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

Lyman is buried at Ft Logan Nat Cem.

Ricky Ditson and I were friends in grade school until my family moved to Ohio in 1957. His father was a friend of my father. While in the Air Force in 1967, I was lucky to be stationed at Lowry AFB in Denver, and met his parents again.

In February, 1969, I was stationed at Vandenberg AFB, California, when my parents notified me about Ricky being KIA.

Years later, I visited the Wall and found Rick's name. I have since visited two more times and a couple of years ago, the Moving Wall was in Kentucky, near where I live and I visited again.

Did I really know the name on the Wall? NO! I did not know Sgt. Ditson. I did not then and do not now know what an 11B40 is (his Army occupation code). I did not know much of anything about Ricky after 1957.

He is a child in my memory of summer days, winter days, school days, of the early 1950's. Bike riding, playing football, playing baseball, running through the leaves of fall, fishing at Sterns lake, sled riding, snow balls. He is part of me that no one can take from me.

Ricky, my other friends and myself are labeled baby-boomers. Many of us boomers are Vietnam veterans. Many, like myself, are Vietnam era veterans. I never went to Vietanm and I am thankful that I did not. That is one life experience I have no regrets about missing. I do know many Vietnam veterans; many have done well but some have not. One of my friends is still battling his wounds, physical as well as mental.

Two weeks ago, the Uncle of a family friend finally finished his Vietnam war with a self inflicted gun shot. He had enlisted back in the late 1960's and had talked a good friend into also enlisting. They both came home, he with memories and guilt but his friend with none. He never got over that, because his friend's name is on the Wall. His own name should also be there, but there is no panel on which to list those who fought in Vietnam, whose battlefield battles were long ago done, but whose memories and guilt never let the war end until the year 2000. He is still a casualty of the war.

It was this man's death at his own hands that got me thinking again of Ricky and the other names on the Wall. They did not save the world from Germany and Japan like our parents did in WWII. They did not save the world from communism. I cannot really tell you what they did do, nor do I want to get into a philosophical discussion about this. What I do know is that Ricky and all the others deserve to never be forgotten. I hope that when someone reads this remembrance and if they knew someone whose name is on the Wall that they remember them.

I remember.