The Vietnam Veterans Memorial

http://thewall-usa.com/

This website is a dedication to those who died in Vietnam, be they Caucasion, Negroe, Male or female. It honours their lives, and the fact that each and everyone was an individual. There is a todays wall birthdays section, and a todays wall casualties. This website makes them real people, who lived, laughed, loved and died. And in the cases when a photo is shown, I actually felt my heart wrench. There was a section for Women who died in Vietnam, and the first nurse had a photo, she died a month before her 26th birthday, killed by the shrapnel from a rocket. Another nurse Captain Mary Klinker, died when the aircraft she was in crashed whilst evacuating Vietnamese orphans.
It may be that I am from a military family, but I felt a great sense of duty, maybe not for the USA as I am not from there, but I felt a sense of duty towards the greater good. All the logic of hindsight disappears, I feel drawn to joining the military and serving my country, maybe not being a hero, but certainly helping people in a job that is not run of the mill. This makes me think that that is exactly what this website is for, not only to remember, but also to recruit. It instils a sense of patriotism, and with the American flag, it feels like there is no better career plan.
There is no controversy surrounding the war on the website, when in reality there was. In reality they killed on mass, for a cause that they probably had no intimate connection with. But still they fought and died. There are the official numbers of dead, and the categories they fell under, like age, MIA and KIA, which like the photos, they hit home. These names were people, and these people are honoured as heroes, with the 244 men who won the Medal of Honour.

This memorial is well and truly about the commendation of life, rememberance and respect.