Vietnam-War Facts

A former Marine pilot in Peru, Indiana, bought a Vietnam-era Army Huey on eBay. The listing said it was not flyable. It was trailered 1,300 miles home from Maine, volunteers rebuilt it, and in 2007 it flew again. The nonprofit he and his brother started now flies three Hueys and has given more than 23,000 rides. The crew says a veteran is reunited with a Huey at every event.

The gaunt face on the POW/MIA flag is a real person. When designer Newt Heisley needed a model for the silhouette, his son Jeffrey had just come home from Marine training, sick and hollow-cheeked, so Heisley sketched his own son onto the flag and never copyrighted it. It is the only flag permanently installed in the Capitol Rotunda, and it still flies at post offices across the country.

Vietnam veterans got no parade when the war ended in 1975. Many came home to silence. Chicago decided eleven years was long enough. On June 13, 1986, nearly 200,000 veterans marched through downtown Chicago. More than half a million people came out to cheer them. One marcher, a paraplegic veteran, had days earlier saved a drowning toddler. He rode the route as an honorary marshal. Chicago was finally saying thank you.

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall gets washed by hand. Vietnam veterans get down on the granite and scrub it themselves, with buckets, soft brushes and a hose. Their group, Chapter 641, started the ritual in 1996, and through 2026 that is 31 seasons of vets and volunteer groups washing the stone together. The wall carries 58,281 names. They are still out there scrubbing it, every warm season.

In 1982 Vietnam veteran John Devitt went to the dedication of the Wall in Washington and wanted people who could never make the trip to feel what he felt. With other veterans he built a half-size copy carrying the same names and first set it up in Tyler, Texas in 1984. Two copies of The Moving Wall still travel the country, about a week in each town, from April to November.