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Posted on 01/30/2004 4:30:19 AM PST by snippy_about_it
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 are acknowledged, affirmed and commemorated.
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| Our Mission: The FReeper Foxhole is dedicated to Veterans of our Nation's military forces and to others who are affected in their relationships with Veterans. In the FReeper Foxhole, Veterans or their family members should feel free to address their specific circumstances or whatever issues concern them in an atmosphere of peace, understanding, brotherhood and support. The FReeper Foxhole hopes to share with it's readers an open forum where we can learn about and discuss military history, military news and other topics of concern or interest to our readers be they Veteran's, Current Duty or anyone interested in what we have to offer. If the Foxhole makes someone appreciate, even a little, what others have sacrificed for us, then it has accomplished one of it's missions. We hope the Foxhole in some small way helps us to remember and honor those who came before us.
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  "IN HONOR OF THE MEN AND WOMEN OF THE ARMED FORCES OF THE UNITED STATES WHO SERVED IN THE VIETNAM WAR. THE NAMES OF THOSE WHO GAVE THEIR LIVES AND OF THOSE WHO REMAIN MISSING ARE INSCRIBED..."  Jan C. Scruggs is the founder and president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. He conceived the idea of building a memorial dedicated to all who served in the U.S. Armed Forces in Vietnam. Scruggs was a wounded and decorated Vietnam War veteran, having served in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade of the U.S. Army. He felt a memorial would serve as a healing device for a different kind of wound – that inflicted on our national psyche by the long and controversial war.  Jan Scruggs In May 1979, Scruggs took $2,800 of his own money and launched the effort. Gradually, he gained the support of other Vietnam veterans in persuading Congress to provide a prominent location on federal property somewhere in Washington, D.C.. After a difficult struggle, Congress responded and the site chosen was on the Mall near the Lincoln Memorial. Serving as president of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund, Inc., the non-profit organization set up to build the Memorial, Scruggs headed up the effort that raised $8.4 million and saw the Memorial completed in two years. It was dedicated on November 13, 1982, during a week-long national "salute" to Vietnam veterans in the nation's capital. He is the author of To Heal a Nation: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial (Harper & Row, 1985). In the forward to another book, (Reflections On The Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial, copyright 1987 by the Smithsonian Institution, published by Stackpole Books of Harrisburg, Pennsylvania (ISBN 0-8117-1846-8). he wrote. “America has other great and inspiring national memorials. But the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, with nearly 60,000 names engraved on its black granite wall, is unlike any other. No other memorial so occupies a place in the heart and soul of the nation as does this simple, reflective wall.”  “No one remembered the names of the people killed in the war. I wanted a memorial engraved with all the names. The nation would see the names and would remember the men and women who went to Vietnam, and who died there.” “The creation, development, and construction of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial ultimately involved two U.S. presidents, the U.S. Congress, hundreds of volunteers, a dedicated full-time staff, and hundreds of thousands of Americans who donated the nearly $9 million needed to build it.” Many advocates came to the front to preserve this unusual concept. Larry Century perfected a technique using photo stencils, which, with some developmental work, could do the job of inscribing the names.  Architect Maya Lin, the designer, wanted the Wall to tell the day-by-day story of the tragedy of deaths. She also specified that the end of the list of names be near the beginning, to show a closed circle, like a wound that is closed and healing.  Optima was chosen for the type, a classic face from the house of Hermann Zapf. Names are approximately half an inch high and are photoetched to a depth of .015 inches.  The two walls extend almost 500 ft and are slightly higher than 10 ft in the middle.  On the web, interested individuals can search the actual Wall in virtual reality and find any name on the Wall.  There are 140 black granite panels, numbered 70W to 1W from the left and from 1E to 70E on the right. Ground was broken in March of 1982 and the Wall was dedicated in November of 1982. The unique tradition of leaving gifts at the base of the wall began before the Wall was even completed.   Visitors began leaving tokens of remembrance at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in 1982, while it was still under construction. Flags and flowers historically have decorated veterans' monuments, but the presence of many other mementos is unique to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. The first, a Purple Heart, was thrown by a Vietnam veteran into the wet cement of the Memorial's foundation. Since then, visitors from at home and abroad have left more than 25,000 keepsakes at the Memorial, collected daily by National Park Service rangers. Each has its own story, often known only to the donor.  This collection of messages and gifts from the heart was created by relatives, former comrades-in-arms, friends, neighbors, and members of civic and fraternal organizations.  They express the love, grief, and pain associated with the 58,220 names on the Memorial's 140 black granite panels. Objects left at The Wall can be seen in the Smithsonian exhibition This outpouring occurs year round, particularly at Christmas, Memorial Day, July 4th, and Veterans Day. The gifts also commemorate birthdays of dead and missing veterans and other days of personal importance.  This selection of remembrances provides us an opportunity to ponder the continuing impact of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the generation that lived through that conflict. Offerings at the Wall Near the base of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, comrades and loved ones leave their poignant tokens of remembrance. "In the fall of 1982, a U.S. Navy officer walked up to the trench where the concrete for the foundation of The Wall was being poured. He stood over the trench for a moment, then tossed something into it and saluted. A workman asked him what he was doing. He said he was giving his dead brother's Purple Heart to The Wall. That was the first offering." The story is told in a book about the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, Offerings at The Wall, released Turner Publishing Inc. The photographs in the book record some of the 30,000 objects and letters that have been placed at The Wall, as if at a shrine, by relatives and comrades of the men and women there memorialized.  These gifts of remembrance are collected each day by volunteers and preserved by the National Park Service in the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Collection, housed in a climate-controlled repository where the mementos lie near such historic artifacts as the life mask of Abraham Lincoln.  U.S. Military Entrenching Tool and Framed Letter - The "donor" mentions the names Timothy, Christopher, Frank and John. He also says, "...I was not successful in healing your injured bodies as they lay in my arms..." Some of the offerings were left with poems or letters (letters that were sealed will always remain so), but others bear meanings known only to those who offered them: a Bible, a fishing float, service ribbons, a sock for an amputee's stump, a popsicle stick, four mortarboard tassels, a foil wrapper from a Hershey's Kiss. In his eloquent introduction to the book, Thomas B. Allen writes that The Wall "became a place for wishes, for futures that could not be.  Black Beret with the 101st Airborn Division, Reconnaissance Unit Insignia - According to "donor" information, it was left by the sole surviving member of a 12-man recon team, ambushed in November, 1967. Tucked into a wreath are the things of an imagined life: new baby shoes for a baby who never would be, the pencils and crayons for a first day of kindergarten that never would be, champagne glasses to toast a wedding anniversary that never would be, ornaments for a Christmas tree that never would be." Someone left five cards, a royal flush for a poker game that never would be played. And a soldier left a photograph of a North Vietnamese man with a young girl, along with a note: "Dear Sir: For twenty-two years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only eighteen years old that day that we faced one another on that trail in Chu Lai, Vietnam. Why you did not take my life I'll never know. You stared at me for so long. . . . Forgive me for taking your life."  And the boots. So intimately shaped by those who wore them, yet so universal-the familiar black leather and tough green fabric, the lugged soles bearing the memory of the earth of the Delta or Con Thien-that they seem a symbol for the whole process of conflict and healing. "OUR NATION HONORS THE COURAGE, SACRIFICE, AND DEVOTION TO DUTY AND COUNTRY OF ITS VIETNAM VETERANS."  The Three Servicemen Statue and flagpole, born in a political compromise that followed an announcement of the Wall’s powerful and unique design, is a 18 foot bronze statue designed by Frederick Hart. It was dedicated in November, 1984. Comprised of three men carrying infantry weapons, the statue grouping has been called both The Three Soldiers and The Three Servicemen.  The men are wearing Vietnam War era uniforms and could be from any branch of the U.S. military at that time. Interpretations of the work vary widely. Some say the troops have the "thousand yard stare" of combat soldiers. Others say the troops are on patrol and begin looking for their own names as they come upon the Memorial. The bronze sculpture was placed in a grove of trees near the west entrance to The Wall. Despite the earlier controversy, the statue today fittingly complements The Wall.  Nearby, a flag is flown 24 hours a day. At the base of the flag staff are the seals of the five branches of military service, with the following inscription: THIS FLAG REPRESENTS THE SERVICE RENDERED TO OUR COUNTRY BY THE VETERANS OF THE VIETNAM WAR. THE FLAG AFFIRMS THE PRINCIPLES OF FREEDOM FOR WHICH THEY FOUGHT AND THEIR PRIDE IN HAVING SERVED UNDER DIFFICULT CIRCUMSTANCES.  Diane Carlson Evans, RN, is the founder of Vietnam Women’s Memorial project. She served in the Army Nurse Corps from 1966 to 1972 and was in Vietnam from 1968-69. The sculptor is Glenna Goodacre, whose bronze concept was eventually chosen over 317 other entries. Eight yellowwood trees representing the eight women nurses killed in Vietnam surround the 8 foot tall statue. The Vietnam Women's Memorial was dedicated over Veterans Day weekend of November 10-12, 1993.      |
That's cute.
Good morning Valin. Hurray for another week of fooling the paymaster.
I remember well all the controversy about the Wall. Lots of suspicion, doubt, worry from those who had not been treated fairly in the past.
I remember that too. It sure turned out all right though
The Wilhelm Gustloff was a ship built originally by Blohm and Voss for the cheap cruise market during the early years of the Nazi Reich, named after the assassinated Swiss Nazi Wilhelm Gustloff.
The German KdF organization provided cultural activities to German workers, including concerts, cruises and other holidays. The Wilhelm Gustloff was the flagship of the KdF cruise fleet. From its launch in 1937 until 1939 it served its original purpose.
From Sep 1939 to Nov 1940, it served as a hospital ship. During the majority of the Second World War, Wilhelm Gustloff was used primarily as a barracks ship for U-boat trainees.
Its final voyage was an evacuation of civilians and German soldiers and sailors from Gotenhafen (now and before the war known as Gdynia), the major port north-west of Danzig, shortly before it would be captured by the Russians. For the trip, it was equipped fore and aft with anti-aircraft guns.
Heavily overloaded and carrying only about 50% of the rescue equipment necessary to rescue its passengers if need be, the ship left Gotenhafen early on January 30, 1945. That evening, escorted by only a small minesweeper, Wilhelm Gustloff was attacked. Somewhere between Danzig and the Danish island of Bornholm it was torpedoed by the Soviet submarine S-13, commanded by Aleksandr Marinesko, taking three direct hits at around 9.00 p.m.
An eyewitness account claimed that 400 members of the Women's Auxiliary of the German Navy, died almost instantly after the second torpedo hit almost directly under the empty swimming pool in which they were sitting. The mass panic that followed the torpedo hits resulted in an increased loss of life, as many of the refugees ignored orders to allow women and children to disembark first, instead trampling each other in a mad rush for access to the few lifeboats and life jackets available. Some equipment was lost as a further result of the panic. It is estimated that of the approximately 5000 to 7000 refugees and over 1000 soldiers and sailors on board at the time, only 1239 passengers survived, saved by German vessels in the vicinity. Some modern studies of the disaster place the death toll at over 9000.
The Discovery Channel program "Unsolved History" has undertaken an extensive computer analysis of the sinking of the Gustloff which was broadcast on January 4, 2004. This study concluded the death toll was in excess of 9,600 persons.
It remains the worst disaster in shipping history, in terms of loss of life in a single vessel.
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