Walking the path toward the New Jersey Vietnam Veterans Memorial, I did not know what to expect.  It was a cool bright windy day, the service flags blowing fiercely in the wind.  I came upon the great round concrete enclosure.  On entering, I stopped dead.  The memorial had a sense of being sacred and sterile.  The feelings of despair and death were all around, but when I saw the red oak tree that rose out of the middle of the memorial I knew that life also had its place here.  The larger than life statues, depicting a standing American soldier, a kneeling nurse, and a wounded young American gave me the chills.  I could hear the soldier yelling to his injured friend.  I could feel the heartbreak of the nurse at seeing another young man injured.  I felt myself inside the hurt soldier as his eyes turned up to the sky for possibly the last time.  All around me, the black granite panels held the name of New Jersey soldiers among the Americans missing or dead during the Vietnam War.  There was nothing gaudy about this memorial.  Standing alone in this place, the emptiness and seeing my own reflection hauntingly in the black stone, forced me to stop and think about what had taken place so many years ago.

The silence and calm of the stones demand your attention; you feel compelled to see each name and try to imagine what they were like.  In the memorial there was no place for politics, for meaningless words, for anger, for hate, but just remembrance.  As I walked and read each name, I thought about what if it had been me that was called to serve and if I would have had the ability to serve with as much honor and courage as these men did.  I am a member of the NJROTC and at eighteen years old, I would have been drafted very quickly, right out of high school.  I can’t even imagine what someone my age would feel as they left their friends and family to fight a war in a place they’ve only read about in school.  The thing that struck me most of all was that each and every one of them was an ordinary hero.  They were ordinary men who were asked to do the extraordinary and gave their all.  Even as the circle of names represents the ongoing loss of brave men and women in our country, it also symbolizes unending life and freedom, and that give me hope for the future.

Owen Hnat-Dembitz, Colts Neck, NJ
Marine Academy of Science & Technology