Share Vietnam War and Memorial Wall stories
Posted: Friday, October 19, 2007
These are stories from readers. Share your story by adding a comment at the bottom of this web page.
From Joanne Reed, Sioux City
Duane M. Nelson, a Sioux City native, served in the Army 173rd Airborne Division. He enlisted right after graduating from Central High School and served for three years, then volunteered for duty in Vietnam. He was killed there Oct. 10, 1965. He was 22.
The American Legion hall in Leeds is named for him.
Nelson's sister, Joanne Reed of Sioux City, said her brother wanted to go to Vietnam. "He got upset with everybody leaving (the military) and not wanting to go," she said. "So he re-upped and didn't come back ... not the way we wanted.
"He was the first one (to die) from Sioux City," Reed said. Nelson was a paratrooper and was killed while on a search-and-destroy mission in the "IronTriangle" when someone near him stepped on a land mine. At least that's Reed's recollection of what the family was told. "There was also sniper fire in the area," she said.
Nelson was the fourth of six children. His parents, Nick and Margaret Nelson, had moved to Rapid City, S.D., after the four eldest were grown. The Army notified them of their son's death in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. A neighbor called Reed.
"That was the bad part, being notified by telegram," Reed said. "But the worst was getting a letter from people who didn't believe in the war. They were really radical then. They said Duane died because he went there to kill and if we mourned his death, then 'so shall we' (be killed). It came from Fort Benning, Ga., where Duane had taken his paratrooper training."
Reed said the funeral was in Sioux City and Nelson was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery. Because of the death threat, the police provided an escort from the church to the cemetery and kept watch over the family there.
Another brother, Robert, was serving with the Army in Korea at the time. When he requested duty in Vietnam, the family said no.
That didn't change the reception Robert got when he came home on leave, however. "He was wearing his uniform," Reed said. "They spit on him, called him names and pushed him away from them."
From Jackie Lefler McKeever, Midlothian, Va
Spec. David A. Lefler of Sioux City went to Vietnam from the Iowa Army National Guard 2nd Mechanized Battalion, 133rd Infantry, headquartered at Sergeant Bluff. He was killed in an air strike mishap in Vietnam on Mother's Day, May 12, 1969, leaving his wife, Kathy, and their 3-year-old son, Robbie. He was a mechanic and one of three soldiers in the unit who were killed in Vietnam, along with Donald F. Wood and Phillip L. Baker. In 1972 their unit dedicated its new armory to the three.
Lefler was 23 when he was killed.
"They came with a telegram," his sister, Jackie Lefler McKeever, of Midlothian, Va., remembered recently. "For days afterward, you got packages and letters from him. It's just a heart-wrenching experience."
David was the oldest of the family of five boys and five girls. The next-oldest boy, Mike, now of Sioux Falls, served in Vietnam a year later.
"At first they told us David had been killed in battle," Lefler's mother, Laura Lefler Kruse, 83, of South Sioux City said. Later they received a letter from his commander telling them David had been killed by friendly fire; U.S. fighter planes had dropped their bombs too soon.
Kruse read from one letter from David: "Mom, I don't know why we have to have this war. In the daytime we go out and kill these people and at night they all come in, the children especially, and eat form our garbage cans. I don't know why we can't just feed these people instead of killing them."
Kruse remembers taking Robbie to the Army Guard unit as a young boy and told how the commander gave Robbie the Iowa state flag on display there after learning he had a flag collection at home.
Mike, now 57 years old, was in basic training when David died. He did not have to go to Vietnam but wanted to, his mother said. He was seriously wounded, came home with hepatitis C and was ill for months. He eventually got a railroad job and married, Kruse said. But the hepatitis plagued him. He received a liver transplant 18 months ago.
Kruse has visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., twice. "It at least showed somebody appreciated him," she said. "But it's amazing when you go to see all the names that are on there -- 55,000 -- that's an awful number."
From Larry Adams, Sioux City
Lance Cpl. Ricky Fay Adams, a Sioux City native, was killed in Vietnam on March 1, 1968. He was 19. He served in the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines Company M. He was in the infantry and was killed when his unit was ambushed in a peaceful village in Quang Tri Provence, according to his brother, Larry Adams of Sioux City.
The youngest of the late Lloyd and Helen Adams' seven children, Ricky Adams attended Riverside Elementary School and Junior High, as well as Riverside Methodist Church before moving with his parents to Baldwin Park, Calif., where he was named most valuable player his senior year on his high school basketball team, according to Larry Adams.
The funeral and burial were in Sioux City. Larry Adams said he visits Ricky's grave at Memorial Cemetery often
"It was so hard on my dad that he died in two years," Adams said. "He was second youngest, so it was really hard."
Adams said that today that the loss is "still really tough" for him. He said he will visit The Wall That Heals.
From Ken Hanshaw, Battle Creek, Iowa
Tom Hanshaw died Dec. 6, 2006 from cancer the Army has only recently acknowledged was caused by Agent Orange, his brother, Ken Hanshaw of Battle Creek, Iowa, said. Agent Orange was a defoliant that was widely used during the Vietnam War.
The Hanshaws grew up in Fairfield, Iowa.
Tom was drafted and spent 22 years in the Army, retiring as a sergeant 1st class to work for the FBI as a homeland security coordinator for the Southeast. He died in Anniston, Ala.
Ken Hanshaw recounts: While in Vietnam, Tom was out on patrol one day with his unit when they came under heavy enemy attack and were surrounded. His commander called for helicopters to get them out. When a helicopter came in it was hit by enemy fire and came down hard. It hit the ground and burst into flames.
Tom, without thinking of his own safety and under the heavy enemy fire, ran out to the helicopter and pulled three men out of the burning aircraft, saving their lives. He did not let his family know of this until 30-some years later when they found out when he was acknowledged at a military retirement ceremony.
"He told me when we were down to see him before he passed away that he was out on the firing range at the Army base in Anniston when a colonel came up to him and said, `I understand you're Tom Hanshaw, is that right?' The colonel advised Tom that he had been trying to find him for years; he was the helicopter pilot Tom had pulled to safety and had always wanted to find him and thank him. Needless to say, they where close friends after that."
Tom Hanshaw was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery.
Initially, Tom served in a compound near the ocean. After a leave to go home to a critically ill child, Ken Hanshaw said, Tom was assigned to an infantry position and became a "tunnel rat."
Ken Hanshaw and another brother, Lenny, and a brother-in-law also served in Vietnam. Their father served 35 years in the Army. Ken said when Tom returned to the United States on the West Coast, people threw feces, beer, "anything" at him and called him "woman killer, baby killer" and other epithets.
Bill Henderson, 61, Sioux City
He served in Vietnam as a machinist mate, both on and off the ship. Hendersen enlisted in 1964 at age 17, volunteering with "13 or 19 guys" from his Clinton (Iowa) high school class. Only two or three made it back from Vietnam, he said. Henderson remembered the times as simpler. "You settled arguments by talking about it or having a fistfight. We were all kids. We grew up with John Wayne. We fantasized about getting shot and waking up the next day."
Vietnam was different from TV. "I remember I was `in country' when I got a telegram from the Red Cross that I was a father. It goes downhill from there.
"There were children killed, there were villages burned," Henderson said. "We participated in a lot of stuff. A lot of white phosphorus was used. It's a shell, like a fireworks display on the ground. It burns at 3,000 degrees. Once the phosphorus hits the air, it burns. It's worse than Napalm. The only time it quits burning is when you get it under water."
He described how children were used to kill American soldiers, even if it meant the child was killed as well.
"The thing I remember is how we got treated when we got home," he said, changing the subject. "They're getting treated the same way now whenthey come home. It's not fair. It's not right.
"The heroes are the guys who didn't make it home, the guys who lost arms and legs and eyes. The government is saying everyone is a hero. The government denies the things that have happened," Henderson said, referring to soldiers who died of cancer from exposure to Agent Orange, a powerful defoliant use on the Vietnamese jungle, and also those who returned sick from Desert Storm and whose children were born with health problems.
"They've got to respect these men," he said. "They should be treated as soldiers."
His own homecoming was cold. He recounted taking a plane to Chicago, a bus to Sterling, Ill., and a cab home to Clinton. He was standing under the big tree in the frontyard, thinking, "I'm home! I'm home! I'm home! when a tiny baby racoon dropped onto his head.
"I walked into the house and my mom glanced over and said, `Oh, it's you.' I got a better reception from a raccoon than my mother.
"I have a lot of memories and I've learned that having the right wife is the best way to heal," he said. Henderson said he has told his wife, Jean, and children "everything." He credited his healing to counseling sessions with Gene Sommers at the Vet Center in Indian Hills, which still exists today. "He made sure the children got involved so they would understand what their dad went through and how to deal with that. He helped the wives." Sommers has since moved to Rapid City, S.D.
Henderson said his father was also in the military, serving in World War II and Korea. He was aboard a ship that was blown up during WWII but never spoke of it.
-- As told to Journal staff reporter Michele Linck
Ralph Swain, Sioux City
I served in Viet Nam in 1969 and 1970 with USARV Area Command Headquarters at Tan Son Nhut at a time when U.S. forces were at the highest level of 540,000. Although the area was heavily populated, we were subjected to rocket attacks, snipers, plastic explosive devices, and hand grenades. Seventeen facilities were blown up in my area of operations, one of them was hit five minutes before my arrival at the compound, and yet in all my time in Viet Nam I never saw an insurgent in uniform. I lost two friends the year I was there. We occasionally heard stories of little children carrying a live grenade and blowing up a U.S. soldier...sure..that might happen, but in my experience the majority of Vietnamese children were really friendly. In fact, it was the children, despite their hopelessness, that kept me and my fellow soldiers happy and laughing with their antics and camaraderie. On several occasions we would sneak hamburgers out the gates of the USO and hand them out to the kids.
Their faces would beam as they pointed at the burgers and yelled, "Cow! Cow!" It was a rare treat for them as well as for my buddies and I. I will always remember their happy expressions despite the perceived hopelessness of their lives.
Claudia Small, South Sioux City, Neb.
My husband Vernard J Small was killed in Viet Nam July 31,1965 he was a CWO-2 in the Marine Corp, he had 12 and a half years in we had 2 sons who were 2 and 6, he had 2 months left over there when I got a phone call at 10:00 that evening telling me he was shot down over Da Nang, Viet Nam. Because of that call that soldier was busted from a Sgt. to a Private as no one is to receive a call the soldiers from Offutt Air Force Base came out the next day but they knew I had been told. That call ruined our life and our life has never been the same since the boys lost a father and I lost a husband. About 30 years later my niece by marriage was talking to a man in a chat room on the internet and she told him her Uncle had been killed in Viet Nam he ask what branch of service was he in and she said the USMC he ask her who it was and she told him he said he wasn't shot down over Viet Nam the engine fell out of the old F3D plane and he was a PFC and he was in the same squadron. I still have the
telegram President Johnson sent telling me he was shot down so it was was one chance in a million we eventually heard the truth. The man in the chat room sent her a picture of him in the USMC as a PFC and then a recent photo of him and his family he was 54 when he sent the letter, he told a few things about Vernard so he was definitely telling the truth. We were both from Akron, Iowa and I was living there at the time, he was the first Plymouth County Fatality of the Viet Nam War.
Cathy
I wish, that the wall would include those that died DUE to the Nam fiasco ... another of my classmates, Diane Lukken, developed Spinal Meningitis while in Nam but died back here in the states. I had two friends that came back from Nam, survived that part of it, but then came home and ended up taking their own lives. Crockett and Charlie, yeah they made it thru and then ended their own lives - too much to live with, and go through. All these names should be added to that wall. The served and died as an end result, and I know there are thousands out there just like them. Some compare this Iraq thing to Nam. I don't know - I graduated in the 60's. It was awful then, and is awful now - senseless ... and where is it getting us?
Todd A. Tastad, US Army 1971-1974
I visited the wall when it was in Sioux City several years ago.
I am a proud Veteran. I’m a Viet Nam era veteran, accent on era, to be exact. When I paid the Wall a visit, it was a very spiritual and emotional experience that is hard to describe, but I’ll do the best I can. In the spiritual aspect I could sense a strong spirit of pride, sacrificial pride. Also there was a spirit of sorrow caused by the climate of public opinion at the time. They came home to a free America that hated them for what they did.
Emotionally, I was upset with my self because I was enjoying the benefits of their sacrifice when my sacrifice was a measly one in comparison.
So many of our young and some older people do not have the faintest idea what the true cost of freedom is. My prayer is when people visit the Wall when it’s here, and I hope everybody does, they will have a greater understanding of the real cost of freedom. When they pass by the Wall and read a name or two, or many, they will sense the souls of those represented by those names, crying out “I did this for you, and for you, and for you”.
GOD Bless America and those who have paid and are paying for our freedom.
From Joanne Reed, Sioux City
Duane M. Nelson, a Sioux City native, served in the Army 173rd Airborne Division. He enlisted right after graduating from Central High School and served for three years, then volunteered for duty in Vietnam. He was killed there Oct. 10, 1965. He was 22.
The American Legion hall in Leeds is named for him.
Nelson's sister, Joanne Reed of Sioux City, said her brother wanted to go to Vietnam. "He got upset with everybody leaving (the military) and not wanting to go," she said. "So he re-upped and didn't come back ... not the way we wanted.
"He was the first one (to die) from Sioux City," Reed said. Nelson was a paratrooper and was killed while on a search-and-destroy mission in the "IronTriangle" when someone near him stepped on a land mine. At least that's Reed's recollection of what the family was told. "There was also sniper fire in the area," she said.
Nelson was the fourth of six children. His parents, Nick and Margaret Nelson, had moved to Rapid City, S.D., after the four eldest were grown. The Army notified them of their son's death in a telegram delivered by a cab driver. A neighbor called Reed.
"That was the bad part, being notified by telegram," Reed said. "But the worst was getting a letter from people who didn't believe in the war. They were really radical then. They said Duane died because he went there to kill and if we mourned his death, then 'so shall we' (be killed). It came from Fort Benning, Ga., where Duane had taken his paratrooper training."
Reed said the funeral was in Sioux City and Nelson was buried in Memorial Park Cemetery. Because of the death threat, the police provided an escort from the church to the cemetery and kept watch over the family there.
Another brother, Robert, was serving with the Army in Korea at the time. When he requested duty in Vietnam, the family said no.
That didn't change the reception Robert got when he came home on leave, however. "He was wearing his uniform," Reed said. "They spit on him, called him names and pushed him away from them."
From Jackie Lefler McKeever, Midlothian, Va
Spec. David A. Lefler of Sioux City went to Vietnam from the Iowa Army National Guard 2nd Mechanized Battalion, 133rd Infantry, headquartered at Sergeant Bluff. He was killed in an air strike mishap in Vietnam on Mother's Day, May 12, 1969, leaving his wife, Kathy, and their 3-year-old son, Robbie. He was a mechanic and one of three soldiers in the unit who were killed in Vietnam, along with Donald F. Wood and Phillip L. Baker. In 1972 their unit dedicated its new armory to the three.
Lefler was 23 when he was killed.
"They came with a telegram," his sister, Jackie Lefler McKeever, of Midlothian, Va., remembered recently. "For days afterward, you got packages and letters from him. It's just a heart-wrenching experience."
David was the oldest of the family of five boys and five girls. The next-oldest boy, Mike, now of Sioux Falls, served in Vietnam a year later.
"At first they told us David had been killed in battle," Lefler's mother, Laura Lefler Kruse, 83, of South Sioux City said. Later they received a letter from his commander telling them David had been killed by friendly fire; U.S. fighter planes had dropped their bombs too soon.
Kruse read from one letter from David: "Mom, I don't know why we have to have this war. In the daytime we go out and kill these people and at night they all come in, the children especially, and eat form our garbage cans. I don't know why we can't just feed these people instead of killing them."
Kruse remembers taking Robbie to the Army Guard unit as a young boy and told how the commander gave Robbie the Iowa state flag on display there after learning he had a flag collection at home.
Mike, now 57 years old, was in basic training when David died. He did not have to go to Vietnam but wanted to, his mother said. He was seriously wounded, came home with hepatitis C and was ill for months. He eventually got a railroad job and married, Kruse said. But the hepatitis plagued him. He received a liver transplant 18 months ago.
Kruse has visited the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., twice. "It at least showed somebody appreciated him," she said. "But it's amazing when you go to see all the names that are on there -- 55,000 -- that's an awful number."
From Larry Adams, Sioux City
Lance Cpl. Ricky Fay Adams, a Sioux City native, was killed in Vietnam on March 1, 1968. He was 19. He served in the 3rd Battalion, 1st Marines Company M. He was in the infantry and was killed when his unit was ambushed in a peaceful village in Quang Tri Provence, according to his brother, Larry Adams of Sioux City.
The youngest of the late Lloyd and Helen Adams' seven children, Ricky Adams attended Riverside Elementary School and Junior High, as well as Riverside Methodist Church before moving with his parents to Baldwin Park, Calif., where he was named most valuable player his senior year on his high school basketball team, according to Larry Adams.
The funeral and burial were in Sioux City. Larry Adams said he visits Ricky's grave at Memorial Cemetery often
"It was so hard on my dad that he died in two years," Adams said. "He was second youngest, so it was really hard."
Adams said that today that the loss is "still really tough" for him. He said he will visit The Wall That Heals.
From Ken Hanshaw, Battle Creek, Iowa
Tom Hanshaw died Dec. 6, 2006 from cancer the Army has only recently acknowledged was caused by Agent Orange, his brother, Ken Hanshaw of Battle Creek, Iowa, said. Agent Orange was a defoliant that was widely used during the Vietnam War.
The Hanshaws grew up in Fairfield, Iowa.
Tom was drafted and spent 22 years in the Army, retiring as a sergeant 1st class to work for the FBI as a homeland security coordinator for the Southeast. He died in Anniston, Ala.
Ken Hanshaw recounts: While in Vietnam, Tom was out on patrol one day with his unit when they came under heavy enemy attack and were surrounded. His commander called for helicopters to get them out. When a helicopter came in it was hit by enemy fire and came down hard. It hit the ground and burst into flames.
Tom, without thinking of his own safety and under the heavy enemy fire, ran out to the helicopter and pulled three men out of the burning aircraft, saving their lives. He did not let his family know of this until 30-some years later when they found out when he was acknowledged at a military retirement ceremony.
"He told me when we were down to see him before he passed away that he was out on the firing range at the Army base in Anniston when a colonel came up to him and said, `I understand you're Tom Hanshaw, is that right?' The colonel advised Tom that he had been trying to find him for years; he was the helicopter pilot Tom had pulled to safety and had always wanted to find him and thank him. Needless to say, they where close friends after that."
Tom Hanshaw was awarded the Bronze Star for bravery.
Initially, Tom served in a compound near the ocean. After a leave to go home to a critically ill child, Ken Hanshaw said, Tom was assigned to an infantry position and became a "tunnel rat."
Ken Hanshaw and another brother, Lenny, and a brother-in-law also served in Vietnam. Their father served 35 years in the Army. Ken said when Tom returned to the United States on the West Coast, people threw feces, beer, "anything" at him and called him "woman killer, baby killer" and other epithets.
Bill Henderson, 61, Sioux City
He served in Vietnam as a machinist mate, both on and off the ship. Hendersen enlisted in 1964 at age 17, volunteering with "13 or 19 guys" from his Clinton (Iowa) high school class. Only two or three made it back from Vietnam, he said. Henderson remembered the times as simpler. "You settled arguments by talking about it or having a fistfight. We were all kids. We grew up with John Wayne. We fantasized about getting shot and waking up the next day."
Vietnam was different from TV. "I remember I was `in country' when I got a telegram from the Red Cross that I was a father. It goes downhill from there.
"There were children killed, there were villages burned," Henderson said. "We participated in a lot of stuff. A lot of white phosphorus was used. It's a shell, like a fireworks display on the ground. It burns at 3,000 degrees. Once the phosphorus hits the air, it burns. It's worse than Napalm. The only time it quits burning is when you get it under water."
He described how children were used to kill American soldiers, even if it meant the child was killed as well.
"The thing I remember is how we got treated when we got home," he said, changing the subject. "They're getting treated the same way now whenthey come home. It's not fair. It's not right.
"The heroes are the guys who didn't make it home, the guys who lost arms and legs and eyes. The government is saying everyone is a hero. The government denies the things that have happened," Henderson said, referring to soldiers who died of cancer from exposure to Agent Orange, a powerful defoliant use on the Vietnamese jungle, and also those who returned sick from Desert Storm and whose children were born with health problems.
"They've got to respect these men," he said. "They should be treated as soldiers."
His own homecoming was cold. He recounted taking a plane to Chicago, a bus to Sterling, Ill., and a cab home to Clinton. He was standing under the big tree in the frontyard, thinking, "I'm home! I'm home! I'm home! when a tiny baby racoon dropped onto his head.
"I walked into the house and my mom glanced over and said, `Oh, it's you.' I got a better reception from a raccoon than my mother.
"I have a lot of memories and I've learned that having the right wife is the best way to heal," he said. Henderson said he has told his wife, Jean, and children "everything." He credited his healing to counseling sessions with Gene Sommers at the Vet Center in Indian Hills, which still exists today. "He made sure the children got involved so they would understand what their dad went through and how to deal with that. He helped the wives." Sommers has since moved to Rapid City, S.D.
Henderson said his father was also in the military, serving in World War II and Korea. He was aboard a ship that was blown up during WWII but never spoke of it.
-- As told to Journal staff reporter Michele Linck
Ralph Swain, Sioux City
I served in Viet Nam in 1969 and 1970 with USARV Area Command Headquarters at Tan Son Nhut at a time when U.S. forces were at the highest level of 540,000. Although the area was heavily populated, we were subjected to rocket attacks, snipers, plastic explosive devices, and hand grenades. Seventeen facilities were blown up in my area of operations, one of them was hit five minutes before my arrival at the compound, and yet in all my time in Viet Nam I never saw an insurgent in uniform. I lost two friends the year I was there. We occasionally heard stories of little children carrying a live grenade and blowing up a U.S. soldier...sure..that might happen, but in my experience the majority of Vietnamese children were really friendly. In fact, it was the children, despite their hopelessness, that kept me and my fellow soldiers happy and laughing with their antics and camaraderie. On several occasions we would sneak hamburgers out the gates of the USO and hand them out to the kids.
Their faces would beam as they pointed at the burgers and yelled, "Cow! Cow!" It was a rare treat for them as well as for my buddies and I. I will always remember their happy expressions despite the perceived hopelessness of their lives.
Claudia Small, South Sioux City, Neb.
My husband Vernard J Small was killed in Viet Nam July 31,1965 he was a CWO-2 in the Marine Corp, he had 12 and a half years in we had 2 sons who were 2 and 6, he had 2 months left over there when I got a phone call at 10:00 that evening telling me he was shot down over Da Nang, Viet Nam. Because of that call that soldier was busted from a Sgt. to a Private as no one is to receive a call the soldiers from Offutt Air Force Base came out the next day but they knew I had been told. That call ruined our life and our life has never been the same since the boys lost a father and I lost a husband. About 30 years later my niece by marriage was talking to a man in a chat room on the internet and she told him her Uncle had been killed in Viet Nam he ask what branch of service was he in and she said the USMC he ask her who it was and she told him he said he wasn't shot down over Viet Nam the engine fell out of the old F3D plane and he was a PFC and he was in the same squadron. I still have the
telegram President Johnson sent telling me he was shot down so it was was one chance in a million we eventually heard the truth. The man in the chat room sent her a picture of him in the USMC as a PFC and then a recent photo of him and his family he was 54 when he sent the letter, he told a few things about Vernard so he was definitely telling the truth. We were both from Akron, Iowa and I was living there at the time, he was the first Plymouth County Fatality of the Viet Nam War.
Cathy
I wish, that the wall would include those that died DUE to the Nam fiasco ... another of my classmates, Diane Lukken, developed Spinal Meningitis while in Nam but died back here in the states. I had two friends that came back from Nam, survived that part of it, but then came home and ended up taking their own lives. Crockett and Charlie, yeah they made it thru and then ended their own lives - too much to live with, and go through. All these names should be added to that wall. The served and died as an end result, and I know there are thousands out there just like them. Some compare this Iraq thing to Nam. I don't know - I graduated in the 60's. It was awful then, and is awful now - senseless ... and where is it getting us?
Todd A. Tastad, US Army 1971-1974
I visited the wall when it was in Sioux City several years ago.
I am a proud Veteran. I’m a Viet Nam era veteran, accent on era, to be exact. When I paid the Wall a visit, it was a very spiritual and emotional experience that is hard to describe, but I’ll do the best I can. In the spiritual aspect I could sense a strong spirit of pride, sacrificial pride. Also there was a spirit of sorrow caused by the climate of public opinion at the time. They came home to a free America that hated them for what they did.
Emotionally, I was upset with my self because I was enjoying the benefits of their sacrifice when my sacrifice was a measly one in comparison.
So many of our young and some older people do not have the faintest idea what the true cost of freedom is. My prayer is when people visit the Wall when it’s here, and I hope everybody does, they will have a greater understanding of the real cost of freedom. When they pass by the Wall and read a name or two, or many, they will sense the souls of those represented by those names, crying out “I did this for you, and for you, and for you”.
GOD Bless America and those who have paid and are paying for our freedom.
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Jeff Jump , Sioux City Iowa wrote on Oct 19, 2007 9:24 PM: