Why is the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C. said to be the most moving war memorial ever built?

Answer 1

Because there have been "war memorials" since time began; Ancient Greece, ancient Rome, Ancient China, man has nearly always made some sort of memorial to something or another. No different in the US, there are war memorials to every war the US has ever fought...mostly of course located in the regions that those conflicts were fought.

But Vietnam was such a heartache (and headache) to America...that everybody (to include the men that fought it) wanted to forget it; forget all that happened over there. It didn't exist!

But then a Vietnam Veteran strove to have the memorial made; and since everybody wanted to forget it (Vietnam), he wanted to ensure that the men weren't forgotten...so he put every single name of every single man upon that wall that perished in Vietnam.

Most, if not all, US war memorials didn't do that, they just memorialized the conflict itself, or the branch of service...such as the US Marine Corps memorial (statue of Marines and one US Navy corpsman raising the flag on Mount Suribachi in WWII). But to have over 58,000 complete names engraved in stone...nationally...was somewhat new; apparently, this was the emotional part.

But beyond the obvious emotions of the Vietnam War, the special nature of the Vietnam War Memorial on the Mall in Washington DC is that it functions on a number of unexpected visual and spatial allegorical levels which prompt our emotions in variety of ways. The siting of the memorial, its plan layout, the materials used, the descent into the depths of the memorial and the rising out of it, the sombre color of the stone slabs, the way the shiny slabs reflect the visitors' images -- as though to emphasize that the dead were Americans just like us, the dignity that is implied by the careful carving of each name in the memorial walls, the grouping together of all the names of the deceased on one long wall, the manner in which one wing of the memorial points toward the Washington Monument while the other wing points toward the Lincoln Memorial, the statues which are separate from the memorial which imply the lonely efforts of those who served in Vietnam -- all these, and more, combine to wrest from the Visitor a surprisingly unexpected array of emotions, among which are a combined sense of Loss, Sorrow, Pride, and Respect for all those who served in Vietnam, and especially for those whose names are emblazoned on the Wall, who, in the words of Lincoln, as carved on the walls of the nearby Lincoln Memorial, "...gave the last full measure of devotion...". Indeed, a visit to the Vietnam Memorial is a profoundly moving experience for any American. It reminds us of the debt we all owe, not only to those who served and died in Vietnam, but to all those Americans, living and dead, who serve and die in distant lands for Love of Country, and to protect the freedoms of their loved ones, as well as the freedoms of generations of American to come, Americans whom they will never know, but who will never forget their selfless sacrifice.