Vietnam Dead Honored in Tribute at Wall

WASHINGTON —  Virginia Sen. John W. Warner led thousands of people at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Saturday in a solemn tribute to the 58,175 Americans whose names are inscribed on its black granite and in a spontaneous celebration of another wall’s crumbling in Berlin.

“This memorial is one of incalculable majesty and mystique,” said Warner in a Veterans Day ceremony marking the recent addition of 19 names to the dark mirror of America’s Vietnam toll. “It conveys the message that victory is ours--not the traditional military victory, but a nation approaching victory with itself . . . a nation healing.”

Some of the 19 were overlooked when the monument was built; others were determined to have met new criteria for being placed on the wall.

The gathering of more than 6,500 people, including families of those whose names were newly inscribed, greeted with a booming cheer Warner’s observation that “there is another wall. And that wall, as we speak, is crumbling down. It falls because its foundation of communist suppression is being exposed to truth and to democracy.”

But Warner cautioned that despite the dramatic openings between East and West: “We cannot let our euphoria erode our will to provide America with the defense that we need.

“We must remind ourselves that (Soviet leader Mikhail) Gorbachev has not become a pacifist,” he said. “The Soviet Union still maintains the largest army in the world, and its navy continues to grow. . . . It remains a potent military threat to the security of the United States.”

The ceremony, beneath sparkling sunshine, was moderated by Jan C. Scruggs, the Vietnam War veteran who led the long and difficult fight to build the memorial, since visited by millions of Americans who daily leave wreaths, love letters, ribbons and medals, countless flags and other remembrances on the sidewalk beneath the names.

After a bugler from the Army’s 82nd Airborne played taps, hundreds of people surged to the wall to find, touch, and trace the names most special to them. It was a common scene at the wall; there, every day is Veterans Day.