The wall that heals

[Mugzy]

The wall that heals is a half-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. that travels around the US.

It was in a city close to me this weekend and I went to a dedication ceremony.

It was really moving to walk down the length of the wall looking at so many names of solders that lost their lives in Vietnam. It was a very nice ceremony.

Her are a few photos I took while there.

[CreepingCharlie]

Thats really cool. To have it come to people rather than have people travel all the way out to D.C to see it. It would never come to my area b/c I only live about 50 minutes away from D.C anyway.

[[ecgn] btt]

I saw the one in D.C. when I was a kid. nine or ten maybe. To see it as an adult, I would probly get more out of it. I am moved everytime I see this pic.

[cavalierlwt]

I saw it in DC. I'll never forget how the crowd standing in line was making all the noise you'd expect a crowd to, talking, joking around etc. As we got closer to the wall though, the crowd got quieter and quieter. Walking by the wall, you could hear a pin drop. There was just such a somber atmosphere hanging over it, you could really sense it.
DC's a great place to visit, people should really check it out. You don't have to spend a ton of money either. Just stay in a hotel in Maryland (north of DC) about an hour and a half up the road, right off 95. Hotels up there are cheap. If you don't like driving around in big cities, just take 95 down to Greenbelt Metrorail station (right off the highway) and take the metro into DC, takes you right to Mall (Washington Monument), Smithsonians, all right there at that exit.

[PudriK]

Of all the memorials, the Vietnam wall is the most powerful. It's impossible to stand there and not be overwhelmed by all the names. A very appropriate memorial for a war which resulted in a lot of its veterans being villified instead of honored.

Ditto on DC. Grew up in the MD surbubs, and my family is still there. If you're going to visit, I'd take a whole week off if you can, there is so much to see, but not in the summer. It gets to be a mad-house with all the tourists. Ditto, cherry-blossom time, whenever that is, though they are beautiful.

[SavageParrot]

Imagine how large the vietnamese equivalent would be if they built it on the same scale

[Twister026]

I plan on going to the wall.

[cavalierlwt]

Originally posted by SavageParrot
Imagine how large the vietnamese equivalent would be if they built it on the same scale

It's tough to say exactly, but I've heard estimate thrown around from many hundreds of thousands to a million. I know a lot Vietnamese people who were fairly young during the war but remember it pretty well. Very simple people who had no understanding or need for ideologies of any sort. Farmers and fishers who lived on the same chunk of land as their ancestors had for a thousand years, doing the same work their ancestors had done. Unfortunately Vietnam always wound up in the middle of a war. Japanese occupied them, France occupied them, then they become the war zone between Communism and the Western world. All this seemed to so important to people back then, once the Berlin Wall fell, everybody just realized that Vietnam, Cuba and about a dozen other little proxy countries were a waste of anyone's time and resources. Meanwhile those countries all wound up getting the short end of the stick.

[Twister026]

I wish that war didn't happen.

[cavalierlwt]

Yeah me too. It's funny though, I think if I were an adult back in the early sixties, I would totally believe in the 'Domino Theory' (the reason why we fought in Vietnam). Looking back, we can see that it turned out to be false. Hindsight is always 20/20.

[I banged Oprah]

Living right outside of DC, I've been to the wall many times. It's pretty moving whatever time of the day you go, but I absolutely recommend visiting it at night. Very powerful. Same goes with the Korean war memorial, which is essentially a platoon of lifesize statues looking like they are walking on patrol.

Just my .02 cents...

[cavalierlwt]

I thought the Lincoln Memorial was pretty moving as well. Love that statue of Abe, plus the Gettyburg memorial on the wall. Standing there reading it,t hat last line jumped out at me 'and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth.'
Poor Lincoln had some really heavy things weighing on him.

Originally posted by cavalierlwt
I saw it in DC. I'll never forget how the crowd standing in line was making all the noise you'd expect a crowd to, talking, joking around etc. As we got closer to the wall though, the crowd got quieter and quieter. Walking by the wall, you could hear a pin drop. There was just such a somber atmosphere hanging over it, you could really sense it.
DC's a great place to visit, people should really check it out. You don't have to spend a ton of money either. Just stay in a hotel in Maryland (north of DC) about an hour and a half up the road, right off 95. Hotels up there are cheap. If you don't like driving around in big cities, just take 95 down to Greenbelt Metrorail station (right off the highway) and take the metro into DC, takes you right to Mall (Washington Monument), Smithsonians, all right there at that exit.

Exactly what i did

Originally posted by Twister026
I plan on going to the wall.

diddo

[SavageParrot]

The official north vietnamese figures put it at 1.1 million dead, 600,000 wounded. Add to that another 223,748 south vietnamese troops and then double it with civilian casualties and add on non fatal casualties and it looks like that.

Of course the figures are most likely inaccurate but wither way it's an awful waste of human life

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War