On May 6th, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund (VVMF) announced the names of five American servicemen that were being inscribed on the black granite walls of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial (The Wall), and will be read for the first time on this Memorial Day, at 1 p.m. In addition, the designations of eight names are being changed from missing in action, signified by a cross, to confirmed dead, symbolized by a diamond. The criteria and decisions for being included on The Wall are set by the Department of Defense. With the additions, the total number of names inscribed (killed or remaining missing in action) is 58,272.
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund was established in 1979 by a group of veterans led by Jan Scruggs, and, over the years, has been “dedicated to preserving the legacy of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D. C., promoting healing and educating about the impact of the Vietnam War.” In July 1980, President Jimmy Carter authorized the Fund to build the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on a site near the Lincoln Memorial in Constitution Gardens. The Fund explains that the resulting monument “was built to honor all who served with the U. S. armed forces during the Vietnam War. It has become known as an international symbol of healing and is the most-visited memorial on the National Mall.”
The Memorial consists of more than the well known Wall that was designed by Maya Ying Lin. The other sites for remembrance are the Flagpole that was installed in 1983 around which the emblems of the Army, Navy, Air Force, Marines and Coast Guard are displayed; the Three Servicemen Statue, designed by Frederick Hart and dedicated in 1984; the Vietnam Women’s Memorial designed by Glenna Goodacre and dedicated in 1993; and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commemorative Plaque, also called the “In Memory Plaque, ” dedicated in 2004 to honor veterans who died after the war as a direct result of injuries which were incurred in Vietnam, but do not qualify for inclusion on The Wall. An education center is being planned.
The names of American military casualties of the Vietnam War are the core element of the Memorial. The initiators wanted to insure that those who were sacrificed would not be forgotten. Inscribed in the black granite, the names are a powerful symbolic expression, which brings many visitors to tears. Among the current 58,272 engraved names are the ones of those designated as missing. Not included are veterans who were casualties of Agent Orange, an herbicide considered carcinogenic by many, the victims of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder related suicides and the fatalities among non U. S. military personnel. The memorial also leaves unnamed millions of Vietnamese military and civilian casualties inflicted by all sides during the war. Statistics on Vietnamese casualties are spotty at best, in part because North Vietnam wanted to conceal the hardships it was enduring, and in part because the narratives that have been told in the United States have been focused on Americans, not the Vietnamese.
© 2003 Seth Rossman | Wikimedia Commons
Notwithstanding this lack of inclusiveness, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial may be considered a gateway and turning point in Vietnam War meaning and memory making. With the creation of the Memorial, a memory block was eliminated, and an outpouring of remembrances and representations ensued. The discussions that led up to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the approval process, the building of the memorial, and the visitations to the memorial helped legitimize more open public discussions about and representations of the war, providing a stimulus for personal, interpersonal, collected and collective memories about the Vietnam War. A proliferation of Vietnam War contributions appeared in the media, popular culture, art and academic works.
The project to build a memorial came to fruition through a bottom up approach to civic action. It emerged from kitchen table politics, an example of the “politics of small things” as Goldfarb puts it. While the design elements of the Memorial have been controversial over the years, they have been implemented to accommodate competing memories associated with the Vietnam War and the need to heal relative to continuing divisions. Associational activities inspired by individual contributors with a vision yielded the creation of the memorial, revealing many competing memories associated with it. Approving, funding, creating, building, opening, maintaining, commemorating, and facilitating visiting and accessing the Memorial helped open the creative flows of Vietnam War representations that followed, and influenced the reception of them.
Small things matter relative to the establishment of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial including: the personal initiatives of Jan C. Scruggs, president and founder of the VVMF, to establish the Memorial; the leadership of Diane Carlson Evans to create the Vietnam Women’s Memorial; and the thousands upon thousands of personal actions of individuals who have left behind objects at The Wall which have been preserved by the National Parks Service.
“When people freely meet and talk to each other as equals, reveal their differences, display their distinctions, and develop a capacity to act together, they create power,” Goldfarb maintains about the politics of small things. In this instance, the power developed into associational efforts to help shape memories of the Vietnam War and heal a nation.
I’m sure many readers have their stories about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. Mine is having gone there for the first time about ten years ago while in DC for a convention. For whatever reason, I searched out the name of the older brother of a childhood schoolmate, the first person I personally knew to be KIA in Vietnam. On wall panel 29W, line 074, I found the name of Thomas Yolkiewicz, who was killed in ground fire on 18 March 1969. As I rubbed my fingers across the engraved letters, memories flooded back of being in the backyard playing when word came over the cyclone fence from a neighbor that Tom, whose family lived two houses over on the street behind us, had died. The catharsis of that moment at the Wall has stuck with me ever since.
The question of authenticity frequently arises relative to Vietnam War stories and artifacts of the Vietnam War Era. There are numerous cases of inauthentic wannabes claiming to be Vietnam War veterans. Fakes are found throughout representations on Vietnam, and some fakes have fooled knowledgeable people for years. This is the case with a well-known Vietnam War poem crafted by a fraud which seems to have captured authentic sentiments; and became part of the remembrances associated with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
Laura Palmer, a Vietnam War journalist and author, wrote Shrapnel of the Heart, a book of remembrances focused on twenty-nine GIs who names are etched on The Wall. The book also contains remembrances about them left at The Wall and supplemental materials including interviews. The book was Palmer’s way of trying to make the war more personal for her and others. Most of the contributions to Palmer’s book are authentic; however, there is one poem and narrative which is both fraudulent and in a sense truthful in a representative way.
Included in the book was a poem by Dusty (Dana Shuster) titled “Hello David”, a poem which brings a tear to the eyes of many who have read it. The poem was left behind at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1987 by Dusty, self-identified as having been with the U. S. Army Nurse Corps in the Republic of Vietnam during two tours of duty between 1966 and 1968. In addition to being in Palmer’s book, the poem was read on November 11, 1993 at the dedication of the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, and it is on the Greater Rochester, New York Vietnam Memorial.
For twenty years, Shuster had befriended Palmer and many activist U. S. Army nurses who had served in Vietnam during the war. She also made a trip to Vietnam with Palmer. In 2006, Palmer was asked if she could corroborate Shuster’s service claims because virtually no other nurses could remember being with her or seeing her in Vietnam during the war. Palmer asked Shuster for poof. Shuster had none and revealed that she suffered from a dissociative personality disorder; PTSD; and an incompletely developed sense of self. She never was in the military; had never been a nurse; and had never been to Vietnam prior to the trip with Palmer. Shuster was a fraud. Her poem was not based upon authentic experiences; yet her poem “Hello David” captured something about the war, nurses and dying soldiers that resonated with readers. In a sense, Shuster’s imaginary offering became more real than the authentic experiences of many others.
Palmer numerous Vietnam War nurses and many others were deceived by Shuster. Shuster lived a lie for a few decades; and her position with the Vietnam War women’s community betrayed many confidences. Yet, somehow “Hello David” captured the imaginations of women with real experiences and others who wanted to learn about wartime experiences. Palmer inadvertently helped make “Dusty” what she had become, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and Vietnam Woman’s Memorial provided an unintended platform for Dana Shuster to become both famous and infamous. Shuster became part of popular culture as a result of Palmer’s postwar experiences relative to the memorials. Shuster was a fraud and yet there are things which can be learned about Vietnam War experiences from her. I used “Hello David” in a sociology course that I taught about the Vietnam War, and the social construction of reality. It was a huge let down for me when I learned the truth about the poem and Shuster, but if your inclined to shed a tear, you might want to read the text of the poem which can be found at (http://iwvpa.net/dusty/hello-da.php). Authentic or inauthentic, it still has an impact on me.