He was a tall, thin man wearing tattered clothes, and tears ran down his bearded cheeks as he walked along the Vietnam Veterans Memorial last week and went through what has become an increasingly common ritual.
He stopped before Panel 25W, staring at it a long time before slowly running his fingers along the names chiseled into the stark black granite of the memorial known as the Wall.Touching the etched letters of these names, which are among the 58,202 Americans who perished in the Vietnam War and are immortalized on the Wall, was a transcendent gesture. It was an effort to bridge the abyss between the living and the lost, and he gasped when his hand came to the name of James C. Harper Jr.
"J.C., it's me," he sobbed. "It's been a long time, but I got here."
Then he reached into a brown paper bag, pulled out a can of sliced peaches and gently placed it before the Wall. "I brought these specially for you," he said. "I know how much you like them."
His name is C.D. Jackson, and Harper, killed by enemy gunfire in 1969, had been his buddy with the 18th Engineers in Vietnam. "We hung around together, and laughed a lot," he subsequently explained. "And sometimes it seemed like we were the only two people in the whole world."
This was his first visit to the Wall, said Jackson, 45, who drove here from Hopewell, Va., to honor his friend on May 16, the 27th anniversary of Harper's death.
"J.C. was from Georgia and he loved those peaches," Jackson said. "They were a very precious item out in the boondocks. He would trade just about anything for them."
Jackson's gift was picked up by park rangers at day's end. It now sits in a government warehouse in Lanham, Md., where it will be cataloged and preserved with more than 50,000 other keepsakes left at the Wall since the memorial's dedication in November 1982.
In addition to being one of Washington's most popular tourist attactions, attracting more than 2 million visitors a year, the Wall has spawned an archaeological collection of American grief. It has become a poignant place of tribute at which thousands of visitors, in private rituals, leave behind personal mementos for friends or loved ones whose names are engraved in stone.
Nearly 4,000 tokens of remembrance now are left at the Wall each year, and the flow picked up markedly during the past week because of the Memorial Day holiday. Military items - medals, hats, boots, belts - still predominate, but the collection includes increasing numbers of profoundly personal things like photos, teddy bears, baseballs, childhood toys and, perhaps most moving, letters and cards that line the Wall's base every day.
"We never expected something like this to develop," said Jan Scruggs, the Vietnam veteran who spearheaded efforts to fund and build the Wall. "It's certainly not an American tradition. But it clearly is happening and it has become an integral part of the memorial."
Scruggs, 48, described the new tradition as "not religious, but something very close to it." He added: "It represents a final stage of mourning. It is, for many visitors, a way of saying goodbye and letting go - and some of the written items are incredibly moving."
One of those was a three-page letter to a North Vietnamese soldier, left in 1989 by a former member of the 101st Airborne Division. It was accompanied by a photo of the enemy soldier posing with a young girl who probably was his daughter.
"Dear Sir," the American began. "For 22 years I have carried your picture in my wallet. I was only 18 years old that day that we faced one another on that trail in Chu Lai. Why you did not take my life I'll never know. You stared at me so long, armed with your AK-47, and yet you did not fire. Forgive me for taking your life."
He continued:
"So many times over the years I have stared at your picture and your daughter, I suspect. Each time my heart and guts would burn with the pain of guilt. I have two daughters myself now . . . As of today we are no longer enemies. I perceive you as a brave soldier defending his homeland. Above all else, I can now respect the importance that life held for you. I suppose that is why I am able to be here today."
He concluded:
"It is time for me to continue the life process and release my pain and guilt. Forgive me Sir, I shall try to live my life to the fullest, an opportunity that you and many others were denied."
That letter, obviously part of a long-delayed catharsis, was signed by Richard A. Luttrell, who could not be located.
There is an olive-green infantryman's utility cap, left in 1989 with a note and Purple Heart pinned to it.
"Rick," says the note, suggestive of a long-unfulfilled pledge or promise. "I didn't forget! It just took me awhile." It was signed "Jack."
And there is an ashtray from the Continental Palace Hotel in Saigon.
"Dear George," says a note accompanying the ashtray. "I'm waiting to have a drink in Saigon. I miss you. I wish it had been me." It was signed "Michael."