Long van carries Vietnam Wall panels

It’s called The Wall – a long, somber, black granite edifice in Washington, D.C., inscribed with the names of military men and women who died in the Vietnam War. Those who visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial – relatives, friends and comrades of the dead, but also just members of the public – are quiet out of respect. There’s also sadness at the idea of so many young lives cut short in that long, brutal conflict so many years ago.

The Wall has several duplicates that travel around the U.S. to remind citizens of that war and its cost. One is a two-thirds replica consisting of aluminum-framed panels that visited central Ohio in late summer. Like the real one, this wall lists 58,281 names of deceased American service people. Not mentioned are the millions of Vietnamese casualties, but they have come to mind for some of us Vietnam veterans after the war has receded into the past and our memories have softened. I was not a combat soldier but still felt compelled to visit the traveling wall when it stopped in my area, near Columbus, Ohio.

Of course, this wall travels by truck, and that was one reason I checked out the display. The Virginia-based Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund owns the trailer that hauls its panels and organizes its yearly tours.

It’s a 53-foot by 102-inch van made by Featherlite, which specializes in display trailers and motorsports transporters. The sides of this one had photos and graphics describing the cargo. A local veterans service officer told me that trucking firms and owner-operators pull the trailer between stops at no charge, and company drivers volunteer their time.

One guy from Cleveland had driven several legs and this time rode down on his Harley to help escort the rig and other vehicles in a procession along highways and streets and into the suburban park where the panels now stood. I heard that 85 local people, many of them veterans, met the truck and helped set up the display. Several days later, a similar number packed it up for the next leg of its journey.

The sponsoring group calls it The Wall That Heals, maybe because it brings some closure to survivors who knew some of the soldiers, sailors, Marines, airmen and Coast Guardsmen who died. As in Washington, D.C., visitors here walked along the wall, touching it, sometimes tracing inscribed names onto sheets of paper. Some were school kids who were born long after the war ended, for Americans in 1973 and for Vietnamese in 1975. Local service organizations, including the American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars, encourage visits by young people because the Vietnam War is not taught in schools – and students should know that it was waged and caused so many to suffer.

As I walked toward the wall, I was greeted by a local volunteer, Susie Bibler, who asked, “Can I help you find a name?” I was an old guy wearing a Legion cap, so she suspected I was looking for somebody, as some visitors were.

“Actually,” I admitted, “I really don’t know anybody who was killed there. Yeah, I was there, but I was ‘rear area.’ I still feel guilty about it.”

Truth is, about two-thirds of military people in Vietnam did not “fight.” They were support troops who got all manner of supplies, from beans to bullets and much more, to the fighting men, cared for them when they were wounded, and yes, prepared their bodies for transport back to the States after they were killed.

This is so in all conflicts. During World War II, three-fourths of all troops had support jobs. And during the Civil War, my great-grandfather, Frank Berg – an immigrant from Germany – served in an Illinois volunteer cavalry outfit. “He was a quartermaster,” his son – my grandpa – once told me. “He was a cooper,” making barrels in which supplies were shipped and manning horse-drawn wagons that carried them. Some of those thoughts went through my mind on this warm Midwestern day as I walked with Susie toward the wall.

“Well, I did know of a guy who was killed,” I told her. “He was in my Armor School class at Fort Knox, back in ’65. His last name was Rand. I heard that he was killed, maybe in late ’65 or early ’66.”

Like me, Rand was in the Army’s Armor Branch, but he was detailed to Infantry, which needed platoon leaders. For those of us who wanted to go into battle aboard a tank rather than on foot, that was not a desirable assignment – and it got worse. “He got shot in the head, the first day he was in country,” another classmate told me back in the day. First day or not, he did die by enemy small-arms fire, according to records I later found.

“Rand,” Susie repeated as she lifted her cellphone, opened the app for The Wall That Heals and found him: Richard Paul Rand, from Upton, Mass., 25th Infantry Division, killed in action, April 1, 1966.

There was a photo of him in battle fatigues, posing in front of a tent in the boonies in ‘Nam, and I looked at his face. He was young, just 22 years of age when he “got it.” She noted the panel number and line he was in, then took me there.

Sure enough, there was his name, along with the many others. Now I could think of that Armor School classmate, whom I had noticed but never talked to. I later found details about him online, along with photos of him in the field, carrying a rifle; in a tux with a young bride, whose name was Carol – something I learned from a website where friends and family members had posted tributes; and a photo of a little girl, their daughter, born four days after his death.

So now Richard Rand is much more than just a guy in my class who was KIA in ‘Nam. I have new respect for him and mourn him. And it’s because, as the industry slogan declares, “A truck brought it.” LL