Offerings at the wall

On Veterans Day 1982, a unique monument was dedicated on the Mall in Washington, D.C. Today, with more than 2.5 million visitors a year, it is the most frequented memorial in the country. In sharp contrast to the typical white marble monuments of our nation's capital, this simple, shallow-angled granite wall slopes down from ground level to a central point ten feet below the grassy surface. Even while this monument was in the first stages of construction, people began to leave remembrances, among them a Purple Heart medal thrown into the wet cement of the foundation. Since that time more than 25,000 offerings have been left at the Wall, and all of these objects have been collected, preserved, and cataloged by the National Park Service. The curator of the collection, Duery Felton, Jr., himself a badly wounded Vietnam veteran, has contributed special insight into the meaning of many of these mementos, and his quiet reflections are an important element of the text of this book. This beautiful volume presents but a small selection of the thousands of mementos left at the Vietnam Wall. They range from combat boots and weapons to baseballs and bubble gum wrappers to a family photograph taken from the body of a dead Vietnamese soldier. On some objects, messages of the most touching sort can be read, but for others there is no explanation why they were left.