The Healing: by Ben Weihrich

The Wall

Long ago, in the Age of Aquarius, there was a war; a war which divided father against son, brother against brother, friend against friend; a war which left mothers, wives, sweethearts in tears and questions in their hearts.

Some of those brothers, friends, fathers and sons came home whole, others missing limbs, others who came home in a gray coffin, and still others who are yet missing.

Time has passed, as time does, and the wounds from that war have slowly healed -- not completely though. 

The people still remember the hurt, the anger, the grief, and the terror of that war. The nation had tried to forget the war because that war was never won and the nation was disgraced by that war. The warriors who came home hoped for empathy, but faced ridicule, hopelessness, nightmares, fear and terror.

These disheartened warriors tried to distance themselves from that war, but they could not. The war drew them like a moth to a flame. So with courage and faith these grunts, flyers, radiomen, medics, docs, nurses, cap'ts, swabjocks, jarheads, doggies, chopper jocks, all kinds of rank and file, hippies, dissenters, draft dodgers, went to the people of that nation seeking to heal those wounds caused by the war.

Without the capital of the capitol, but with the clout of the Powers That Be behind the seats of government, these warriors made their dream and the nation's come true in the fall of '82. Together with courage and compromise, "THE WALL" is a reality today. 

The fathers, mothers, sweethearts, brothers, sisters, friends, foes, strangers all came to see, touch, cry, and rejoice when they saw (or did not see) a name on the "THE WALL". Friends were made and reunited, wounds healed, goodbyes said, unspoken words were spoken, and things of love were left.

The hippies and hawks became one, the glorifiers and the demeanors are silenced by the "Blackness Of The Wall".

No Shame No Glory.

Just a celebration of heroes.

Respectfully Submitted,
Ben Weihrich, Jr.
USMC '69-'75
Proud Grad of "Saigon U"

"The man who will go where his colors go without asking, who will fight a phantom foe in the jungle and mountain range without counting, and who will suffer and die in the midst of incredible hardship without complaint, is still what he has always been, from Imperial Rome to sceptered Britain to democratic America.

He is the stuff of which legions are made. His pride is in his colors and his regiment, his training hard and thoroughly, and coldly realistic, to fit him for whatever he must face. And his obedience is to his orders. He has been called UNITED STATES MARINE."  ~T.R. Ferenhoch, ['This Kind Of War']

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“I am only one, but I am one. I can't do everything, but I can do something. The something I ought to do, I can do, and by the grace of God, I will.” ~Everett Hale