THE WALL OF FACES

Semper Fi, Marine.

Thinking of you,on this day (as well as many others) on what would have been your 60th birthday. I believe I still have the letters you wrote me from training camp & Nam, somewhere, but always in my heart. I miss your smiling eyes, your laugh. How you would have loved to have lived & have seen how the world has changed.

Richie served while I did not. Though I regreted his choice I had the greatest respect possible for his decision. He was the first of my friends to fall and I honor his sacrifice and I wish we might have had many more good times together.

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 heros 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 heros 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

Richard is buried at Long island Nat Cem.