> > > It's funny, Dave, but that wall even had a strange effect on me. I say it's funny, because I have never had a family member, or even a friend killed in any war, and I go back to before WWII. I spent my Army days between wars in Oklahoma. There is something really mysterious about that wall, if it even effects people like me.
> > > Howard
> >
> > And even funnier, I think, the effect it had on me- I'm way too young to remember any serious conflict, as the Gulf War and Bosnia were so foreign to a girl still in grade school. And I never knew anyone involved in any war, except for my uncle, who never said anything about WWII and wasn't at all hurt. The sheer number of names on that wall is enough to deeply affect even those most removed from any of the circumstances around it or even remotely similar to it.
> >
> > ~Minamoon
>
> Dave's feelings about the Vietnam Memorial were also mine on the only occasion I saw it. Vietnam is not a war that looms large in the consciousness of New Zealanders - I think we sent some medics, but "our" Vietnam was Gallipoli in World War I. However, the Vietnam Memorial in D.C. is the most moving war memorial I have ever seen. I can only imagine its impact on those who were more closely involved.

I hadn't been personally affected by the war, either - I am too young to remember the war, no one I knew died there, and very few I know went... but the one time I saw the wall I was brought to tears. It is a moving experience... just looking at the immense list of names, of lives affected, really hits you in a way that hearing about it in a history book can't. I am grateful to have seen it.

-Fobulis