Whenever I teach the American Civil War, I always end the last lecture on the conflict by reading a passage from Walt Whitman’s funeral hymn for Abraham Lincoln, “When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d.”
I saw battle-corpses, myriads of them,
And the white skeletons of young men, I saw them,
I saw the debris and debris of all the slain soldiers of the war,
But I saw they were not as was thought,
They themselves were fully at rest, they suffered not,
The living remained and suffered, the mother suffered,
And the wife and the child and the musing comrade suffered,
And the armies that remained suffered.
I also read this passage whenever we look at war memorials — particularly the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in DC, which substantiates like nothing else that crushing sadness in Whitman’s verse. Anyone who’s visited the site knows this.
The wall was dedicated 26 years ago today. Built less than a decade after the war’s conclusion, the memorial was the outcome of a difficult process that required veterans to negotiate the meaning of the war itself; the fact that the design bore the names of the dead was not accidental — it was the only thing the committee could agree on. The final design had earned its creator, a 21-year-old student named Maya Lin, a “B” in her funerary architecture course at Yale. After the selection jury chose it, Lin’s proposal was subjected to howls of protest from veterans and others who regarded it as a sign of disrespect to the soldiers whose names it would carry. Phyllis Schlafly described it as a “tribute to Jane Fonda,” while the National Review dismissed it as “Orwellian glob” and begged Ronald Reagan to scotch the project. A veteran named Tom Carhart wrote in the New York Times that the memorial, if built, would commemorate the war with a “black gash of sorrow and shame.” Tom Wolfe, in a moment of wankery that must be judged as epic even by his own olympian standards, insisted that the memorial would fail because it emanated from the sort of elitist, modernist sensibilities that Real Americans would never accept.
In spite of the negative publicity, the memorial fund continued to receive a stream of donations from veterans and other actual Americans who subsequently traveled to the site to see the names of their fathers and comrades and husbands and sons. They touched their names, rubbed them onto paper with pencils and charcoal, brought them things — stuffed toys and cans of beer, wedding rings and Bibles, yearbooks and agonizing letters — all of which, having seen in person, you really, really wish you could use to beat the shit out of Tom Wolfe.
***
The photo at the top of this post was taken by my father sometime in the early 1990s, when he visited the wall for the first and — to my knowledge — only time. As I’ve written elsewhere, Dad never expected to survive the American war in Vietnam, where he served as a helicopter pilot for nearly two years before returning to live another forty. While he was in Vietnam, seven pilots and passengers from his company lost their lives; he may have known as many as six others who died in the year after he left. Overall, roughly half of Dad’s training group, which included somewhere between 300-400 young men, never made it back from the war.
One of those killed was CWO Kenneth Edward Messenger, whose name is visible just below center in this photo. I didn’t see this picture — and never heard the story about Dad’s visit to the wall — until a day or two after he had passed away. As a result, I was never able to ask him about his friend, who died on 5 May 1968 from a mortar that struck his sleeping quarters in Kien Hoa during a brief NVA/NLF offensive known as “mini-Tet.” Donald L. Merry and Lloyd Lockett — the men whose names bracket Messenger’s — also died the same day, as did nearly 30 others on panel 55E, which contains 199 names.
Based on what little information I’ve been able to gather, Messenger was about three weeks from leaving that awful war when he died. He was 27 — three years older than my father — and had never been married, never had kids. He grew up in Wantagh, NY. His parents may or may not still be alive, and there are no websites devoted to his memory. Still, though, he had musing comrades who remained and suffered. On a Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund site, one of Messenger’s neighbors at the airfield in Soc Tran posted a brief tribute to someone he barely knew:
The mortar round that stole his life was the first of many. He surely never heard it, he never suffered. The impact of it blew me out of my bunk, the beginning of another horrible night of man killing man. I never knew him, but he was my neighbor, and my brother in arms, another American serving with honor. I didn’t know him, I wished I had. We fought all night, the war stopped at dawn, as usual. I cried when I learned of his fate. I never knew him, but I dearly miss him and I will never forget his name.
39 comments
November 13, 2008 at 4:29 am
don q
A sad story. The memorial is extraordinarily powerful.
November 13, 2008 at 6:50 am
tom
The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is probably the most powerful and moving memorial I’ve seen. Its simplicity is its strength, the way it manages to pay tribute to and mourn such a traumatic event (physically, emotionally, socially, politically) in our nation’s history. A great number of subsequent memorials (the Oklahoma City bombing site, the planned WTC memorial) have borrowed heavily from its aesthetic, which speaks to its success as a site honoring the dead. The uniqueness of the wall (names, not statues; humble contemplation, not grandiose patriotism; a mirror reflecting ourselves, not a view of larger-than-life “heroes”) is a striking contrast to the rest of the Mall (with the exception of the Korean War Memorial, which is similar in some respects). The WWII memorial is its opposite in almost every way. Seeing the WWII memorial always causes me problems, because on the one hand I understand the necessity of a WWII memorial and don’t want to disrespect the people it honors. One the other hand, it almost seems to be a parody of a “Great War Memorial,” a huge and not terribly pretty temple to our greatness. I suppose it is somewhat fitting, given how our culture had chosen to remember WWII.
Anyway, it’s always good to find Tom Wolfe most assuredly wrong about something. In this, he is definitely the elitist, figuring “Real America” could never understand the simple, mournful beauty of the wall.
November 13, 2008 at 7:57 am
Ben Alpers
I actually went to graduate school with Tom Carhart of “black gash of sorrow and shame” fame (Princeton’s history program tended to include a handful of military officers getting their PhDs en route to teaching at the Academies or serving as official historians). He was an, er, interesting classmate, especially in courses like the women’s and gender history grad survey in which we were both enrolled.
November 13, 2008 at 8:13 am
politicalfootball
I’m grateful that the WWII memorial didn’t screw up the sight lines on the Mall.
It also fulfills an important goal of memorials – historical education. Once you go around the monument and read all the quotes on it from Americans, you learn that Americans had almost nothing interesting to say about the war. Leaving aside Roosevelt’s “day which will live in infamy,” Churchill got all the good lines in that war.
The monument is weirdly literal and didactic – lots of words, including the names of the states and territories, and “Atlantic” and “Pacific” inscribed above two arches on either side. The use of words is stunningly effective in the Lincoln Memorial, but that’s because Lincoln spoke some great words.
Betcha Tom Wolfe loves the WWII memorial. I have to admit, I like the look of it myself, though I’m sympathetic to tom’s description of it above.
November 13, 2008 at 9:08 am
joel hanes
Carhart was right about the Wall; it _is_ a black gash of sorrow and shame. But the shamed are not those honored dead whose names appear on the Wall — the monument instead shames those old men who sent so many young men to die so needlessly. And those who voted for them.
November 13, 2008 at 9:17 am
Vance
The clips of Lin defending the design during the hearings are astounding. (They make the documentary worth watching.) I couldn’t imagine showing such self-possession under fire, let alone at that age.
November 13, 2008 at 9:17 am
Ahistoricality
My only complaint about the Vietnam Memorial is that it spawned so many imitators: listing names — or exact enumerations of victims (those stars on the WWII memorial?) — is now the de facto standard for memorials, more or less obliterating any chance at abstraction, inspiration or processing beyond simple grief.
November 13, 2008 at 9:44 am
Hemlock
My dad, also a veteran of Vietnam, visits the memorial every two or three years. He doesn’t really talk about affect aside from recognizing childhood friends. For example, he never discusses deceased comrades on the string of river boats he served on (two destroyed). I think there’s been an inner struggle within my father’s psyche for some time now, and I’m uncertain how it’s shaped his personality and character. Such is the path of war and remembrance.
November 13, 2008 at 9:56 am
Neddy Merrill
I’m outraged by the reaction to the wall. It deserves at least a B+.
November 13, 2008 at 10:08 am
Vance
San Francisco has a couple of World War I memorials. One is the War Memorial Opera House, one of the massive buildings of the Civic Center. Another is a boulder, well-hidden in the woods of Golden Gate Park, listing the names of all the San Franciscans who died, in alphabetical order. And of course every small town in Europe seems to have such a stele, or plaque.
So the idea was out there — but it hadn’t been applied at such scale, or with national scope, or with such a design.
November 13, 2008 at 10:28 am
Vance
Nor with the John McCain font.
November 13, 2008 at 11:28 am
SomeCallMeTim
They touched their names, rubbed them onto paper with pencils and charcoal, brought them things — stuffed toys and cans of beer, wedding rings and Bibles, yearbooks and agonizing letters
Thanks for making me cry, you bastard.
November 13, 2008 at 11:44 am
kathy a.
i’ve only visited the memorial once, and it was so deeply moving. on that day, there were notes, flowers, flags, momentos left along its length. the sheer expanse of names is overwhelming. a few people were making rubbings of names.
i do not see how anyone with a heartbeat could walk by without choking up. the design captures perfectly both personal honor for those lost, and a recognition of the wrenching ways that the war divided and harmed the country as a whole. this was not a war with a victorious outcome. it is still an open wound.
November 13, 2008 at 12:03 pm
Mr. Natural
Wonderful post, Thank you.
November 13, 2008 at 12:08 pm
ben
My only complaint about the Vietnam Memorial is that it spawned so many imitators: listing names — or exact enumerations of victims (those stars on the WWII memorial?) — is now the de facto standard for memorials
Indeed, this is the approach taken at the museum at Manzanar. But you know what? It’s still effective.
November 13, 2008 at 12:27 pm
Artemis
This week, SCOTUS speculated whether the government had the right to not list the names of homosexual soldiers on the Vietnam Memorial. The Bush administration’s lawyer argued yes.
November 13, 2008 at 12:40 pm
Josh
So the idea was out there — but it hadn’t been applied at such scale
I don’t know about that. Sure, the Menin Gate doesn’t have the name of every soldier who died in WWI, but it’s got about the same number of names. (And of course the number of dead — even just on the Western Front — dwarfs the number of American dead in Vietnam.)
November 13, 2008 at 1:09 pm
strasmangelo jones
But the shamed are not those honored dead whose names appear on the Wall — the monument instead shames those old men who sent so many young men to die so needlessly. And those who voted for them.
The shame is also for the country, for killing two million Vietnamese. Or it would be, if Americans felt ashamed of killing foreigners.
November 13, 2008 at 1:21 pm
Josh
Or it would be, if Americans felt ashamed of killing foreigners.
Is this failing particular to Americans?
November 13, 2008 at 1:23 pm
Vance
the Menin Gate
Wow, I didn’t know about that. Impressive.
November 13, 2008 at 2:57 pm
ben
Is this failing particular to Americans?
Et tu, quoque?
November 13, 2008 at 3:04 pm
Josh
That’s a bit of a leap from what I wrote, ben.
November 13, 2008 at 3:19 pm
Davis
Having been born after the Vietnam War, I think my initial reaction upon first seeing the wall was probably quite a bit more muted than some of yours. What finally brought me to tears was seeing the reaction of the veterans who were there paying their respects — specifically, one large, leather-clad biker who knelt at the wall quietly sobbing.
I later visited the Korean War Memorial with my grandfather, a veteran of that war. He was clearly unhappy with the monument, complaining of the inaccuracy of the platoon as portrayed and comparing the display unfavorably to the Vietnam memorial.
November 13, 2008 at 3:43 pm
urbino
Tom Wolfe, in a moment of wankery
Too few sentences start that way.
beat the shit out of Tom Wolfe.
Too few sentences end that way.
More on topic, I’m currently finishing Denis Johnson’s Tree of Smoke, which I started forever ago and had to put aside for a while. It, like the wall, is effective at calling attention to the futility of that war.
November 13, 2008 at 4:20 pm
dana
ben, that made me grin.
November 13, 2008 at 5:08 pm
Lori
Great post, thanks. Reminded me of taking my then 13 year old son to DC a few years ago. We walked silently and slowly by the Vietnam Memorial and he got teary-eyed. He later broke the silence when he whispered to me, “wow, that is what a war memorial should look like.” Impressive that Lin could move a teenage, video-game playing boy decades later.
November 13, 2008 at 5:24 pm
Jason B
Impressive that Lin could move a teenage, video-game playing boy decades later.
I’m just disturbed that you can legitimately say “decades later.” I don’t want my life to be distant history. Take it back.
November 13, 2008 at 5:30 pm
Lori
Sorry, it is the harsh reality of history. I now routinely teach college students who could be my children (and not in a precocious Palin grandchild sort of way).
November 13, 2008 at 6:17 pm
silbey
“and now it can be said of each one in whose honour we are assembled….he is not missing,he is here.”
General Herbert Plumer at the Menin Gate dedication, 1927.
November 13, 2008 at 8:54 pm
JPool
After having mused on the power of cenotaphs in representing both figuratively and literally the spirit of national sacrifice in Imagined Communities, Benedict Anderson noted in The Spectre of Comparisons that it is the fate of most national monuments to fade into the landscape. Some of this is historical distance, as it’s hard to find individuals for whom the many monuments to the dead of WWi that dot American cities are personally meaningful, but also the form they took doesn’t lend itself to the maintenance of meaning. What do you do with with an obelisk, besides use it as a landmark?
My family didn’t lose anyone in the Vietnam War, so when I visited the monument I didn’t have any personal route into it. But in watching the many others who had come to pay their respects, I was struck forcefully by the valuable ritual that the wall gave to them. Both Lin’s design (especially the fact that you have to walk down into the space) and the rituals that people have collectively built around it, give the wall continuing meaning and relevance as one of the few true sites of national mourning.
November 13, 2008 at 10:23 pm
urbino
But presumably that, too, will fade with historical distance. When there are no longer people who lost a close relative or friend in that war, the rituals you find moving will slow and finally cease, will they not?
What do you do with with an obelisk, besides use it as a landmark?
Impregnate the heavens?
November 13, 2008 at 10:35 pm
Vance
Steal it?
November 13, 2008 at 10:37 pm
JPool
“But presumably that, too, will fade with historical distance.”
Sure, it’s inevitable, and in some ways that’s a good thing (Renan’s point about nations having to forget as well as remember their founding traumas comes in here). My point was that Lin’s design and rituals people invented in response to it had slowed that process and kept it a site of mourning rather than just memorialization for longer.
November 14, 2008 at 6:41 am
silbey
But presumably that, too, will fade with historical distance
Maybe, though it’s interesting what nations do and don’t hold onto in their historical memory.
Gettysburg has become *more* of a national icon as time has passed rather than less.
November 14, 2008 at 8:00 am
Daniel De Groot
I chuckled bleakly reading that the National Review and the usual suspects opposed the design of the Vietnam war memorial. Always wrong about everything, even in the height of the Reagan years.
I suppose they would have preferred a statue of Lt. Calley stomping the skull of a hippie protester with a necklace of ears around his neck, and the inscription “Stabbed in the back”
November 14, 2008 at 8:10 am
Daniel De Groot
Also, in the category of much earlier war monuments with lots of names on them, is the awesome Vimy Ridge Canadian monument at Vimy, France. It was started in 1925 and completed in 1936, and incorporates the names of 11,000 Canadians who died in France during WWI but have no known graves.
Interesting story: When Hitler conquered France, he visited the monument, and rather than ordering a monument relating to an Allied victory over Germany in WWI torn down, he had it protected and guarded against defacement. Apparently because the monument was not celebrating the victory but instead mourning the lost soldiers, he admired it. Also the design of the thing is staggering. I’m not moved by a lot of architecture, but this thing is well worth seeing if one is so inclined and in Northern France (can be done as a day trip from Paris).
November 14, 2008 at 12:59 pm
TF Smith
When we went to France the last time, we went out to Versailles (which is as amazing as one would expect); one of the things that struck me, however, is the monument in the train station of the town of Versailles, which include four large plaques that include the names of all those Versaillaise (?) who died in the first and second world wars, Indochine, and Algerie.
There are, not surprisngly, quite a few names…and when one considers how small the population of the town must have been over the years, it is truly chilling.
Given that history, the French, not surprisingly, tend to be somewhat cautious about land wars in Asia…
November 15, 2008 at 1:02 pm
Charlieford
The debate over the Wall back in the ’80s was one of those astounding moments where the mythology of rationality gets blown from the national discourse, and something very deep and mysterious erupts before our eyes. I was reading very widely then, trying to find my way through the ideological thickets that contended for everyone’s attention–these were the days when Marxism was very much alive, and I actually participated in rousing arguments between Kautskians, Gramscians, and Althusserians–but I also subscribed to Nat’l Review and the American Spectator. The debate over the Wall was profoundly enlightening. The vehemence with which those offended by it denounced it, its designer, the vets, and anyone who appreciated it was something to see. Best of all, the Wall itself, with its sad beauty, has silenced the critics.
November 15, 2008 at 7:50 pm
Prof B
Very interesting post. I wonder if I’d have been much happier had I done the dissertation I wanted to do as an undergraduate, in American Studies on war memorials.
I’ve always had a come-here/go-away relationship with the Wall, particularly because — though you don’t mention it here — the criticism was overbearing enough that they added the faux-heroic statue to it (and then the female-faux-heroic nurse statue to it).
So you have this inherent tension that reflects the basic schism of American political life — the “revisionism” or “post-modernism” (both terms catastrophically misused) of “liberals” and the heroic literalism or “traditionalism” of the conservative movement. The London Cenotaph would never do in this America — it leaves too much to the imagination.
So every time a monument is proposed, the same debate ensues. For some reason, conservatives are uncomfortable with anything that is not literal — which is why I literally despise the WWII memorial. To me it looks like it came right off of Albert Speer’s drawing board.
There’s something about representation that really speaks to the conservative mind-set. And “conservative” doesn’t necessarily mean “Conservative” in that sentence — witness the debate over the FDR monument. He wanted the one he got — a marble slab in the shape and size of his desk. But what was wanted was representation, the more literal the better (in a wheelchair, which he surely didn’t want).
So what is it about representation and memorialization that also becomes a kind of social validation or mark of approval? Could one, for example, imagine a Gay Rights monument in this day and age that didn’t include figural representations of two men, two women, and a transgendered person — all cast in bronze, all in the name of “dignity,” simply because an abstract representation wouldn’t suffice?
(As to the Korean war memorial, I rather like it, paradoxically enough, though I was troubled at my last visit (Dec 2007) to see that the etchings in the marble around the perimeter are already being worn away by the elements. I also rather like the Marine Corps museum, which takes representation and literalism to the next level. When you enter the Chosin Reservoir display area, for example, the ambient air temperature drops noticeably; in the Vietnam exhibit, the air becomes more humid.)
If I had to pick a favorite, I would pick the cenotaph at the British military cemetery in Istanbul, on the Asian side, at what was then known as Scutari. The little cemetery, still tended, sits not far from the hospital where Florence Nightingale became Florence Nightingale. There aren’t many graves left there, but those that remain are heartbreaking, particularly the little headstones of the little children of British troops whose families had followed them there. Many died around the same time, apparently of a fever pandemic. The monument itself is quiet and dignified, with an inscription from Queen Victoria and a Winged Victory atop it.