THE WALL OF FACES

I was ten years old when my Mom and I went to visit your family in Beaver Falls. While staying in the house, I noticed medals and a picture with a profile of your face. It was explained to me that you had been lost in Vietnam. Over 25 years later, I vividly remember the conversation and the photo. I think of you from time to time and what you might have been like. Perhaps one day we'll eventually meet, but I will forever and always save a place for you in my heart.

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

"An God said who shall we send.I answered I am here,send me."

Isaiah 6:8

Facta Non Verba

Please, if you could give me any information or a picture of Nicholas, I would really appreciate it. I never knew him as I wasn't born until 1978, but I saw his name on the traveling Vietnam Memorial Wall and have been interested ever since and I am trying to get a KIA bracelet of him.

Nicky was a year behind me in high school. We had a party at my house a few weeks before he left for the marines with his brother and our buddy Ronnie. Nicky was one of the greatest kids ever. He really knew how to have fun. And what a ladies man! I was devastated when I found out he died. I had been drafted in Feb 1968 and had only been in a few months when I learned of his death. It was a privilege to know this hero.