By Linda Girardi
For Sun-Times Media
November 11, 2013 2:59PM
William D. Barnett Commandant of the Fox Valley Marines Salutes during the Aurora Veterans Day Ceremony at G.A.R Memorial Hall in Downtown Aurora, IL on Monday, November 11, 2013 | Sean King / For Sun-Times Media
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Updated: November 11, 2013 4:10PM
After an already emotional past few days for the thousands who came to experience and attend the observances around the Vietnam Memorial Moving Wall and Healing Field in Aurora, there was yet another reason to pause and reflect on Monday.
“These memorials and parades provide us with focal points to remind us not only of the significant events in our nation’s history, but of the individual memories,” said Wesley Yi, a U.S. Army Vietnam veteran who is now a Veterans Service Officer in the Illinois Department of Veterans Affairs.
Under a chilled rain, Aurora came together Monday for Veterans Day to honor the sacrifices of the men and women of the armed forces.
The annual Veterans Day procession and observances in front of the historical GAR Memorial Hall on Downer Place in the downtown was one of the closing events surrounded around the display of the Wall at West Aurora High School that will be part of the city’s history.
The 30-unit parade featured members of the Aurora Police Department, veterans’ organizations, East Aurora High School NJROTC, Marmion Academy Flannigan Rifles and members of the Aurora Fire Department, as well as country recording artist Ricky Lee, who performed the national anthem.
Yi, the keynote speaker, served his last year in Vietnam in 1968 as an Army Artillery Officer with the 1st Infantry Division, III Corps, in a year that had the most casualties for Americans in that conflict.
The Aurora veteran was awarded the Vietnam Campaign Medal with four Bronze Stars, a Vietnam Cross of Gallantry Medal and an Army Commendation Medal for his service.
He shared the somber statistics of the 58,282 names listed on the “polished, black Wall” who gave the ultimate sacrifice: 39,996 on the Wall were 22 years of age or younger; 8,283 were 19 years old and 33,103 soldiers were 18 years old. He said another 12 soldiers were 17 years old, 5 soldiers were age 16 and one soldier was just 15 years old.
“997 soldiers were killed on their very first day in Vietnam; 1,448 soldiers were killed on their last day and eight women are on the Wall nursing the wounded,” he told those gathered.
Yi shared that 244 soldiers were awarded the Medal of Honor during the war and 153 of them are on the Wall. He said the highest number of casualties, 245 deaths, occurred on Dec. 31, 1968. He said the highest number of casualties for a single month was in May 1968 when 2,415 soldiers were killed in the war.
“For many, they will only see the numbers the Vietnam War created, but to those who survived the war and to the families of loved ones who did not, we see the faces and feel the pain,” Yi said.
Yi held back tears when he showed a paper rubbing lifted from the Wall of a personal friend and fellow comrade, First Lt. James Burns, who paid the ultimate price.
“You may not have met Jim, but you now have a link to him on the Wall. Any name you approach, see and touch you are connected and forever bonded if you honor and value their service,” Yi said.
Vietnam veteran Herschel Luckinbill, who submitted the application to bring the Wall back to Aurora for the first time since 1989, said he was humbled by the impact the Wall has had on so many.
“It has been (an emotional) roller coaster,” Luckinbill told the crowd. “I have been able to shed tears and remember my two shipmates that I lost Dec. 23, 1966.”