Shrapnel in the Heart: Letters and Remembrance from the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Book

This book is a 1988 collection of intensely personal stories of the men, both draftees and volunteers, who died in Vietnam, most of them between 19 and 22 years old. The stories derive from writings left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C., and interviews with the people - family and spouses and children (many of whom never knew their fathers) and best friends and fellow veterans - who left these memories, which are now gathered in a museum. There are pictures of many of the young men/boys. The stories are, quite simply, heartbreaking, perhaps even more so for those of us who can't help reflecting that there, but for purest luck, go I - now, 50 years later, having had the opportunities in life that they never had.

For those of us who came of age in the late 1960s, the war in Vietnam was of course at the core of our lives. All of the American boys/men who were born in the late 1940s were subject to the draft; all of us knew someone (or many) who drew the low numbers, and were faced with the choice of military service, Canada or jail. All of us knew someone who made each of the choices. And thus were our lives shaped: by the purest luck of the draw. I drew 247; my best friend drew 13. Everyone up through 195 was called up.

I went to the Wall several times on East Coast trips with a group of middle school children from eastern Washington several years after I became a teacher in the early 2000s. It was the one place that I had to say to them, "I can't walk here with you - I'll meet you at the other end. I have to walk it alone, because to me, this is not just another historical monument; I know some of the young men whose names are on this Wall, and it is just too real and personal for me to share with you." And these young people, born thirty or so years after these men died, were quiet, and reflective, and respectful as they walked along the Wall, because I had explained to them in class how I had gotten the high number and how such a random event had helped determine that my path at that junction in my life.