THE WALL OF FACES

WILLIAM MCGREGOR PIERPONT

YOU ARE NOT FORGOTTEN

William,

This year my 8th grade students have been working on a project to put faces with the names of each of the men and women whose names are inscribed on "The Wall." It is our hope that through your picture your legacy will live forever.

Thank you for your service to your country and for your sacrifice.

You are not forgotten.


Photo courtesy of Gordon Pierpont

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 all your "Band of Nam Brothers"

Bill, we miss you, ran around with your younger brother Jim in high school and remember the good times we had over at your Dad's place on elm st. God bless you Bill you were a good friend to many, a gentleman and a patriot! the Byrnes family& Ernie Koski.