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You are here: Home / Foreign Affairs / Military / Late Night Open Thread: Not Forgotten

Late Night Open Thread: Not Forgotten

by Anne Laurie|  March 29, 202111:21 pm| 39 Comments

This post is in: Military, Open Threads

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NEW: President Biden and the First Lady pay an unannounced visit to place flowers at the Vietnam Memorial

March 29 is National Vietnam War Veterans Day pic.twitter.com/v3BYrdpDVe

— Jonathan Lemire (@JonLemire) March 29, 2021


For those who couldn’t come to the wall this year, we are here for you. #VietnamWarVeteransDay pic.twitter.com/RUqdmcT3BZ

— Jill Biden (@FLOTUS) March 29, 2021

The Vietnam War Veterans Recognition Act, signed into law in 2017, designates March 29 of each year as National Vietnam War Veterans Day. The efforts to honor those veterans include the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall. #WashingtonDC pic.twitter.com/erHy13DwlJ

— National Mall NPS (@NationalMallNPS) March 29, 2021

Today is National Vietnam War Veterans Day. On this date in 1973, the U.S. Military Assistance Command, Vietnam, disestablished. Thank you to all Vietnam Veterans and their families who served during this era. Read more at https://t.co/Vxw3svOk17. pic.twitter.com/EZzFtQKwez

— Veterans Affairs (@DeptVetAffairs) March 29, 2021

Visitors stopped by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial today to pay their respects. There are 58,279 names inscribed on The Wall, men and women who lost their lives or remain missing and unaccounted for from the Vietnam War. You can search every name at: https://t.co/qCXB6pWAWy pic.twitter.com/PwqPS3psMf

— Vietnam Vet Memorial (@VVMF) March 29, 2021

Perspective: Three groundbreaking journalists saw the Vietnam War differently. It’s no coincidence they were women. https://t.co/IntwycavaF

— The Washington Post (@washingtonpost) March 28, 2021

"If this memorial has helped to welcome you home and to help heal some of the turmoil and pain of that war, and to embrace you and honor you in our nation's capital, then I am deeply honored to have played my part in your story."—Maya Lin, designer of The Wall #WomensHistoryMonth pic.twitter.com/LydIymSba7

— Vietnam Vet Memorial (@VVMF) March 24, 2021

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Reader Interactions

39Comments

  1. 1.

    JoyceH

    March 29, 2021 at 11:23 pm

    Biden also took a rubbing of one of the names – does anyone know whose name it was?

  2. 2.

    Goku (aka Amerikan Baka)

    March 29, 2021 at 11:29 pm

    “If this memorial has helped to welcome you home and to help heal some of the turmoil and pain of that war, and to embrace you and honor you in our nation’s capital, then I am deeply honored to have played my part in your story.”—Maya Lin, designer of The Wall

    I still can’t believe wingnuts at the time hated her design. I’ve been there in person to see the memorial and it’s very humbling seeing all of the names of those that died on the wall

  3. 3.

    dmsilev

    March 29, 2021 at 11:33 pm

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ‘Black gash of shame’ was the term they used. Needless to say, it’s a good thing the selection committee had a bit more insight and were able to see just how powerful Lin’s design was.

  4. 4.

    Jackie

    March 29, 2021 at 11:37 pm

    Thank you for this post. I’ve been thinking of all our BJ Vietnam Vets today.♥️
    I’m not the least bit surprised President Biden and First Lady Jill took time to honor our fallen.

  5. 5.

    dlwchico

    March 29, 2021 at 11:37 pm

    Pictures my dad took during his two tours in Vietnam.

    https://www.flickr.com/photos/tasker/albums/139275

  6. 6.

    Jackie

    March 29, 2021 at 11:41 pm

    @dlwchico: Wow! Thanks for sharing!

  7. 7.

    phdesmond

    March 29, 2021 at 11:41 pm

    that article from the WaPo about the women journalists in Viet Nam sent me right down here.

  8. 8.

    randy khan

    March 29, 2021 at 11:55 pm

    I first saw the Wall on Memorial Day weekend in 1985.  My dad had driven me down to D.C., where I was working for the summer, and we spontaneously decided to go there on Saturday night.  We looked for the name of the son of a family friend, and the very act of looking for a particular name helps drive home  just how many people were lost in that war.  It was really moving, particularly at night.  I don’t think I’ll ever forget that moment.

  9. 9.

    HumboldtBlue

    March 29, 2021 at 11:57 pm

    @dlwchico: ​

    Fascinating, thanks for sharing.

  10. 10.

    rikyrah

    March 30, 2021 at 12:08 am

    @dlwchico:

    thank you

  11. 11.

    rikyrah

    March 30, 2021 at 12:09 am

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):

    It was powerful from the beginning

  12. 12.

    Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.)

    March 30, 2021 at 12:15 am

    Yet another instance of Biden’s decency and respect for the country he serves. Can anybody imagine Former Guy doing this?

  13. 13.

    namekarB

    March 30, 2021 at 12:18 am

    Just a young kid who didn’t realize how fu_cked up a war could be. The first clue would be when I was issued an M-16 like all the other infantrymen and not issued the typical red cross helmet cover. “I know you are a medic but you don’t want to look like a medic.” they said, “You wanna look like every other grunt.”

    https://www.dropbox.com/s/du5vwcggc4rkot4/Holder.023.jpg?dl=0

  14. 14.

    Soprano2

    March 30, 2021 at 12:22 am

    I saw the Vietnam Memorial with my husband in 2008. It’s an amazing experience to see it, walking down the hill to it. You don’t realize how tall the middle is until you get close. It has the effect of inspiring awe unlike any other memorial in D.C., with the possible exception of the Lincoln Memorial. I was a child during that war – to me, we’d always been at war, it was on our TV at 5:30 every night. I didn’t know anyone who was killed there, but my husband is a combat vet of that war. He took a rubbing from the wall; he only said it was someone who shouldn’t have died. Actually, that describes everyone who fought in that war and died.

    I remember what a shit fit conservatives threw about the design. I wonder if they ever admitted how wrong they were.

  15. 15.

    Emma from FL

    March 30, 2021 at 12:22 am

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): Why are you surprised? The wingnuts are always “supporting the troops” but  they don’t give a shit about the human beings that make up “the troops”.

  16. 16.

    Jager

    March 30, 2021 at 12:30 am

    On Veterans Day 1994, we had a wedding in Virginia that weekend. My girlfriend and I flew from Boston to DC, rented a car. We visited the Memorial on a foggy cool, November night. I found the names I came to find, 2 classmates, two Army buddies, and my old platoon Sgt’s name. In retrospect, it was the perfect time to be there. It was very moving. At the wedding, my girlfriend’s brother, the father of the groom, was a Vietnam vet. When I told him about our visit, he said “I wish I would have known you were going.”

  17. 17.

    Yutsano

    March 30, 2021 at 12:31 am

    In 1994 the Washington State Cougar basketball team got into the Tournament. 40 band people were allowed to go. Somehow as a freshman I was selected to go. Our first (and only) stop was Washington D.C. We were all excited as all get out. That was the first time I saw the Vietnam Memorial. And I found it both humbling and awe inspiring.

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka):  Maya Lin is* both a woman and Asian. Both of those points sent the wingnuts into fits.

    *correction to my language. Lin is very much alive. 僕はアホです

  18. 18.

    ?BillinGlendaleCA

    March 30, 2021 at 12:31 am

    @Lord Fartdaddy (Formerly, Mumphrey, Smedley Darlington Mingobat, et al.): Remember TFG called them “suckers and losers”.

     

  19. 19.

    HumboldtBlue

    March 30, 2021 at 12:32 am

    @namekarB: ​
     
    You sure as hell don’t look like a medic.

  20. 20.

    Mary G

    March 30, 2021 at 12:37 am

    @dlwchico: That is a monster bug.

  21. 21.

    Kineslaw

    March 30, 2021 at 1:04 am

    Part of what helped me understand the Vietnam War was spending three weeks in Vietnam in the mid-2000s on a cheap tour.  Part of the tour involved walking bent over through the extensive tourist versions of the Cu Chi tunnels, which, while bigger, are still in scale.

    What really brought home some of the aftermath for veterans of that war was a conversation I had at St. Arnold’s Brewery in Houston.  I started talking to an incredibly nice Hispanic family sitting next to me, everyone from the family patriarch to the grandkids.  The grandfather and I were talking and Vietnam came up and he said he fought in that war and I asked what he had done.  Frank mentioned that he had been forced into the role of tunnel rat a few times and I told him I had seen the tunnels and couldn’t imagine having to do that.

    It was the first time he had talked to a civilian and a younger adult that had some inkling of what that must have required of him.  I was also the first person Frank had talked to that had been to Vietnam as a tourist.  He got a pretty serious look on his face and asked about what people in Vietnam thought.  He was obviously yearning to hear that things turned out okay.  I gave him an answer that seemed to give him some closure, although I had to put a rosy spin on the the truth to get there.  A couple minutes later we rejoined his family in both conversation and Jenga.

    I’ll never forget Frank going from a man surrounding by a loving family, to a Veteran reliving trauma and seeking answers, and back to a family man in twenty minutes.

  22. 22.

    Kent

    March 30, 2021 at 1:14 am

    Time just keeps marching on relentlessly.  I’m 57 and so was just a child during the Vietnam war and only really remember snippets of it in the last years of the war.  Nightly news coverage in the early 70s.  The fall of Saigon, and so forth.

    My middle daughter just turned 18 this past week on March 20th.  She was born on the very day that Bush invaded Iraq.  I remember watching the start of the war on CNN in the hospital room in Juneau, Alaska on the morning of March 20, 2003 while we waited for my wife’s C-section.

    For my kids today, the Vietnam war is now farther in the distant past than World War 1 was to the Vietnam generation.  That is a sobering thought.  For my 18 year old daughter, 9-11 was something that happened 2 years before she was even born.

  23. 23.

    John Revolta

    March 30, 2021 at 1:56 am

    @Kineslaw: Wow.

  24. 24.

    Roger Moore

    March 30, 2021 at 1:59 am

    @Goku (aka Amerikan Baka): ​
     

    I still can’t believe wingnuts at the time hated her design. I’ve been there in person to see the memorial and it’s very humbling seeing all of the names of those that died on the wall

    That’s exactly why they hated it. They wanted something that treated the war as a noble endeavor. Showing its the terrible cost was one step away from admitting the DFHs were right, which was the last thing the wingnuts wanted.

  25. 25.

    John Revolta

    March 30, 2021 at 2:22 am

    @dlwchico: Great pictures! The last one is perfect.

  26. 26.

    Amir Khalid

    March 30, 2021 at 3:50 am

    This film taught me a lot about the Vietnam war: Dear America: Letters from Vietnam. It consists of letters home from soldiers, read by actors; period news footage; and some contemporary music that would have been on the typical soldier’s playlist if they had Spotify in the 1960s. It ends with Springsteen’s Born In The USA, played over footage of the Vietnam War Memorial and its visitors.

  27. 27.

    opiejeanne

    March 30, 2021 at 3:59 am

    I lost a cousin and a friend from HS in the Vietnam War, both 19 years old. I found both of their names on that wall.Very moving experience even if I hadn’t known anyone.

    Nearly lost The Boyfriend, although by then he wasn’t mine any more.  He came back with the 1000 yard stare, according to another friend. I saw him at the reunion in 2018 and he’d recovered; seemed like the same guy I was so nuts about.

  28. 28.

    opiejeanne

    March 30, 2021 at 4:00 am

    @dlwchico: All that mud.

  29. 29.

    Dan B

    March 30, 2021 at 4:08 am

    @Mary G: Katydid I believe.  They’re an amazing light green.  We had them in Ohio, smaller but still a large bug.

  30. 30.

    Amir Khalid

    March 30, 2021 at 4:15 am

    @opiejeanne:
    I’ve seen some of Matthew Brady’s photos of Union soldiers in the Civil War. Those photos are one century and half a world apart from Vietnam in the 1960s. But one thing that seems a constant for soldiers in both wars is All That Mud.

  31. 31.

    Dan B

    March 30, 2021 at 4:19 am

    @Kent: I was in the Freshman Design Studio at the University of Cincinnati when they announced the lottery draft numbers over live radio.  There were groans when someone’s number was read.  Architecture was a high failure program.  Failing meant going to Vietnam if your number was low.  Mine was 359 so no chance.

    I sent a letter to my draft board in Medina, Ohio that I was homosexual.  They replied that was not true “because there are no homosexuals here.”  It was a different era when America won every war and there were no deviants outside New York and Hollywood.  We all bled the same as did the heroic myth of the country.

  32. 32.

    Debbie(Aussie)

    March 30, 2021 at 4:19 am

    I have an Uncle who fought in Vietnam or more correctly, drove trucks. That had been before and was again , his job at home.

  33. 33.

    Dan B

    March 30, 2021 at 4:25 am

    @opiejeanne: A classmate lost both legs in the war.  He’d been the blonde guy with the perfect muscled physique.  I made contact with him via email a decade ago.  He had become embittered.  He’d won the Boston Marathon in his wheelchair – fastest finish of anyone in a chair or not.  That wasn’t enough to lift him out of his hatred of his fate.

    There were more than 58,000 casualties.  People died and the life force died, often long after.

  34. 34.

    raven

    March 30, 2021 at 7:02 am

    @dlwchico: I’ve been following your flickr for quite some time but I forgot your dad was a cannon cocker in Korea before his Vietnam tours. Thanks

  35. 35.

    raven

    March 30, 2021 at 7:07 am

    @namekarB: 4th ID, one of my high school buddies was with 4thr Divarty at Enari.

  36. 36.

    raven

    March 30, 2021 at 7:09 am

    @Debbie(Aussie): RAR?

  37. 37.

    raven

    March 30, 2021 at 7:15 am

    I picked up a copy of “You Don’t Belong Here: How Three Women Rewrote the Story of War,” which celebrates the work of FitzGerald, Kate Webb and Catherine Leroy. It’ very interesting but I almost threw it across the room reading, in the preface, how LBJ had “won” the Silver Star in ww2. That fucking  asshole was on a plane that went NEAR some action and turned away. He was in no danger and did nothing. No other person on the plane got any decoration. Fuck LBJ

  38. 38.

    Ruckus

    March 30, 2021 at 10:20 am

    One of my absolutely must do items is to visit The Wall.

    I can’t imagine the feelings that will bring back for me.

    I wasn’t sent there, many went and did their jobs and a hell of a lot of men and women died there. The other side are the people who served and were injured and have lived with those injuries for the following decades. I’ve seen them, in a navy hospital during that war, men with shattered lives, I see people every time I go to the VA who are still paying a price for serving their country. The Wall is for all of them, a reminder that war always has a price, and it’s always measured in lives.

    If you get Netflix, watch Resurface. It’s less than an hour out of your life. I’ve watched it countless times. Vietnam is a part of your life if you were of that age, war seems to have to be a part of all of our lives, no matter how you feel or felt about it.

  39. 39.

    raven

    March 30, 2021 at 11:17 am

    @Ruckus: I’ve been several times. I like it best in the dead of night or during Veterans Day. The couple of times I went during a regular day sucked because it’s just “Another Roadside Attraction”. I don’t begrudge anyone that but I don’t like being  there then. On the 10th Anniversary I was part of the group that read all the names. I made sure I got to read my good friend’s so it ended up at 3 am.

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