A Generation Forgotten

In her piece, “Postcards from the Trenches,” Allyson Booth writes, “The dead and the missing are equally represented as crucial to the war effort.” Although this uniformity is beneficial in creating unity amongst the fallen soldiers, it overshadows the individuality of each of the young men lost. They are all alike in death, but is that really the message a memorial wants to convey while attempting to commemorate the lives and efforts of the individuals sent into combat? Perhaps this stems from my individualism-centered bias that comes with being an Aquarius, but the lives of the soldiers who sacrificed their youth for the US should be remembered more personally than with a short engraving in an endless sea of names. For example, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial plainly lists countless names on a black surface, erasing all the personalities of the soldiers and replacing them with letters lacking a story. To onlookers, any individual name would appear insignificant amid the oodles of others. There is no way for a stranger to know what any given soldier was actually like in life.

In a way, such an impersonal memorial also limits the soldier’s life to only their time spent in the war and the contributions they made on the battlefield. The energy of the entire wartime generation is forgotten, and blind, violent tragedy is all future generations can see. As a way to remember the war itself, along with the lives lost, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial is still somewhat ineffective. The war is not only the the bombings, battles, and death, it also encompasses the characteristics of American society at the time. The Vietnam War was highly controversial and met with protests throughout the nation. The early baby boomers, who made up a majority of the troops shipped off and lost in the war, were also involved in battles on the home front, against the US government. The outspoken spirit of this generation, especially including that of the soldiers that lost their lives, does not come across in the simple and death-centered memorial they received. The young adults at the time, being born under Pluto in Leo, shared a desire for development, attention, and self-expression, exhibited in their fight on and off the battlefield. If thousands of names are to be grouped together, let their fighting spirit be the reason they are united, not the fact that they died in senseless violence.