thedrifter
02-22-09, 07:22 AM
February 22, 2009
The 'wall' builds peace by humanizing cost of war
Mark Hare
More than 30 years after it ended, the Vietnam War continues to teach two important lessons: To separate the war from the warrior, and to remember that war is personal, brutal and desperate, an absolute last resort.
I spoke to Jan Scruggs, who launched the campaign for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1979, during his recent visit to Rochester on a fundraising trip. Scruggs, 58, served with the Army's 199th Light Infantry Brigade and was wounded in a battle near Xuan Loc.
When he started to work for the memorial, "all I knew was that it should include the names" of the 58,000 Americans killed, he says, as a way to recognize their service and humanize the war that so deeply divided the country. "I felt it would help the healing," he says.
The polished black granite wall is today the most popular monument in Washington, and for Vietnam veterans and those of us of their generation, it is still impossible to approach the wall without a swelling of emotion.
Twenty-seven years after the wall was first dedicated, Scruggs has embarked on a second campaign, this one to raise between $80 million and $100 million for an underground education center to be constructed (starting in 2010 or 2011) on the National Mall near the Vietnam Memorial. "More than half the visitors today are younger than the memorial," Scruggs says.
The center will use key military values — such as loyalty, duty, respect, service, courage, integrity and honor — to frame the experiences of the soldiers, sailors, marines, nurses, medics and chaplains who served in the war.
Like the wall, the center will be dedicated not to the war, but to those who served.
Scruggs says the center will collect photos of every person whose name is on the memorial, and each day, the entry to the center will feature large headshots of those whose birthday it would have been. On special occasions, say the anniversary of D-Day, it will be possible to display photos of those killed in the invasion of Europe.
Since the memorial opened, visitors have left items at the base of the wall to remember those lost — letters home, packs of cigarettes, graduation tassels, toys, athletic equipment, photos, trophies, even boxes of cookies returned home because the intended recipient had been killed. Those items, collected daily by the U.S. Park Service, will also be on display — further humanizing the war.
The Iraq war is unpopular, Scruggs says, but "no one today blames the soldiers. People honor their service." That wasn't always so for the returning Vietnam vets, but the memorial has helped heal the country's wounds by focusing on the service and the humanity of the warriors.
It's not provable, Scruggs says, but "there are people who think the memorial has helped change mourning in America." It is, he says, as if the Vietnam Memorial gave the country "a license to publicly mourn."
To memorialize those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, he says, there is a field of empty chairs reflecting the individuals lost. Across the country, personal memorials spring up at homicide scenes and at fatal traffic accident scenes.
The healing process has been long, but genuine. And slowly, we have all come to better understand the toll wars take on those who survive them as well as those who do not.
And so it goes. Those who survived the war, and those who did not, continue to remind all of us that the way to prevent war is to remember what it can do.
Ellie
The 'wall' builds peace by humanizing cost of war
Mark Hare
More than 30 years after it ended, the Vietnam War continues to teach two important lessons: To separate the war from the warrior, and to remember that war is personal, brutal and desperate, an absolute last resort.
I spoke to Jan Scruggs, who launched the campaign for a Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1979, during his recent visit to Rochester on a fundraising trip. Scruggs, 58, served with the Army's 199th Light Infantry Brigade and was wounded in a battle near Xuan Loc.
When he started to work for the memorial, "all I knew was that it should include the names" of the 58,000 Americans killed, he says, as a way to recognize their service and humanize the war that so deeply divided the country. "I felt it would help the healing," he says.
The polished black granite wall is today the most popular monument in Washington, and for Vietnam veterans and those of us of their generation, it is still impossible to approach the wall without a swelling of emotion.
Twenty-seven years after the wall was first dedicated, Scruggs has embarked on a second campaign, this one to raise between $80 million and $100 million for an underground education center to be constructed (starting in 2010 or 2011) on the National Mall near the Vietnam Memorial. "More than half the visitors today are younger than the memorial," Scruggs says.
The center will use key military values — such as loyalty, duty, respect, service, courage, integrity and honor — to frame the experiences of the soldiers, sailors, marines, nurses, medics and chaplains who served in the war.
Like the wall, the center will be dedicated not to the war, but to those who served.
Scruggs says the center will collect photos of every person whose name is on the memorial, and each day, the entry to the center will feature large headshots of those whose birthday it would have been. On special occasions, say the anniversary of D-Day, it will be possible to display photos of those killed in the invasion of Europe.
Since the memorial opened, visitors have left items at the base of the wall to remember those lost — letters home, packs of cigarettes, graduation tassels, toys, athletic equipment, photos, trophies, even boxes of cookies returned home because the intended recipient had been killed. Those items, collected daily by the U.S. Park Service, will also be on display — further humanizing the war.
The Iraq war is unpopular, Scruggs says, but "no one today blames the soldiers. People honor their service." That wasn't always so for the returning Vietnam vets, but the memorial has helped heal the country's wounds by focusing on the service and the humanity of the warriors.
It's not provable, Scruggs says, but "there are people who think the memorial has helped change mourning in America." It is, he says, as if the Vietnam Memorial gave the country "a license to publicly mourn."
To memorialize those killed in the Oklahoma City bombing, he says, there is a field of empty chairs reflecting the individuals lost. Across the country, personal memorials spring up at homicide scenes and at fatal traffic accident scenes.
The healing process has been long, but genuine. And slowly, we have all come to better understand the toll wars take on those who survive them as well as those who do not.
And so it goes. Those who survived the war, and those who did not, continue to remind all of us that the way to prevent war is to remember what it can do.
Ellie