THE WALL OF FACES

Addressing a Memorial Day service as keynote speaker, I used your words, "If you are able...." They were more than fitting and it was an honor to share them with the world.

Michael:

Recently I made a journey to a cemetery in California to say good-bye to someone I knew 36 years ago in the Army. It was something I've needed to do for a very long time.

Your Poem: "If you are able" helped me do this.

I am sure it has helped many people over the last 30 years.
I found Marcus and he shared some things about you. Your friendship meant a great deal to him. A lot of people still miss you.

It is good that you are finally home after so many years. I am glad of that. I am sure it means a great deal to your family. I see that on the site they still list you as MIA. I don't know how to change that.

I would just say, "WELCOME HOME, MICHAEL."

Godspeed.

Jane Fulkerson
US Army 1965-68

Thank you for your poetry, gentle spirit.
You have helped many of us in our survival in the "real world."
Godspeed.

Outrider
Sgt. US Army 65-68

Sir:
I am using one of your writings in church as a reminder to those who wish to forget all that you were and all that you are. Our Gentle Hero.

"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."
-- Michael Davis O'Donnell

Somehow, I knew his poetry would survive. Those quiet reflections couldn't simply disappear. And as I read those words in a worn issue of Time's special edition on Vietnam, my thoughts drifted back to two earlier encounters with O'Donnell; 21 years ago in Vietnam and on a spring day nine years ago in the nation's capital.

"A day lost somewhere in the Pacific...
There are no days any of us can come back to.
Friday was a day I never had at all..."

I never knew the warrior. But I think I understood the poet. O'Donnell died in 1970, killed while piloting a rescue helicopter in South Vietnam. But his poetry touched something in me that even today I can't explain. Until the Time article, I had read only one of his poems, one selection from a book he called "Letters from Pleiku." The poem and a short story about O'Donnell appeared in Stars and Stripes. I remember the day I tucked the article away in my wallet. That was one of the days it didn't rain.

"On the days there is no mail from you,
I sit quietly in my room and reread what I have...
Because I love you.
I am alone for the first time in my life..."

For 13 years, I carried that tattered and worn poem, forgotten among the other things you never seem to take out of your wallet. But I didn't rediscover my poet friend until 1984, his name one of the more than 58,000 etched in the black granite wall of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.

I went to the "the wall" looking for this name ... and for something more, something personal.

"Sometimes there is not one thing worth feeling... Some feelings are not worth a thing.
I will not recall this day except to add it to a growing number not worth recalling.
They all become the same in the end..."

So many names. Each one special to someone. Each one gone forever. Emotions come to the surface quickly. And as you study the names, trace them with your fingers, and remember... your own image is reflected. A sobering experience.

I found his name. Just above eye level on Panel 2W, Row 40. His name and a small MIA cross. Michael Davis O'Donnell never came home.

"Heaven knows I'm not so proud of everything I've done... I mean I've let some people down.
And heaven knows there's so many things left I've got to do...

From my wallet I pulled the clipping, worn and brown from years of carrying. I read it once more and attached it to the wall next to his name.

Then, heart pounding and eyes stinging, I walked away.

"God knows I'm not so sure of Him these days.
He also knows why people are bleeding to death in the back of my helicopter...
And He understands how we can wash the floor clean and just one day later forget He knows anything at all...

I left it there... a small brown scrap of paper fluttering in the Washington breeze.

The warrior didn't come home. But the poet did.

(Thanks for letting me share that. I served as an Army correspondent in Vietnam in 1971-72. Back home, I became a newspaper editor, and wrote this as a column for Memorial Day 1993. I never met Michael O'Donnell, but I sure wish I had. -- Dave Berry, Tyler, Texas.)