World War II had been, for the most part, a perfect war, clear of purpose, the forces of democracy and freedom lined up against the forces of fascism and tyranny. If a person died or went missing in those areas, DoD considered that individual to be a combat zone casualty and eligible for inclusion on the Wall. How many Smiths can there possibly be who died in Vietnam? On the other end of that phone call was an former Air Force officer who had served in Vietnam. Order records from the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis at the Start your Military Service Record Request page at the National Archives website. The Vietnam Wall at the Buffalo and Erie County Naval & Military Park features the names of local fallen soldiers. In a massive sampling of the database, it was established that between 5 and 6 percent of Vietnam dead had identifiable Hispanic surnames. The very young were considered by many to be preferred combat material. As the Vietnam War dragged on, Kurt tried twice to enlist. The slabs meet at a vertex of 125 degrees, 10 feet above ground level to form the Wall. Richard Sandza received the message on the morning of May 15, 1975, the day his friend became the last American to die in combat during the Vietnam War. Lins intention from the beginning was to have the names appear chronologically, beginning and ending at the apex. THE WALL OF FACES - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund These directories help locate names on the wall. Copies of WWII though Vietnam era (men born April 28, 1877 to March 28, 1957) Selective Service Records may be obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis, for a fee. Their sacrifices were honored July 8, 2009, in Washington during a ceremony commemorating the 50th anniversary of their deaths. A more precise equation would be that the college bound stayed home while the non-college bound served and died. Look at the bottom of each panel on the wall for its number. What the MIT study almost certainly showed was that members of the so-called working class consisting of carpenters, electricians, plumbers, firemen, policemen, technicians, skilled factory operatives, farmers, etc., were living in middle class communities and were, therefore, part of our burgeoning middle class. The job of cross-referencing the information of individual branches with the DoD fell to Doubek. With this list in hand, he went to the various locations where individual service records were kept to review files. Indeed, officer casualties of all branches were overwhelmingly white. The men and women who valiantly fought in the Vietnam War certainly deserve the title of hero. Getting to Washington, D.C. The civilian and military men who formed the policy did not see it necessarily as a disadvantage. AGE 17 TO 21 PREFERRED ARMY AND MARINE COMBAT MATERIAL. But you had stories of guys in the Air Force who would die in their aircraft over Thailand after having been shot over Vietnam. Technically, they were ineligible for inclusion on the Wall. Records of individuals who left service more than 62 years ago are considered Archival Records and become records of the National Archives open to the general public. The virtual Wall of Faces features a page dedicated to honoring and remembering every person whose name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. It should be noted, however, that the draft was specifically designed to trigger volunteer enlistments. The figures show that on average 65 percent of white enlisted men and 60 percent of black enlisted men were high school graduates. Perhaps more important, many of them probably did not yet fully understand their own mortality and were therefore less likely to be hesitant in combat. With few exceptions, almost all of the 6,600 commissioned officers who died in Vietnam were graduates of the service academies, college Reserve Officers Training Corps (ROTC), or the Officer Candidate School (OCS) programs. NAID 5709942, U.S. Air Force Historical Research Agency, National Archives Command Chronologies:Vietnam War, National Archives Command Chronologies: Vietnam War: Index to Reports, National Archves. His name does not appear at either far end. It ripped men from their loved ones, family, friends, and it left a wave of death in its path. If the two branches are combined, then 80 percent of the Army and Marine enlisted casualties were privates or corporals, grades E-1 to E-4. In the military it can be somewhat more deadly. The Air Force lost 2,580 or l percent. Thus we can see that the channeling philosophy continued within the armed forces. Richard B. Fitzgibbon III, who was killed on Sept. 7, 1965. The Vietnam Wall Flashcards | Quizlet Each entry includes a panel number and letter; "W" is for "west" or the left half of the memorial, "E" is for east, or the right half of the memorial. Today, more than 58,000 names are engraved in the wall, and more were added in May. It is instructive to read the literature of the war, the letters written home from those who died, the novels and narrative accounts of those who served in combat and then returned. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund is a 501(c)3 nonprofit organization. Vandegeer was on a mission to rescue the crew of the SS Mayaguez, a merchant ship captured three days earlier off the coast of Cambodia by the Khmer Rouge. The Marine Corps lost 14,836, or 5 percent of its own men. And they are so respectful when they do the engraving. Database of the 58,195 Names on The Wall in Wash,D.C. There are three sets of fathers and sons on the Vietnam Wall. If your browser displays the text file, you can then use Nevertheless, 336,111 men were phased into the service under this plan (mostly the Army) and 2,072 were killed. A diamond symbol signifies that the service members death was confirmed. Subscribe to receive our weekly newsletter with top stories from master historians. The Reading of the Names is an in-person event where every single name on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is read in order of which it appears on The Wall. No duplicate copies of the records that were destroyed in the fire were maintained, nor was a microfilm copy ever produced. Photo credit DOD photo. Chronological Lists of Names On The Wall - The Moving Wall Vietnam War Casualties, MIA and POWs. Except for the last file, there are approximately 10,000 names per file. It should be emphasized that 55 percent of all Navy and Air Force officer casualties came as a result of reconnaissance and bombing sorties into North Vietnam, Laos, Thailand and Cambodia. 244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War; 153 of them are on the Wall. This uneven impact was caused by a number of factors: (1) While the South was home to some 53 percent of all blacks in the 1970 census, almost 60 percent of black casualties came from the South; (2) Although we cannot be as precise, we do know that a considerable majority of Hispanic-American casualties came from the West, (California, New Mexico, Arizona, Colorado) and the South (Texas); (3) Better employment opportunities in the Northeast reduced the number of volunteers; (4) Greater college matriculation in the Northeast increased the number of status deferments for the regions 17- to 24- year olds; (5) More anti-war sentiment in the media and on college campuses in the Northeast. . Some recent studies tend to refute what had been the perceived wisdom of social scientists and other commentators that our Vietnam dead came overwhelmingly from the poor communities. Individual Award Case Files, 1969 - 1970. There was no need to embellish. This page was last edited on 12 December 2022, at 18:28. Copies of WWII though Vietnam era (men born April 28, 1877 to March 28, 1957) Selective Service Records may be obtained from the National Personnel Records Center, in St. Louis, for a fee. They often reveal a typically warm American family atmosphere. Vietnam War: in Country, Notice: Scanning of Vietnam-era Deck Logs, Vietnam War, 1961-1975. 8 Women are on the Wall. The shining surface is intended to reflect the sun, the ground and those who stand before it. For weeks and weeks, a team worked through the list, verifying spellings and ensuring that the computer printout that was to be used for the stenciling was correct. Patricia Krause. site, for searching with a word processor. There were no indexes created prior to the fire. As a result, the software improperly truncated or abbreviated names. Eight women were killed in Vietnam, five Army lieutenants, one Army captain, one Army lieutenant colonel and one Air Force captain. The young enlisted volunteer or draftee had not had much time to form any complicated theories about our Vietnam commitment. As we have pointed out earlier, more than 80 percent of our casualties were Army and Marine enlisted men with an average age of 19- to 20-years. The virtual Wall of Faces features a page dedicated to honoring and remembering every person whose name is inscribed on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. Thus it is safe to say that Hispanic-Americans were over-represented among Vietnam casualties an estimated 5.5 percent of the dead against 4.5 percent of the 1970 population. Your donation to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund will help expand our mission to honor, educate and heal. as the names on the Wall. Marlin on March 19, 1967 and Norman on August 18, 1968 Brothers Bennett and Dennis Herrick were both killed in Vietnam. The result: no comprehensive master list of Vietnam War casualties existed. As Maya Ling Lin, the architect of the Wall, has said: It was as if the black-brown earth were polished and made into an interface between the sunny world and the quiet dark world beyond that we cannot enter. In high school, he joined ROTC and kept his fathers medals pinned next to his own awards on a piece of crimson cloth. Once additions are approved by DoD, VVMF receives the list of approved names, coordinates the inscribing and absorbs the costs. compiled by Military Records and Research Library, Department of Military Affairs; edited by Julia D. Rather and Jeffrey Michael Duff, Research Our Records. 54 soldiers on the Wall attended Thomas Edison High School in Philadelphia. During and after the Vietnam War, the Department of Defense (DoD) compiled a list of combat zone casualties according to criteria in a 1965 Presidential Executive Order. If you For more great articles be sure to subscribe to Vietnam Magazine today! The draft continued from 1948, during both peacetime and war, to 1973, when President Richard M. Nixon signed legislation officially ending the draft. Doubek contacted the National Personnel Records Center, Archives and Records Service, in St. Louis, Mo. The directories are organized alphabetically by last name. Thirty one sets of parents lost two of their sons. You may print these files and have the pages available for visitors to Marine Corps History Division2044 Broadway StreetQuantico, Virginia 22134Telephone: (703) 432-4877, Coast GuardU.S. Plan a Visit - Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund The panels are numbered beginning from the center out toward the ends of each wall. The black granite walls are engraved with the names of more than 58,000 men and women who laid down their lives or remained missing. These casualties came largely from the Northeast and North Central regions of the United States, many from the traditionally patriotic, Catholic working class neighborhoods. The numbers on the wall ascend from the center out toward the left and right extremes. Only 10 percent of enlisted men had even some college to their credit and only 1 percent were college graduates. Authority Record - NARA, Records of the U.S. The combination of the selective service policies with the skills and aptitude testing of both volunteers and draftees (in which blacks scored noticeably lower) conspired to assign blacks in greater numbers to the combat units of the Army and Marine Corps. A Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) study released in 1992, found that our Vietnam casualties were only marginally greater from the economically lowest 50 percent of our communities (31 deaths per 100,000 of population), when compared with the economically highest 50 percent (26 deaths per 100,000 population). Note the panel and line number for the name listed. This makeup, they say, was the very antithesis of what we stand for as a democracy a shameful corruption of our values and our historical sense of fairness and social justice. As she wisely predicted, this would help bring the veterans back in timeand a cathartic healing would occur for many by facing this loss again.. It is located north of the Lincoln Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. along Constitution Avenue NW between 21st and 23rd streets. Chronological order by date of casualty allows friends and family members to pick out their loved one from all of the others with the same name. In an effort to further preserve the legacy of those who sacrificed all in Vietnam, VVMF is committed to finding a photo to go with each of the more than 58,000 names on The Wall. However, in 1980, President James E. Carter resumed Selective Service registration in response to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. These names are followed by the inscription: Our nation honors the courage, sacrifice and devotion to duty and country of its Vietnam veterans. This page has been viewed 167,336 times (0 via redirect). Officer casualties in Vietnam, including warrant officers, numbered 7,874, or 13.5 percent of all casualties. These were Mexican, Puerto Rican, Cuban and other Latino-Americans with ancestries based in Central and South America. The names would become the memorial. Certainly, some who died did come from poor and broken homes in the urban ghettos and barrios, or were from dirt-poor farm homes in the South and Midwest. . Whether they produced battlefield images of the dead or daguerreotype portraits of common soldiers, []. This can help veterans or relatives find other persons who died with At the time, approximately 1,300 names were designated as servicemen who were either missing or prisoners of war. but will allow you to download it after you specify a file name. This was long before the advent of integrated computer databases. The resulting aptitude scores were used to classify entrants into four categories and this would, for the most part, determine their subsequent assignments. During one review, Doubek found a glitch with the computer software: it did not recognize the spaces that appeared within a last name, such as van der Meide. Nor could it properly discern a compounded first name, such as Billy Bob, versus a traditional first and middle name. No other American war has presented such a young profile in combat. Lower end category IVs consisting of those who scored below 20 on the AFQT were usually rejected for service. The DOD percentages reveal that nearly 75 percent of Army enlisted casualties were privates or corporals. We worked very hard with volunteers from the Gold Star Mothers, recalled Doubek. How to Find a Name on Vietnam Wall - YouTube These files are lists of the names on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, listed in chronological order of the casualty date and then alphabetical by last name within a given date. Please say a prayer for our fallen heroes, their family members, and our hero Vietnam War Veterans during your visit. More than 200 names have been added to the Wall You must refer to a database, which gives the names in alphabetical order and includes the position of each on the Memorial. By his estimate, he helped pull out close to 2,000 people. Beside each name is a symbol that denotes a service members status: either missing or confirmed dead. The most casualty deaths for a single day was on January 31, 1968 245 deaths. Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund | 3033 Wilson Blvd, Suite 300 | Arlington VA 22201 | 202.393.0090 In 1964 an Ohio woman took up the challenge that had led to Amelia Earharts disappearance. These officer casualties came more from the South and West regions, 4.1 deaths per 100,000, in contrast to 3.5 from the Northeast and Midwest regions. Congress and the Johnson administration, therefore, sought to protect our college-bound and educated young men. As we search for proper bookends to encapsulate the story of a generation at war, perhaps the best we can do is look at what is written in stone. In many of these families it was considered unpatriotic and indeed reprehensible to avoid active duty by requesting a status deferment or seeking out a draft counselor for advice on how to avoid the draft.