« September 2006 | Main | December 2006 »
October 16, 2006
On War
The typeface was smaller than I expected.
But then it would have to be.
I visited Washington D.C. for the first time this morning. I took the two hours allotted by my parking meter to walk up and down "the mall" - the area between the Capitol building and the Lincoln Memorial. I checked out the usual touristy things along the way, of course.
But the most difficult was "the wall".
There's really no reason for me to have any particular attachment to the Vietnam War. It was over, really, before I had to worry about it. I didn't know anyone who had gone, and I didn't lose any friends or family to it.
And yet.
Maybe it was the news (NBC's "Huntley/Brinkley Report" at the time) that we watched regularly that stuck in my mind. Each night news of a handful of American soldiers killed was contrasted with thousands of enemy casualties. With footage. In black and white.
Apparently all those hand-full's added up.
And that's what struck me this morning.
There were a lot of names on that wall. The type face was smaller than I was expecting, and the wall itself larger. It had to be to hold all those names.
58,253 names.
58,253 people.
The Vietnam Veteran's Memorial, or simply "The Wall", is an emotional place for many. Gifts and remembrances are left regularly. The image here is of a birthday card - presumably left for one of the wall honoree's. Elsewhere was a program for an upcoming 40th high school reunion.
The Wall is still contemporary. Visitors arrive every day that knew the people that those names represent. Perhaps in 20 or 40 years the impact of The Wall will change - much like memorials for earlier wars are starting to represent abstract events more than specific people we knew and loved.
But for now, it's real, and it's tangible.
And perhaps because these names were close to being my contemporaries, I feel it.
Many of the memorials, in fact many of the most striking memorials, in Washington D.C., and elsewhere, are about war. That's a sad reflection on humanity.
And yet, I do believe we need these memorials, and that we each need to visit them and understand what they represent while the people those memorials honor are our contemporaries.
Maybe building them and seeing them and feeling them will move us a little closer to not needing them any more.
I can dream.
Posted by Leo at 12:59 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack