Vietnam war wounds healing

Press, 25 November 1982, Page 21

Vietnam war wounds healing

From

HUGH NEVILL

NZPA,

in Washington

The memorial in Washington to the Americans who

died in the Vietnam War (or who are still listed as missing in action) is having a profound effect on veterans and on the nation as a whole.

The veterans have been bitter for years: protesters spat on them when they came home, but most felt they served their country honourably and have felt bewildered and betrayed ever since.

The monument is a black granite wall, a “V” sunk into the earth in a grassy slope near the reflecting pond, one arm pointing to the pillared white marble memorial to Abraham Lincoln, the other to the needle-like monument to George Washington, which is also made of white marble.

•The memorial is engraved with the names — no ranks, no decorations — of the

almost 58,000 Americans who died in Vietnam.

To its detractors the memorial selected from more than 1400 entries is a “black gash of shame and sorrow” and “a tribute to Jane Fonda.”

Many veterans felt the colour, the depth and the "V” sign dishonoured them (a statue of three servicemen, and a flag, will be added nearby over the protests of the memorial’s designer, Maya Lin, a 22-year-old architecture student of Chinese extraction). However, those who go down to see the memorial — and there have been thousands since its dedication recently — feel that its sombre beauty lies in the fact that it is a memorial to the fallen, and not, like so many other memorials a monument to a war.

The names rolling endlessly on — they are in chronological order of death,

not alphebetical — bring home even to those too young to remember it the human cost of this war, and ' of all others. Americans tend to wear their emotions close to the surface, and many of the veterans cry as they find the names of friends killed. There are gaps , between the slabs just big enough for the stem of a flower, and dozens - mostly red roses —

have been inserted by specific names. Flowers line the base of the monument, too, and so do small flags, and photographs. People have taped , newspaper clippings or obituaries to the polished granite surface, and at least one medal lies at the base.

The clippings change the effect, but no-one would dream of removing them, the recollections of veterans and of families are so intense, so personal and so emotional. .-■ ■ Veterans are meeting old buddies at the memorial for the first time since they left Vietnam, and the reunions are a mixture of grief and joyThe overwhelming feeling, though, is one of relief, that the nation has finally decided to honour them, and that they can hold up their heads for the first time since the war ended and don their old camouflage fatigues without the fear of seeing hatred or contempt in eyes around them, the feeling that with the passage of time they

have won respect.

The arms of the memorial are each nearly 80 metres long. The ground slopes in from either end, so the etched names appear out of the earth and disappear back into it. The, wall, with its more than 1000 slabs is level along the top, but the ground slope means it is about headheight at the ends and about three metres high at the junction of the two arms.

More than two million Americans served in Vietnam between 1959 and 1973; the first Americans killed were two advisers shot through the window of a house.

Many of the veterans still have nightmares about the war. A significant number believe, too,’- that it was “Agent Orange,” the defoliant, which was responsible for deformities in their children, born after they got

back — an argument that is still going on. Many veterans are still adjusting some 10 years later, but the majority have slipped back into the civilian mainstream with' only their memories to keep them apart. Many “dropped out” for a period after they came back, went on long drinking spells or smoked marijuana constantly to overcome the pain of their rejection by many of the Americans who had stayed at home, and the pain of their incomprehension. Counselling services are still working full-time.

The memorial is a “people’s”'memorial, the $7 million it cost was raised by public’subscription, with no help from the Government. Newspaper reports and interviews across the country show a new mood, one of reconciliation and acceptance.