Memorial Day

The Things They Carried

They carried P-38 can openers and heat tabs, watches and dog tags, insect repellent, gum, cigarettes, Zippo lighters, salt tablets, compress bandages, ponchos, Kool-Aid, two or three canteens of water, iodine tablets, sterno, LRRP-rations, and C-rations stuffed in socks. They carried standard fatigues, jungle boots, bush hats, flak jackets, and steel pots. They carried the M-16 assault rifle. They carried trip flares and Claymore mines, M-60 machine guns, the M-70 grenade launcher, M-14's, CR-15s, Stoners, Swedish K's, 66 mm Laws, shotguns, 45 caliber pistols, silencers, the sound of bullets, rockets, and choppers, and sometimes the sound of silence. They carried C-4 plastic explosives, an assortment of hand grenades, PRC-25 radios, knives and machetes.

Some carried napalm, CBU's, and large bombs; some risked their lives to rescue others. Some escaped the fear, but dealt with the death and damages. Some made very hard decisions, and some just tried to survive.

They carried malaria, dysentery, ringworms, and leaches. They carried the land itself as it hardened on their boots. They carried stationery, pencils, and pictures of their loved ones real and imagined. They carried love for people in the real world, and love for one another. And sometimes they disguised that love: "Don't mean nothin'!"

They carried memories!

For the most part, they carried themselves with poise and a kind of dignity. Now and then, there were times when panic set in, and people squealed, or wanted to, but couldn't; when they twitched and made moaning sounds and covered their heads and said, "Dear God," and hugged the earth and fired their weapons blindly, and cringed and begged for the noise to stop, and went wild and made stupid promises to themselves and God and their parents, hoping not to die. They carried the traditions of the United States military, and memories and images of those who served before them. They carried grief, terror, longing, and their reputations.

They carried the soldier's greatest fear, the embarrassment of dishonor. They crawled into tunnels, walked point, and advanced or flew into fire, so as not to die of embarrassment.

They were afraid of dying, but too afraid to show it. They carried the emotional baggage of men and women who might die at any moment. They carried the weight of the world, and the weight of every free citizen of America .

THEY CARRIED EACH OTHER.


Sent by Major Ross W., via Seamus

Graphics by Doc

New Names Etched Into Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall

Visitors pay tribute to the wall’s 58,260 etched names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, which bear testament to the ultimate sacrifice made by U.S. troops. Defense Dept. photo by Sebastian J. Sciotti, Jr.


By John J. Kruzel
American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, May 7, 2008 – The names of four U.S. servicemembers were etched into the glossy black walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial this week alongside more than 58,000 of their fallen comrades.

Finishing the addition today was the name of Raymond C. Mason, a Marine lance corporal who died a year ago as a result of ailing health stemming from a bullet wound that paralyzed him in February 1968 during the Tet Offensive.

In a ceremony at the wall here, Mason’s widow, Priscilla Mason, watched as an engraver inched a sandblaster over the Marine’s stenciled name with surgeonlike precision.

Priscilla got on bended knee, held a sheet of paper up to the bright, new inscription, and rubbed a crayon in diagonal strokes until “RAYMOND C MASON” was embossed against the white paper. She said she plans to have the outline tattooed onto her skin, and she has promised to make dozens of rubbings for friends back home in Riverside, R.I., when she returns here on Memorial Day.

“This is wonderful. He’s finally home,” she said when asked how she felt upon seeing the finished product on Panel 41E, Line 64 of the memorial.

The names of Richard M. Goosens, a Marine lance corporal, and Dennis O. Hargrove and Darrell J. Naylor, both Army specialists fourth class, were inscribed here yesterday. The Defense Department determined that their deaths, which occurred years after the end of U.S. operations in Vietnam, resulted from wounds suffered in a combat zone there.

The wall’s 58,260 etched names bear testament to the ultimate sacrifice paid by those U.S. troops, said R. James Nicholson, former secretary of Veterans Affairs.

“It’s also a tangible expression of the gratitude of the American people for those who served and died there,” he said in an interview today. “The hope is that more and more Americans will learn and grow to appreciate the sacrifice and the price that was paid to perpetuate our freedom.”

Designed by architect Maya Lin and built in 1982, the memorial consists of two black walls sunken into the ground, with a rolling mound of earth behind it sloping toward a heavily trafficked street.

“It was Maya’s vision for the memorial that it appear as a rift in the earth,” said J.C. Cummings, architect of record for the memorial. “At the same time, the wall serves a practical purpose of separating the visitor from the noise and the traffic of Constitution Avenue and the noise of the city.”

As a result, the architecture creates a quiet and contemplative atmosphere, he said, a design that allows visitors to have a respectful experience.

Jan C. Scruggs, founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, said adding the names this week completes the healing process for surviving friends and family members. The additions also reflect America’s solidarity with its servicemembers of past and present, he said.

“When you join the service, you can feel comfortable that the service is going to stand behind you,” Scruggs said in an interview today. “Especially the people who are serving today in Iraq and Afghanistan in combat, they need to know that we’re behind them and we appreciate what they’re doing.”


Related Sites:
Vietnam Veterans Memorial

More Photos

Bush Marks 25th Anniversary of Terror Attack on U.S. Embassy in Beirut

From DefenseLink:


President and Nancy Reagan file by the flag-draped caskets of victims of the April 18, 1983, bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, Lebanon in an April 23, 1983 file photo. Photo courtesy Ronald Reagan Presidential Library


By Donna Miles

American Forces Press Service

WASHINGTON, April 18, 2008 – Twenty-five years after terrorists detonated a massive car bomb, killing 52 people at the U.S. Embassy in Beirut, President Bush urged unity in condemning terrorism he said continues to threaten the United States.

The Islamic Jihad Organization, today known as the terrorist group Hizballah, launched the April 18, 1983, attack that left 17 Americans and 35 Lebanese citizens dead. Those killed included Marine Cpl. Robert V. McMaugh, an embassy guard, and Army trainers Sgt. 1st Class Richard Twine, Staff Sgt. Ben H. Maxwell and Staff Sgt. Mark E. Salazar.

Employees of the State Department and U.S. Agency for International Development and members of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Middle East contingent were also killed.

President Ronald Reagan quickly denounced the “vicious terrorist bombing” as a “cowardly act” that would not deter U.S. goals of peace in the region.

Bush marked the anniversary of the Beirut embassy bombing in a statement released yesterday remembering those killed and honoring the sacrifice of their family and friends and those wounded in the attack. He called the anniversary “a timely reminder of the danger U.S. diplomats, military personnel and locally employed staff bear in their service to the the United States.”

“Since the Beirut attack, we and citizens of many countries have suffered more attacks at the hands of Hizballah and other terrorists, backed by the regimes in Tehran and Damascus, which use terror and violence against innocent civilians,” Bush said. “All nations should condemn such brutal attacks and recognize that the purposeful targeting of civilians is immoral and unjustifiable.”

The bombing was the deadliest terrorist attack the United States had ever faced in its history, although more attacks were to follow.

The Beirut embassy bombing opened a new chapter in attacks against Americans overseas. Six months later, on Oct. 23, 1983, two truck bombs struck barracks in Beirut that houses U.S. and French members of the Multinational Force in Lebanon. The attacks, which occurred 20 seconds apart, killed 241 U.S. Marines, as well as 58 French servicemen and six civilians.

Other embassy attacks were to follow: in 1998 on the embassies in Dar es Salaam,Tanzania; and Nairobi, Kenya; and in 2002 on the U.S. Consulate in Karachi, Pakistan.

Bush noted that the people of Lebanon have remained resilient despite living the better part of three decades living under the threat of violence, assassinations and other forms of intimidation.

“They and their leaders continue to work for a peaceful and democratic future, even as Syria, Iran, and their Lebanese proxies seek to undermine Lebanese democracy and institutions,” he said.

“The United States will continue to stand with the Lebanese people and their government as they struggle to preserve their sovereignty and independence, seek to bring justice to victims of terrorism and political violence, and seek election of a president committed to those values,” Bush said.


Related Sites:
White House Statement