Engraved in Their Minds

But now here was the Wall. "It was like being back in Vietnam, having all the guys there," he said. "In fact, the hardest part of the whole thing was that Monday, when everybody left. I mean, I just got really depressed."

Since then, he said, life has had ups and downs. He and his wife had another son, then divorced seven years ago. "I'm quite sure the Vietnam experience had something to do with that," he said.

He moved from job to job in the construction industry, impatient with what he called workplace "Mickey Mouse." He suffered from touches of post-traumatic stress disorder, and as he grew older, he reflected more on the war. "You think of the guys you killed," he said. "You start thinking about those things as your life progresses."

Kentes now runs a home inspection business, is on disability because of war-related infirmities and is active in veterans' affairs.

Twenty-five years after the birth of the Wall, he said he believes he is better for his experience in Vietnam. "There were periods when I didn't think that," he said. "Are things ever going to settle down?" he said he would ask himself. "When is some normalcy going to settle in in your life?"

"It never really does," he said.

* * *

When Hugh M. Jordan showed up at Washington's Shoreham Hotel for pre-dedication festivities that weekend in 1982, he could find no gathering place for the outfit in which he had served in Vietnam, the Americal Division.

Other units had hospitality suites. But the Americal, formed in the South Pacific during World War II, didn't even have a table. So he and some friends commandeered a desk. One man ripped the sky-blue division patch from his old uniform and pinned it on a poster board.

They started collecting donations in a shoebox, got enough money to rent a hospitality suite and stock it with beer, and soon had a regular reunion going, just like the other outfits.

Jordan, of Great Falls, had landed in the Americal Division in 1968. The year before, he and his best friend, Gerald Niewenhous, entered the Army to become helicopter pilots.

But Jordan's eyesight wasn't good enough, and he was assigned to the artillery. He was very disappointed, because his friend was cleared to stay with helicopters.