When we visited Washington, D.C. over the Spring break, there was another monument I added to the usual parade through history: The Lincoln Memorial, the Washington Monument, and the Jefferson Memorial. In 1983 I had visited the building site for the Vietnam Veterans Memorial briefly and now that it had been completed I wanted to see the finished product. Of all the monuments it seems the most true to its purpose: memorializing fallen soldiers. Although the VVM, sometimes called “the Wall” is majestic and beautiful, it is not just another architectural wonder in marble. It is thought provoking, relevant and controversial. There are 58, 267 names inscribed on the Wall.
Early on a Monday morning the Mall is quiet and deserted; the deep gash in the earth lies in shadow. As I walk close to the polished black granite, I feel a compelling urge to reach out, to trace the names with my finger. There is a heavy bound directory on a stand, but I don’t need to consult the book to find the name of a friend; the names are listed in the order in which they died. The day. The month. The year. February 1966 was a long month.
Don went to Georgetown University before he was commissioned to serve in the armed conflict of Vietnam. It was never declared war by an act of Congress. As a student, Don was working as a bartender in The Tombs of the 1789 Club on the corner of Prospect Ave and 36th Street in Georgetown. My sister and I would go down to the Tombs after school where Don would serve us a draft beer in cold mugs. He and my sister were pretty serious about each other.
When Don came home on leave from boot camp before he was shipped out, we were uncomfortably repelled by his army issue “skinhead” haircut. Behind his bravado, we could tell he was scared and that made us feel scared, too. And guilty. He was separated from our reality by drab green uniform; and then, by a grave.
He had been in Vietnam only two months when we learned that he had been killed in action. His death was only one of the reasons that we marched along Pennsylvania Avenue that spring in l967. We were part of a carefully bedraggled mob of youth, who shocked ourselves by chanting, “One, two, three, four, we don’t want your fucking war!” echoed from the facades of government office buildings that lined the streets. Men in dark suits and narrow ties snapped pictures of the marchers. FBI.
Swept along in the angry mass of humanity to the reflection pool on the Mall, I felt like a fraud. I felt that our conviction was tentative and weak. Were we in it for Don? Or, we were out there because it was cool? Passing a joint around right outside Johnson’s White House south gate was pretty cool, even back then.
I felt hot pressure behind my eyes as I traced Don’s name with my finger. We were young; we had no idea what the war was all about. We had blocked Don from our consciousness as soon as he took off his bartender’s apron and walked out the heavy oak door of the 1789. He became a statistic. And, now he had become a name inscribed on a black granite slab.
The grass looks very green against the polished stone and, like a black mirror, the slab reflects the grass, the sky, and my face. The whole war seems like a blur in my past. We were swept up in being part of our worthy “cause”, but we were young, and things like this monument never entered our minds.
