Remembering Veteran's Day

By Libby Spencer, junior English major at Silver Lake College

Often when thinking of Veteran’s Day we are brought back to an important time in our country’s history- the Vietnam War.  At the time of the Vietnam War, the U.S. government viewed American involvement as a way to prevent a communist takeover of South Vietnam.  Beginning in 1950, American military advisors arrived in what was then French Indochina, but U.S. involvement really escalated in the early 1960s, with troop levels tripling in 1961 and again in 1962. Regular U.S. combat units were deployed beginning in 1965. Later in 1968, the war peaked when operations crossed international borders and from that Laos and Cambodia were heavily bombed by the U.S. American involvement.  After this, U.S. ground forces were gradually withdrawn as part of a policy known as Vietnamization, which aimed to end American involvement in the war. Despite the Paris Peace Accords, which was signed by all parties in January 1973, the fighting continued.  Direct U.S. military involvement ended on August 15, 1973 as a result of the Case–Church Amendment passed by the U.S. Congress.  In total, 58,220 U.S. service members died in the conflict.

In memory of the soldiers lost in the Vietnam War, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial was dedicated in November of 1982 Washington, D.C.  It honors U.S. service members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War, service members who died in service in Vietnam/South East Asia, and those service members who were unaccounted for during the War.  In March of 1982, Maya Lin, who was a senior undergraduate architecture student at Yale at the time, submitted the design for the Wall in a competition.  Her design beat out 4,120 other designs and in her entry for the competition she envisions seeing her wall for the first time:

. . . the memorial appears as a rift in the earth—a long, polished black stone wall, emerging from and receding into the earth. . . . Walking into the grassy site contained by the walls . . . we can barely make out the carved names upon the memorial’s walls . . . seemingly infinite in number. . . .

When designing this monument Lin could not have imagined the response from visitors, especially of those who were veterans themselves.  Today we find ourselves coping with war and tragedy through reading and writing.  That is exactly what the poet Yusef Komunyakaa does when he describes his experience of visiting the Vietnam Veterans Memorial for the first time.  According to "Yusef Komuyakaa: Facing It" by Robin Ekiss, Komunyakaa served in Vietnam as a correspondent and managing editor for the military newspaper Southern Cross from 1969-1970.  In 1982, Komunyakaa began to reflect on his experiences.  In his poem, Facing It, Komunyakaa’s response to his war experience is deeply shaped by his visit to Lin’s memorial.  Inspired by the monument, he confronts his conflicted feelings about Vietnam, its legacy, and, even the part race plays in America.

Facing It

My black face fades,
hiding inside the black granite.
I said I wouldn't,
dammit: No tears.
I'm stone. I'm flesh.
My clouded reflection eyes me
like a bird of prey, the profile of night
slanted against morning. I turn
this way--the stone lets me go.
I turn that way--I'm inside
the Vietnam Veterans Memorial
again, depending on the light
to make a difference.
I go down the 58,022 names,
half-expecting to find
my own in letters like smoke.
I touch the name Andrew Johnson;
I see the booby trap's white flash.
Names shimmer on a woman's blouse
but when she walks away
the names stay on the wall.
Brushstrokes flash, a red bird's
wings cutting across my stare.
The sky. A plane in the sky.
A white vet's image floats
closer to me, then his pale eyes
look through mine. I'm a window.
He's lost his right arm
inside the stone. In the black mirror
a woman's trying to erase names:
No, she's brushing a boy's hair.

Through reading and writing we are able to find closure, understanding, and hope.  Reading Komunyakaa’s, Facing It, gives insight to the struggle not only he faces, but also the many veterans who have experienced the hardships of war and now live in the aftermath.  Veterans risked their lives for us and our country.  This Veteran’s Day make sure to thank the veterans you know for their hard work and dedication to this country.




 

Libby Spencer is a junior at Silver Lake College.  She is majoring in English (with an emphasis in Writing) and minoring in Spanish.  She enjoys spending time with her family, coaching and participating in sports, and of course, writing.