A name can only be a name, until something can be attached to it. It is only in ignorance that someone can look at the names etched on a war memorial, and no matter which war it is for, say that those were people who died for nothing. A wartime prayer told by Eleanor Roosevelt adequately sums up why these names should mean something to us: "Dear Lord, lest I continue my complacent way, help me to remember that somewhere, somehow out there a man died for me today. As long as there be war, I then must ask and answer am I worth dying for?" Granted that today it would be more apt to say someone died for you as opposed to the man mentioned in the prayer. Today I had a chance to visit a memorial and museum dedicated to a war that had the nation torn. I also had the chance to see the facility with a veteran as my tour guide.
The Vietnam War was a war that cost many their lives and their friends. And unfortunately many of those soldiers that returned home didn't receive the respect they deserved. It's difficult to imagine coming home from a tour of duty and the only people that greet you with any degree of warmth are your friends and family, while others on the street may even have the nerve to spit in your face. Most history books don't do all that much to remove this image. I can honestly say, upon walking out of that museum, I was not expecting to feel as much as I did. Getting the chance to read letters written to friends and family, sometimes just months before that family was told their boy wasn't coming home, helped add a level of connection. Some of them were eagerly counting the days before the end of their tour of duty, while others took the chance to crack a terrible joke in the midst of a worse situation. It made all those men and women seem real, as opposed to a statistic taught to us in history class.
The New Jersey Vietnam Veterans' Memorial and the Vietnam Era Museum and Educational Center was well worth the trip. The grounds are beautiful with several other monuments are scattered throughout. One of them is dedicated to the dogs that fought alongside the troops. Around five thousand went to fight and only about two hundred made it home.
The volunteers and what few staff members were present were incredibly pleasant company, and they always came across as helpful and willing to share. The tour guide even showed us photos that he had personally taken during his own tour of duty. The stories he shared were at times both wonderful and incredibly tragic to listen to. Even if a visit is not in the cards for you, I would at least recommend looking at their website at www.njvvmf.org. It's always good to look at things from a new perspective, and I can say after visiting it showed me the Vietnam War from a very different perspective than the one offered in any history class.
