We can also see ourselves, reflected among the names of the dead and missing. Maya Lin, who designed the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, said that she intended to create the impression that the earth had been cut open like an geode and polished, making an interface between the present world and the world beyond. I'll always love you. Mothers leave toys that belonged to their sons, veterans leave medals, C-rations, photographs and cans of beer for their buddies. Last Veterans Day a nurse left a poem for her young patients.
Children write letters to fathers they have never seen.
The Wall is also a place where living friends meet. The veterans who came to the first and second salute to veterans, in 1982 and 1984, were looking for buddies from their old units and many found them. A woman who served as a nurse in Vietnam and is now a volunteer guide at the Memorial has met several men whose lives she helped to save. Some veterans have found friends they have thought for years were dead. One of the veterans from the vigil saw a man walking up from the Wall at three in the morning whom he had put on a stretcher for dead in 1968.