Names on Wall Bring Back Memories of War in Statesville

BY WESLEY YOUNG
SALISBURY POST

STATESVILLE - The names get you - the sheer number of them.

As workers assembled a replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial beside Broad Street United Methodist Church in downtown Statesville this week, they hauled big metal sheets out of the back of a trailer and fitted them together one by one.

Each sheet contained hundreds if not thousands of names. And as one metal sheet joined another - and another - the casualty list grew longer and longer.

Just like lists grew longer back then.

The work wasn't even finished Tuesday when the first watchers ventured up to look for a name.

Jane Layton, watching from the sidelines as workers did their tasks, was thinking ahead to Saturday. Layton's husband, James E. Deese Jr., died in the 1968-69 Tet offensive by the Viet Cong. On Saturday, she plans to be at the Wall to meet Gary, a friend of her husband's whom she hasn't had a chance to talk to since the war.

Gary was stationed in Germany when Deese went to Vietnam, Layton said. He didn't think it was right that Deese should have to go, since the couple had just married. Layton said Gary even wrote letters to the military brass hoping to get himself transferred to Vietnam, so that maybe Deese wouldnFt have to serve. It didn't work.

Layton ran into Gary at a class reunion several years ago, and told him they needed to talk sometime.

Saturday will be the time, in front of the Wall.

Layton herself didn't go to the Wall in Washington for many years. She had remarried and begun a family.

"I had put it in a closet and didn't deal with it at all," Layton said. "It is easier not to face it than to face it."

Then, on a trip to Hawaii in 1984, she and her current husband heard a motivational speaker talk about his experiences as a Prisoner of War in Vietnam. He talked about how much it had meant to know that people back home were wearing armbands with soldiers' names on them.

After the talk, Layton approached the speaker and told him how hard it was for her to come to grips with her feelings about that period.

"He said I had to start with the Wall," Layton said. "He said, 'Until you face the Wall, you won't begin to heal.'|"

A few years after that, she made the trip to the Wall.

"Seeing his name - it is still an emotional experience," Layton said. "To see his name on that wall is unbelievable."

Nearby, Bud Holcombe watched the workers putting up the wall and talked about the thrill it had been to escort the Wall exhibit into Statesville.

Holcombe is president of the N.C. Chapter 2 of Rolling Thunder, a group that bills itself as more than just a motorcycle club. The members work to publicize the issue of soldiers still unaccounted for from the Vietnam War experience.

Members on their motorcycles met the trucks and trailers carrying the Wall exhibit at the Virginia border, and escorted them down Interstate 77 towards Statesville. People even stood on overhead bridges and cheered or gave salutes, Holcombe said. It wasn't like that at all when he and others came back from Vietnam in the 1970s.

Holcomb said he'd be hanging around the Wall exhibit to give comfort to people who wanted someone to talk to.

Standing beside the wall, Walter Janvrin of Statesville pointed out the name of Charles McMahon Jr., his cousin. The young man had only been in Vietnam for a week when he was killed on the last day of the war, during an attack on an embassy evacuation.

Later, Layton got a chance to talk to Holcombe about dealing with memories of the Vietnam War era. Layton feels that besides talking to Gary, her late husband's friend, she has one other person to talk to in order to balance the books of memory: a man who served in Deese's unit, and who lives nearby. The man contacted her shortly after he got back from Vietnam, but never made another effort to get in touch.

Talking to Holcombe helped, she said, even if he didn't know her husband.

"It is such a burden of being a widow and being left out of everything," Layton said. "The veterans were not treated well, but there was no way for the widows to come into contact with anybody."

It was good "just to talk to somebody who was there to find out how they feel," Layton said.

The memorial will be on display 24 hours a day until 5 p.m. Tuesday. A wreath-laying ceremony will be held 10 a.m. Saturday, rain or shine. Some 1,000 to 1,500 people are expected for the ceremony, so parking will be at premium. Organizers recommend that people try to arrive early.