Somehow I didn't realize, or had forgotten until this month, that New York City has a memorial to Vietnam veterans, created in the same era as the one in Washington, DC, the early 1980s. It's a small riverside park on South Street called Vietnam Veterans Plaza. Two days ago, thinking about John McCain, I stopped and spent some time there.
Etched on the glass wall are quotations from writings of New Yorkers who served in Vietnam, including this letter from LT JG Richard W. Strandberg: "One thing worries me--will people believe me? Will they want to hear about it or will they want to forget the whole thing ever happened." And this, from a poem by Major Michael Davis O'Donnell, written shortly before he was killed in action on March 24, 1970:
And in that time When men decide and
Feel safe to call the war insane . . .
Take a moment to embrace those
Gentle heroes you left behind . . .
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