THE WALL OF FACES

FOREVER REMEMBERED

"If you are able, save for them a place inside of you....and save one backward glance when you are leaving for the places they can no longer go.....Be not ashamed to say you loved them....
Take what they have left and what they have taught you with their dying and keep it with your own....And in that time when men decide and feel safe to call the war insane, take one moment to embrace those gentle heroes you left behind...."

Quote from a letter home by Maj. Michael Davis O'Donnell
KIA 24 March 1970. Distinguished Flying Cross: Shot down and Killed while attempting to rescue 8 fellow soldiers surrounded by attacking enemy forces.

We Nam Brothers pause to give a backward glance, and post this remembrance to you, one of the gentle heroes lost to the War in Vietnam:

Slip off that pack. Set it down by the crooked trail. Drop your steel pot alongside. Shed those magazine-ladened bandoliers away from your sweat-soaked shirt. Lay that silent weapon down and step out of the heat. Feel the soothing cool breeze right down to your soul ... and rest forever in the shade of our love, brother.

From your Nam-Band-Of-Brothers

Rudy and I rode the Greyhound bus to El Paso together, and were inducted into the Army at Ft. Bliss, TX on the same day. We spent the last night before induction together, and visited some relatives of Rudy's in El Paso. We were put into different companies for Basic Training, but saw each other from time to time. He was so excited about going to Airborne School, but I don't know if he ever made it there. I went to Ft. Benning myself, and eventually to Vietnam, but I came home. I have thought of Rudy many times over the years, always with his outrageous laugh. Rest in Peace.