The Vietnam Wall Pays a Visit

The Washington Monument serves as a sentinel to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. 

Potomac, MD -- As chance would have it, while I was driving north on Route 202/206 by the Bridgewater Commons Mall on Wednesday, a column of police cars and motorcycles moving southbound on the other side was escorting a decorated trailer containing the Traveling Vietnam Wall.

It formed an impressive motorcade – one that was impossible to miss.  The exhibit may be seen at North Branch Park in Bridgewater, where it is open to the public until Sunday afternoon.

Finally, after years of neglect and derision, Vietnam Vets have finally been getting the recognition which they deserved then and which is now their due.  As the President and Congress debated that war, the draftees and volunteers of that era did what American servicemen and women have always done – they fought. 

Those who were pressed into that conflict served bravely and unselfishly, with far too many of them incurring physical and psychological wounds before coming home, only to be confronted by the Jane Fonda syndrome upon their return.
The seemingly endless list of names on that blackmarble wall in our nation’s Capital registers the terrible toll of the dead and the horrors of that war.

“When will they ever learn?  When will they ever learn?”

Thanks for your reading time.

(If you click on the image for an enhanced view, you can read some of the names.)