Inside the arms of the Vietnam Wall, thousands wearing green, camouflage, and black leather flooded the lawn. Signs, flowers, notes to the dead lined the black, reflective surface of the wall. Most visitors that day held flags or signs or wore medals and patches.
Shedding tears, many seemed overcome by emotion. So many people affected by war so long ago.
Eleven Bucks students, with instructor Stephen Tow, stood in the midst of this gathering on Veteran’s Day. Tow takes students to Washington D.C. every year on that day.
Moving past the Lincoln Memorial toward the Korean War Memorial, the crowds became less dense until, at the Memorial itself, there were only about 50 observers.
The veterans dressed in light blue suit coats-the blue was taken from the colors of the United Nations-said they were part of a forgotten war.
“Most of us have died,” said one vet. “I’m 75”
The Korean War seems lost between the magnitude of World War II and the controversy of the Vietnam War. The distinction of Korea is generally know only to the soldiers.
The Korean War was the coldest war in American history. Soldiers fought through cold and ice. One veteran credited the newly invented sleeping bags for saving their lives.
During the three years of the Korean War, over 54,000 American soldiers died. It took ten years in Vietnam to cost 58,000 their lives.
Like Vietnam, the U.S. government never declared war in Korea; it was officially a police action. For this reason, it did not receive the attention a war would have produced. Vietnam also may have been overlooked had it not been for the protests captured on T.V.
Back at the memorial, one elderly man hugged his son and cried. Another man called his father on his cell phone to say “Happy Veteran’s Day.”
While the Vietnam Wall, with over 58,000 names engraved on it, captures the magnitude of the casualties of war, the Korean Memorial shows the human side of war.
A black wall, similar to the Vietnam Wall, displays faces of unidentified soldiers killed in the war. In front of it, 19 statues of soldiers on the march perpetually look forward with haunted eyes.
The group went finally to Arlington National Cemetery.
Miles of white stone and green grass, the dead reduced to dirt and stone. Here everyone is equal. The famous and the common, the rich and the poor all lie in rows. This is the reality of war.
Everyone is equal in death. Death remembers everyone.