A replica of the Vietnam Memorial Wall made its way through the Verde Valley to Sedona March 30.

Escorted by a fleet of veterans on motorcycles, the traveling wall rumbled through Camp Verde up State Route 260 before arriving at Posse Grounds Park in West Sedona, where it was set up and displayed over the weekend.

Late last week, I received a phone call from a resident who wanted to take her husband to the ceremony. Initially against the idea, he relented, as all good husbands do, and attended. She said they were both moved by the ceremony.

The Vietnam War remains a turning point in U.S. foreign policy and modern American history. World War II is known in the American consciousness as the “Good War,” an existential battle against the tyranny of nationalistic fascism and racial genocide, liberty vs. authoritarianism, good vs. evil.

The Korean War was geopolitical sequel, pitting rival superpowers against each other on the Korean Peninsula, but the armistice only put an indefinite hold on active combat operations.

The Vietnam War was an entirely different affair. Confusing and messy, both domestically and internationally, and without clear front lines, it was hard to delineate gains and losses.

Previous wars were told through newspapers, still photographs and carefully crafted government newsreels but for the first time, Americans watched combat unfold on their television screens.
Visceral and violent, civilians witnessed what soldiers had undergone in war zones since the birth of our nation. Coupled with deceptive political leadership in both Saigon and Washington, D.C., public opinion fractured between those who loved the soldier but hated the war, and those who had trouble separating leaders from soldiers. Following the American withdrawal and subsequent fall of South Vietnam, the war has been stigmatized.

“Theirs not to make reply / theirs not to reason why / theirs but to do and die:” poet Lord Alfred Tennyson wrote in 1854 about soldiers who needlessly died in a failed charge at the Battle of Balaclava.

Soldiers serve because we ask them to or draft them to. Their service is not a choice of politics nor a quest for glory, but one of honor, patriotism, service and loyalty. Soldiers do not fight for flags or presidents, but for the soldier next to them.

The Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., articulates this subtly. It is not a statue of soldiers in the heat of combat, but merely a list of 58,000 names of men and women who died so that others would not.

As citizens, we were honored to give the traveling wall a temporary home, and pay tribute to those who gave the last full measure of devotion in our names.