Before the Vietnam Memorial, war memorials predictably portrayed soldiers in arms, perhaps on horseback, ruggedly leading a charge or looking into a far-away place where only might or rank or valor could take you.
The Vietnam Memorial and its doppleganger, The Wall That Heals, recently on view behind Stillinger Family Funeral Home in Greenfield, is different. It is an egalitarian war memorial. The names you see are of doctors and ditch-diggers, students and farmers. But on this wall, they are indistinguishable, one from the other. The names are second-generation Santiagos from south Texas; fifth-generation Schmidts from middle-America Germantowns; Little Italy’s Russos; the Joneses of Harlem; the Woos of San Francisco’s Chinatown.
The memorial gives no credence to rank. The only way to make this memorial is if you gave your life during the Vietnam War. The memorial doesn’t distinguish between Navy, Army, Air Force or Marine service. There is no tally of how many medals were won. The tally, simply, is of the dead. Those who made the ultimate sacrifice, whether called to duty by an internal code or forced by circumstance, does not matter on this wall. They all paid the same price.
The black panels of continuous white type resemble newspaper columns, but in reverse color. Each panel has a left- or a right-hand typographical justification. The non-aligned side of type looks jagged, like a page torn out of a book, like a life torn out of its prime.
The creeping shape of the war is revealed in the memorial’s design: it starts small and crescendos to swollen lists of names—liked stacked bodies. After the panels rise in height, they steadily grow smaller as the war draws to a close.
Although this depiction may represent a beginning and an end, we know that war never ends. Is this why the memorial has a blank space at the end of the shortest east-west panels? Is it telling us there is room for more names and they will come?
Late at night, The Wall commands attention. It is a time of small crowds, hushed voices, and the illuminated sky shining on us as it did these honored dead from decades ago, half a world away. It is a peaceful night in America, and the sky is clear. Were there any nights like this in Vietnam for the American soldiers? For the ransacked Vietnamese?
The Wall That Heals is a moving portable Vietnam Memorial that was a long time coming. I’m not referring to the preparations for it, although they were great. I’m referring to the national readiness to have the conversation about the ugly war, where United States soldiers came home bedraggled and not to glory, but to disdain.
Just because they are not on the wall doesn’t mean the returning veterans didn’t pay a heavy price. They still pay today. The horrors of war can’t be unseen. The seeming abandonment of your countrymen and countrywomen can’t be forgotten. Fighting for a lost cause makes scars.
Yes, there are many names not on the wall. Yet, not just the names of our own.
They are the names of the Vietnamese who died in hamlets, villages, mountains, and rice paddies the same as our soldiers. Perhaps the ultimate war memorial that honors all of the dead will signal the beginning of a new era. An era in which the full cost of a war is accounted for, and we find it too hard to bear.
Let us always honor our sacrificed. And let us know the cost of war, both home and in faraway places.
Donna Steele is a civic leader who advocates for informed citizen participation, transparent representation, and government accountability.
