THE WALL OF FACES

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

James Dale Camp - 21 yrs

I feel everyone here needs some acknowledgement of their ultimate sacrifice for our country. You died much too young, you were most likely just out of school. You had a life that deserved many more years. You left behind people who loved you and who, I imagine still feel the pain of your loss to this day. I hope they have comfort in knowing you are at rest and that they will someday see you again in a much better place.

Your courage and efforts in Viet Nam will never be forgotten in my heart and in a multitude of others who have the utmost respect and honor for the soldiers who lost their lives there.

in Peace always
February 4, 2003

James Camp was a "Shake and Bake" like me. We both graduated from NCOC Class 33 of the 71st Co at Fort Benning Georgia in 1968. He was in a different platoon than me, and I have little recollection of him personally. He was probably drafted like most of us were and was "volunteered" for this school. We were in a training program to make new NCOs to replace the ones killed in Vietnam. We were infantry NCOs, not a healthy occupation in 1968. 16 of 145 of us died over there doing our jobs. I've been checking my old class yearbook of that school, comparing it with the names on the "Wall". I wish I could remember more about James than that he was just a classmate. He had to have been a capable soldier, he made Staff Sergeant, not all did. I don't know his unit or how he died, but I remember that we were once in the same class, training to be the best Sergeants we could be. I see his photo here tonight in our class yearbook and know that somewhere he has family who also look at photos of a young Staff Sergeant and wonder why? I'm sad for James and his family, and feel compelled to place some reflection of him on this "Wall".