 years old.
I count 997 soldiers killed on their first day in Vietnam. 1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day in Vietnam.
31 sets of brothers are on the Wall. Thirty-one sets of parents lost two sons. 54 soldiers attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia (makes you wonder why there were so many from one school!)
There are eight women’s names on the Wall. They were, I later learned, nursing the wounded when they were killed.
It was interesting to note that 244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War, and 153 of them are on the Wall, almost 63% of them KIA.
Beallsville, Ohio with a population of 475 lost 6 of her sons. West Virginia had the highest casualty rate per capita in the nation. There are 711 West Virginians on the Wall.
The Marines of Morenci, AZ: they led some of the scrappiest high school football and basketball teams that the little Arizona copper town (population 5,058) had ever known and cheered for. They enjoyed roaring beer busts and parties. In quieter moments, they rode horses along the Coronado Trail, stalked deer in the Apache National Forest.
And in the patriotic camaraderie typical of Morenci, the nine graduates of the local high school enlisted as a group in the USMC. Their service began on the 4TH of July Day, 1966. But . . . only 3 returned home.
The Buddies of Midvale, Utah — Leroy Tafoya, James Martinez, and Thomas Gonzales were all boyhood friends and lived near each other on Fifth, Sixth and Seventh Avenues. They lived only a few yards apart. They played baseball at the adjacent sandlot field. And they all went to Vietnam.
In a span of sixteen days in 1967, all three were killed. Leroy was killed on Wednesday, Nov. 22, the fourth anniversary of John F. Kennedy's assassination. Jimmy died less than 24 hours later on Thanksgiving Day. Tom was shot dead assaulting the enemy on December 7, Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.
The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968. 245 American military personnel died that day.
The most deaths on the battlefields in S.E. Asia for a single month occurred in May 1968. 2,415 soldiers died.
Most tourists who attend the Wall see only the names that the polished granite has created. To those who survived the Vietnam War, and to the families of those who did not, we see the faces, we feel the pain that these names create.
We are, until we too pass away, haunted by these names, because they were our friends, fathers, husbands, wives, sons and daughters.
The Vietnam Wall brought me to a major conclusion: I will never go there again, where the Wall is in Washington, nor will I ever write about it further. There are, after all, no important, consequential noble wars — not Iraq nor Afghanistan nor anyplace where American blood has been spilled — just important, consequential noble warriors.
(The next entry for Saturday, March 23, may not appear until Sunday or Monday, March 24th or 25th. Sorry for any inconvenience; I will be taking care of grandson Hutson in Alabama while his parents attend a wedding in New Orleans. I will not have access to a computer.)
