Healing Viet Nam's Wounds

By Alessandra Stanley

A statue helps to honor survivors of a divisive war

The posture of the three figures is slack, the battle dress disheveled. The faces are young and tired. The eyes are wary. There is nothing heroic about the bronze men, but together they suggest the wordless fellowship that is forged only in combat. And there can be no mistaking where they fought: Viet Nam.

The dedication of Frederick Hart's seven-foot figures last week before 150,000 veterans, relatives and officials in Washington, D.C., climaxed three days of ceremonies devoted to Viet Nam veterans. The statue, says Hart, was "deliberately designed to be a sort of anonymous snapshot."

Two years ago, to honor the 2.7 million members of the U.S. armed forces who served in Viet Nam, a wall of polished black granite was erected on the Washington Mall, 500 ft. from the Lincoln Memorial. The 493.4-ft., $4 million-plus structure, inscribed with the names of the 58,022 Americans who died or were declared missing in the Southeast Asian war, was the result of a five-year fund-raising drive led by Jan Scruggs, an ex-infantry corporal who founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. But the wall's stark, understated design displeased many veterans. As a result, the veterans' organization decided to install a more traditional artwork near by. The new statue, 100 ft. from the wall, suggests soldiers scanning the granite wall for the names of fallen comrades.

The dedication ceremony marked a double triumph. A Washington television station, WDVM, which had earlier charged Scruggs and other veteran organizers with misappropriating funds for the monument, retracted the story, apologized and contributed $50,000 to the memorial fund. Noting that Viet Nam vets, unlike those of America's earlier wars, were forced to build their own memorial, Scruggs said, "As it turned out, the monument has more of an impact being done privately. It was Viet Nam veterans taking care of their buddies."

The closing ceremony was attended by General William C. Westmoreland, the former Viet Nam theater commander, and President Reagan. Wearing a raincoat and speaking in a subdued tone, Reagan, who had angered vets by not attending the wall's dedication two years ago, called those who had served in Viet Nam true patriots. "I believe that in the decade since Viet Nam the healing has begun," said the President, "and I hope that before my days as Commander in Chief are over the process of healing will be complete."

For some, the weekend came close to achieving that end. "If the country rejected us, and it did," said John Ruehlmann, 37, a former Army sergeant, "we can get together here, bound by the monument." That harmony was expressed in a variety of ways, from a candlelight vigil to a '60s nostalgia concert by Frankie Valli and the Four Seasons; the mood throughout shuttled between tearful meditation and joyous, beery reunions. At the end, just about everyone seemed to feel a little better.

"The monument," explained Everett Alvarez Jr., a Navy veteran who was the first American pilot to be shot down over North Viet Nam, "marks the final step of dedicated effort to overcome the past."

--By Alessandra Stanley.

Reported by Bruce Van Voorst/Washington

With reporting by BRUCE VAN VOORST