THE WALL OF FACES

Yesterday was Memorial Day. As every other day I thought of you and missed you. I'm grateful you served and were my friend.

I can't believe it's almost 42 years since we lost you. We were just kids. I have lived a lifetime and you will be forever a young GI. Your photo still hangs on my bedroom wall. You are loved and remembered. Blessed be your memory.

Darrell is buried at Cokato Luthern Cemetery in Cokato, Minn.

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

Darrell...I miss you so very much. I was with you when you died. on that fateful day of April 12,1968 when you left us.You will always be in my prayers.I will continue to honor the fact that we were as close as brothers.God Bless you always.