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The Moving Wall is a moving experience

October 10, 2009 by JD
Filed under: Murphy NC 28906, Murphy North Carolina, Musings 

I’m going to preface this by saying that since I was a teenager in high school I was very opposed to the war in Vietnam. I still hold that view.

Even so, I’ve never been one of those people who took it out on the people who served in the military in Vietnam.

It has been a long time since I really thought about the Vietnam War and that all changed this week.

The Cherokee Scout ran a series of articles about local people who served in the war and I was moved enough by one of them that I called him and thanked him for what he did. We had a pleasant conversation for the next 20 minutes. I already respected him a lot, but, now, even more.

(I won’t mention any names. This was between him and me.)

I was never in the military, but I worried about the draft all through high school.

Unlike many of my friends, I was not drafted, but they were and quite a few of them went to Vietnam.

On Friday, October 9, 2009, I went to see The Moving Wall in Murphy, NC.

(I uploaded some photos of The Moving Wall in Murphy, NC on MurphyConnections.com.)

Every volunteer I saw was friendly and helpful.

After walking down the flag-bedecked path to the Wall, located right next to the River Walk, we arrived at the booth where all guests were asked to sign the register.

I think one of my cousins was killed in the war, but he was not a close cousin and I didn’t know his name. When one of the volunteers asked if I was looking for anyone in particular, I told him my cousin’s last name. He looked in the huge book and found a number of people with that same name, but none of them were from the Atlanta area. So, I wasn’t going to look for a particular name on the wall.

(After talking with my brother this afternoon, I realized I was thinking of the wrong branch of the family. He told me the name of our cousin who died in Vietnam. I’m going to try to get back to the Moving Wall before they leave and see if I can find his name.)

I spent a few minutes just standing there looking at it.

The Moving Wall is longer than I thought, but only half as long as the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC.

I started walking down the Wall and looking at the names. At first, there are only a few names on each panel, but as you approach the center of the memorial, there are more and more names until the panels are full.

It affected me more than I thought it would. Even though I didn’t know anyone whose name was on that memorial, I had to stop along the way and read a few of the names and realize that these were real people who served and died in Vietnam.

Every now and then, someone would leave something stuck between two of the panels or something at the foot of the monument. There were photos of the people who had died, a few flowers, and even a pair of boots.

By the time I reached the end of The Moving Wall, I had tears in my eyes. I had to sit on one of the River Walk benches and let it all sink in.

At that moment, I had an entirely new way to look at the Vietnam War, and this time it was personalized by the names I read on that wall. Now, I understand the photos I’ve seen of people who visited the actual memorial in Washington.

I don’t know anyone on that wall, but others have friends, relatives, and people they served with memorialized there.

I felt a level of empathy for not just the names on the wall, but for the real people those names represent and for all the people who knew them.

It’s not just 58,000+ names, it’s hundreds of thousands of people who were personally affected by the war and the tragedy of so many lives cut short.

As I left, I stopped and thanked each volunteer I saw for helping to bring The Moving Wall to Murphy.

I realized that I was lucky and so were my friends. Of all the people I know who served in the Vietnam War, all of them came home alive. Some were radically changed and others were seriously wounded, but none of them died there.

Not everyone was that fortunate.

These words do not really represent how deeply I was moved by visiting the memorial, but they’re the best I can do.

I want to thank the Marine Corps League #1011, all the volunteers, and the sponsors, individuals, and businesses that contributed to bring The Moving Wall to Murphy.

If you haven’t visited, yet, you still have a couple more days.

All the best,

JD

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4 Comments on The Moving Wall is a moving experience

  1. Mitch on Sun, 11th Oct 2009 12:20 am

    2. John,

    Interesting to see you touched in this manner. My dad was in Vietnam, and I’m glad he came back home. I didn’t have an opinion on Vietnam, being too young, other than I didn’t want my dad there. I always honor military people for what they do.
    .-= Mitch´s last blog ..When Is The Last Time You Searched Your Name? =-.

  2. JD on Mon, 12th Oct 2009 7:01 am

    3. Good morning, Mitch.

    Obviously, I still have some unresolved issues with the Vietnam War, probably more than I realized.

    In my immediate family, I had an uncle who was in the Army in WWII. He was traumatized by what had happened and would almost never talk about it. His experience, of which I knew little before his death, shaped some of my opinions about war in general.

    Other than him, I had no other close family members who served in the military (since the Civil War).

    I entered high school in 1965 and graduated in 1970. The Vietnam War was in my mind just about every day.

    At the same time, I was watching how protesters were treated by the police and military. This applied to both war protesters and civil rights protesters.

    I watched – on TV – as they were routinely hosed down with fire hoses, beaten with sticks, threatened or attacked by dogs, and violently arrested, all for exercising their rights as Americans to protest.

    Some of those protesters were killed, and sometimes it was done by representatives of the government.

    I could not, then or now, wrap my head around the idea that these protesters were exercising rights guaranteed to them by the Constitution, and the representatives of our government were doing their best to deny them those rights. I didn’t understand it then and I don’t understand it now.

    The killings of the students at Kent State were particularly traumatizing. I think it was that day that I started distrusting the military.

    I know it wasn’t fair on my part to generalize from one incident to all government and military personnel, but I was young and still forming my opinions and views of the world.

    That, coupled with not really knowing anyone in the military, I believe, left me with some skewed and conflicting opinions.

    When I visited the Moving Wall and came face-to-face with all those names of people who had died in Vietnam, I started thinking of them as real people, not just statistics. I understood on an emotional level, for the first time, that these were people who had served our country to the best of their ability and who had died as a result.

    Some of them were drafted, some volunteered, some knew no better, some were career soldiers. Nevertheless, all of the names on that wall represented a person who served and died.

    Even now, when I think about it, I feel a real sadness.

    I’ll be thinking about this for a long time.

    The Moving Wall leaves town today and it is raining heavily, but I’m going to try to visit one more time before it goes.

    I’m still surprised that this experience affected me the way it did.

    All the best,

    JD

  3. Mitch on Mon, 12th Oct 2009 8:35 am

    4. Hi John,

    There’s this strange thing about protest. It’s not always peaceful, and sometimes, law enforcement does what it has to do, whether we like it or not.

    For instance, I’ve seen the film of the Kent State protest. I’ve also seen the film of the Selma March led by Dr. King. Did you notice any differences in the two protests?

    The King protests and marches never crossed the line of being physically threatening by the group of people protesting. They never yelled “kill the pigs” or anything like that. They knew that if they had, they’d have all been slaughtered without a second thought, and no one would have ever been convicted.

    The Kent State protests, and many others, including the protests at the 1968 Democratic Convention, were violent protests in a way, not peaceful like Dr. King’s. Police feared for their lives at times. Any idiot knows you can’t just go rushing at the police, even if you say you were faking it, and not expect retaliation. Well, maybe that’s not true, since idiots did it, police beat them and shot at them, and, well, you know the rest.

    Sometimes there’s this sense of entitlement that I see some people have when they believe they’re exercising their constitutional rights. It’s the same kind of thing I see with these people who stand outside of Planned Parenthood and yell at women who go there for anything whatsoever, but are immediately being accused of going there to get abortions. The Constitution gives them a right to protest; it doesn’t give anyone the right to bully for their cause.

    I bet you didn’t see us going down this particular road on a Monday morning. ;)
    .-= Mitch´s last blog ..Fake Commenter Names =-.

  4. JD on Mon, 12th Oct 2009 2:50 pm

    5. Good afternoon, Mitch.

    No, I really didn’t see us going down this road today.

    I have not looked at the films from any of those events after the fact.

    It’s been what, about 40 years or so, since I really took the time to think about all of this, because I’m sure I compartmentalized it and moved on.

    I don’t have a clear recollection of the Kent State or Selma events. It’s all a blur, and I admit that my memories are not accurate. I do have strong emotions attached to what I think I remember of those events, however.

    After awhile, it just got to be too much for me to deal with. If I’d been older and had a better sense of myself and the world in which I lived, I might have been able to handle it better.

    Speaking only for myself, as a teenager, I couldn’t see a continuum. Everything was or was not. I’m sure that skewed my perspectives and probably led to wrong conclusions.

    I also didn’t have the life experience I have now. As a teenager, I didn’t know anyone personally who had died. I didn’t understand the event nor the emotions surrounding it.

    I’m a bright guy, but there is a very big difference between intellectually understanding something and going through the entire experience, especially the emotions.

    All that said, I did not recollect the points you made about the protests at Kent State and Selma. In my mind, they were lumped into the same group and that’s not a great way to understand something.

    I agree with your points about free speech versus bullying.

    To tie this all back to the Moving Wall and the Vietnam veterans, I can see, somewhat, how all the experiences I’ve had in the intervening years have helped me to have a better understanding of what the real, actual people and their family and friends went through.

    I never understood that before last Friday. Or maybe it would be better to say that I never really felt it before then.

    When we form impressions, opinions, and biases early in life and then box them away, it can lead to all sorts of conflicting opinions and perceptions.

    Maybe, one of these days, I should watch some documentaries of those protests and see how I respond to them as the adult (old guy) I am now.

    Thanks, Mitch.

    All the best,

    JD

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