A look at the Vietnam Memorial Wall at 27

By Monty Marengo

A Vietnam Memorial Wall Park Ranger uses a ladder to assist visitors with locating and tracing a veteran’s name near the top of one of the panels. (Monty Marengo photo)

Walk down to the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, DC, take a left at the bottom of the stairs and walk 400 feet east and visit the most controversial attraction at our nation’s Capitol: the Vietnam Memorial Wall.

Nested on a two-acre plot remains a list of men and women who fought the single most unpopular war to date - the Vietnam War, that lasted 16 years from 1959-1975. A war, that most Americans in that era believed, “We had no business being in.” When one war ended, another war started in the States - the beginnings to honor the 58,256 men and women to date who either died in the Vietnam war or who are missing to this day.

A nationwide contest - the largest of any kind - was held to honor Vietnam’s dead and missing. Over 2,573 proposals were entered and finally 1,421 made the cut, then it was pared down to 232, then 39, then on May 1, 1981, the eight highly trained architects picked the winning number: 1026. To avoid any political favor or gender favor, and to preserve anonymity; all designs were entered by numbers only, with no names, no gender, and no race identified.

Seek and ye shall find as this young boy finds out where his grandfather’s name is on one of the many panels of the Vietnam Memorial Wall. (Monty Marengo photo)

Winning the $50,000 first place prize was a 21-year old student from Yale. Maya Ying Lin entered the competition to fulfill a requirement for a class in funeral architecture. And when Lin came to the press conference, many Americans were upset that the winning memorial design went to a woman and a woman from Asia nonetheless. Protests were in the making for another contest with different guidelines. But, fair-is-fair and the eight men went with Lin’s design despite nationwide discontentment.

In 1979, former veteran Jan C. Scruggs started the first successful movement to construct the “Wall.” Donations came in, a flurry of small bills and a large gift from Ross Perot ($160,000) made the “Wall” a reality. On March 16, 1982, work began for this $4.3 million project that was totally funded by private funds - and without any federal help.

But this “Wall” was unlike any of the 156 statues or memorials in Washington DC, it had numbers, it had names, and it had 58,256 stories - at least one story for person listed on the Wall.

The numbers: the Wall doesn’t give the names of the 23,000 men and women who fled America and ran for Canada. It doesn’t give the names of the 14,000 men from Canada who fought for the United States during the war’s sixteen-year span. But it does list the 57 Canadians who died for the US and had their names on the Wall.

Want more numbers? Of the 3.1 million men and women who went to fight, 84 percent were Caucasian, 12.5 percent were African American, 2 percent were Hispanic, and the other 1+percent were Native American, Canadian and/or Australian. Of all the troops and medical personnel who went to the Vietnam War, 26 percent were drafted and the rest (74 percent) were volunteers!

The state with the most killed and missing: California with 5,572. The two states in the lower 48 with the fewest killed and missing: Vermont with 100 and Wyoming with 119. Montana had 268 veterans missing and/or killed.

Still want more numbers? The number of sets of brothers on the Wall killed: 35 sets of brothers; of father and sons killed: three. Those killed the very first day they arrived in Vietnam: 997. Native Americans killed in Vietnam: 226. The school with the most names on the Wall: Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia, PA: 54 students perished.

That’s right, 54 young men between the ages of 18-24 fought in the Vietnam War between the years 1965-1974. No other school experienced so much pain and sorrow. Of those killed from Thomas Edison High School at the age of 16: five. Twelve more of those young men died at the age of 17.

But just when you thought it couldn’t get any worse, there was a little town in Beallsville, Ohio (population 475), it had six young men die making it the highest per-capita loss in the United States. Year with the most killed: 1968, with over 16,589 men and women gone within that 365-day period.

But with all the numbers, there comes names - famous names or so they appear until you dig a little deeper. There’s a Michael Cooper on the Wall - not the one that was the 1987 Defensive Player of Year with the NBA and who played with the Los Angeles Lakers. There is one John F. Kennedy, but not the JFK. There’s one Roger Clemons. Looking for James Dean? There are two by that name. Remember John Rambo? There’s one, but this Rambo is from Libby, Montana instead the one from the Hollywood movie series.

Looking for a man named Smith? There are 667 men with that last name. Of those numbers and name, 37 are John Smith from 25 different states.

Still want more names? Take the name of the youngest man killed in action on the Wall: Dan Bullock. In the book near the Wall it states he was 20 years old when he was killed. He lied.

Bullock entered the Marines in September of 1968. Went to war in May 1969 and died 20 days later in June of ‘69. He was only 15 when he was sent home to North Carolina in a box. (The oldest man to die in Vietnam: Dwaine McGriff at age 63).

Take Carol AE Drazba, a nurse, and her fiancé Charles M. Honour, a pilot. Drazba was only one of eight women on the Wall. They were engaged and had their wedding date set for March 20, 1966, but they were both were killed together in a helicopter accident a month earlier on February 18, 1966.

The following day after Honour’s and Drazba’s death, a gift from Drazba’s mother had arrived in Vietnam: a wedding dress.

This Wall with its names and numbers brings out the emotions of those who served this war. The Wall only bears the names of those dead or those who are missing. With each name, a diamond for confirmed dead or a cross for the 1,800 veterans still missing 50 years later. The names are organized chronologically from 1959-1975.

Since the dedication of the Vietnam Wall in November 1982, an additional 317 names have been placed on the Wall.

But unlike all other memorials in Washington DC, this one brings out the raw emotions of the human spirit. Want to see men just cry? Go to the Wall.

Want to see men just freeze? Go visit the Wall. No other memorial in America will show you the pain these young men and women went through. No other memorial in the United States will allow men and women to release their sadness, their guilt, and stress, like the Wall.

This Wall was built for a reason.

Of the 58,256 who are dead or missing from the Vietnam War, about 17,000 of them were married. They left behind 20,000 children who never knew their fathers. Men who never watched their sons play baseball, men who never saw their children off to their first day of school. Men who will never see their daughter’s wedding day or fathers who will never share Thanksgiving dinner with their wife, family and friends.

Since 1982, over 100,000 items have been left at the Wall: Baseball gloves, high school Lettermen jackets, photographs from past girlfriends, flowers, and cans of beer left from buddies fill the wall every day. Each night around 10 p.m., all the items are gathered and stored in a warehouse a couple of miles away - except for food and flowers, which are thrown away. (Plans are being made to make an underground museum for all the items that have been left at the Vietnam Wall).

The Wall even had its affect on local troops from the Tribes and Lake County in Northwestern Montana. Young men who went to Vietnam and never came back alive.

From Arlee, gone is William John Fisher; from Charlo, gone is John Charles Mattheisen.

Local soldier Roger Marvin Courville of Pablo is gone, too. Add in Jack Marvin Baker and Wayne Barnum, both of Ronan; Gary James Grenier and Richard Earl Westfall, both of Polson; Clarence Frank Bristol, Jean Baptiste Inchashola, John Louis Pokerjim, Dale Franklin Rollins and Gilbert Leroy Zerbst - all five from St. Ignatius, and you just might have 12 of the bravest young men around. Who like many men that went to Vietnam, went straight into enemy lines of fire from high school. (Average age of men in Vietnam: 22 years and four months old).

A second Vietnam Veterans Memorial depicts the races of people in these three soldiers. (Monty Marengo photo)

They, too, left behind family, friends and even children. Sure, the Vietnam War was very unpopular but these 12 men traveled 9,000 miles to fight a war for freedom and for our liberties. They may be gone, but there is a saying about the Vietnam Memorial Wall, “Most walls are put up to keep people out, this WALL was put up to bring people together.”

Editor’s note: Monty Marengo of Polson has visited Washington DC’s Vietnam Memorial Wall the past four consecutive years and nine years as a guide, arranging tours from the reservation to Washington DC; Cooperstown, home of the Major League Baseball’s Hall of Fame; and has even arranged for groups to attend a NY Yankee game. Char-Koosta News thanks and appreciates Marengo’s efforts and desire to provide us with his experiences. Marengo can be reached at 212-1699 or by email: montymarengo@yahoo.com