Word: viets
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...years ago, to honor the 2.7 million members of the U.S. armed forces who served in Viet Nam, a wall of polished black granite was erected on the Washington Mall, 500 ft. from the Lincoln Memorial. The 493.4-ft., $4 million-plus structure, inscribed with the names of the 58,022 Americans who died or were declared missing in the Southeast Asian war, was the result of a five-year fund-raising drive led by Jan Scruggs, an ex-infantry corporal who founded the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund. But the wall's stark, understated design displeased many veterans...
...dedication ceremony marked a double triumph. A Washington television station, WDVM, which had earlier charged Scruggs and other veteran organizers with misappropriating funds for the monument, retracted the story, apologized and contributed $50,000 to the memorial fund. Noting that Viet Nam vets, unlike those of America's earlier wars, were forced to build their own memorial, Scruggs said, "As it turned out, the monument has more of an impact being done privately. It was Viet Nam veterans taking care of their buddies...
...closing ceremony was attended by General William C. Westmoreland, the former Viet Nam theater commander, and President Reagan. Wearing a raincoat and speaking in a subdued tone, Reagan, who had angered vets by not attending the wall's dedication two years ago, called those who had served in Viet Nam true patriots. "I believe that in the decade since Viet Nam the healing has begun," said the President, "and I hope that before my days as Commander in Chief are over the process of healing will be complete...
...monument," explained Everett Alvarez Jr., a Navy veteran who was the first American pilot to be shot down over North Viet Nam, "marks the final step of dedicated effort to overcome the past...
...courtroom six floors below the one in which Ariel Sharon testified, another general last week took the stand in a $120 million libel suit against CBS. Dressed in a crisp, gray suit and sporting a small red-and-white striped Viet Nam service ribbon, the ramrod-straight William Westmoreland, 70, former commander of U.S. forces in Viet Nam, recounted his 36 years of military service. Then he launched into a rebuttal of The Uncounted Enemy: A Vietnam Deception, the 1982 CBS documentary that is at issue in the trial...