THE WALL OF FACES

On May 16, 1971, a New York Times article described heroin use by American troops in Vietnam had reached epidemic proportions. The piece reported that 10 to 15 percent of lower-ranking enlisted men were heroin users, and military officials working in drug‐suppression estimated that as much as a quarter of all enlisted personnel, more than 60,000 men, were hooked. They added that some field surveys reported units with more than 50 percent of the men on heroin. In Vietnam, the drug was plentiful, cheap, and 95 percent pure. Its effects could casually be achieved through smoking or snorting, as compared to the U.S., where the drug was impure, only about five percent heroin, and had to be main-lined or injected into the bloodstream to achieve a comparable high. The habit, which cost a hundred dollars a day to maintain in the U.S., cost only five dollars a day in Vietnam. PVT Bruce A. Abdellah served with the 576th Ordnance Company, 3rd Ordnance Battalion, 29th General Support Group, U.S. Army Support Command (Saigon), 1st Logistical Command, U.S. Army Vietnam. Eight months after arriving in Vietnam, Abdellah was hospitalized with a staph infection caused by non-sterile intravenous heroin injections. He expired a few days later on October 26, 1971, at the 24th Evacuation Hospital at Long Binh from staphylococcal septicemia (blood poisoning). Abdellah was eighteen years old. His body was forwarded to the U.S. Army Mortuary at Tan Son Nhut Air Base where Graves Registration personnel prepared the remains for shipment back to his family in Maine. [Taken from coffeltdatabase.org]

Image courtesy of Redbird Research LLC, Saint Charles, MO.

Never forgotten.

HOOAH

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circled flight.
I am the soft stars that shine at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

As long as you are remembered you will never truly die....

On the remembrance of your 68th birthday, your sacrifice is not forgotten.

Forever 18.

HOOAH