THE WALL OF FACES

Melvin Sodowsky is fondly remembered by the soldiers with whom he served from “D” Company, 1st Battalion (Mechanized), 50th Infantry. Visit the Website of the Association formed by these 50th Infantry Vietnam Vets at: http:www.ichiban1.org. Post a note on our “Message Board” and possibly some of our members who served with Melvin will respond. Search our site for photos and other documentation and(or) contact me (Jim Sheppard, Association Historian) at [email protected] for details about our Memorial for our men lost in action at the current day 1st Battalion, 50th Infantry Headquarters at Fort Benning, Georgia. Memorial Wreath Laying Ceremonies are held every two years at the reunions of the 50th Infantry Association.

Melvin is buried at Lone Star Cemetery in Fairview, OK. PH

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 and patriots 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