Escorted by hundreds of motorcycles, a traveling Vietnam memorial came up the Turnpike Tuesday, passing under flags draped from overpasses and past people waving flags and holding up pictures.
Steve Roberts of Gorham, whose brother was killed in Vietnam, rode on one of the motorcycles. “It was a ride of a lifetime,” he said.
A three-quarter replica of the Vietnam Memorial in the nation’s capital, the Dignity Memorial Wall, will display the names of more than 58,000 Americans who lost their lives in the Vietnam War this weekend in South Portland. Maine lost 343 in that war.
The memorial will be open to the public on Friday, Saturday and Sunday at Southern Maine Community College in South Portland. Ceremonies are scheduled for 12:45 p.m. Friday, Aug. 11; 1 p.m. and 6:30 p.m. Saturday, Aug. 12; and 1 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 13.
The opening ceremonies Friday will include a flyover by the U.S. Navy. The 195th Army Band will play at 1 p.m. Saturday.
On Wednesday, Roberts planned to place his brother’s Purple Heart medal in the wall. His brother, Pvt. John W. Roberts, was killed in a battle on Oct. 14, 1967, in Vietnam.
For Vietnam veterans, the wall triggers old, unforgettable memories. Patrick LaBrie of New Gloucester said Vietnam had a hot and humid climate with rotting, unsanitary conditions in the jungle. “I can see it. I can smell it,” LaBrie said Tuesday.
Visiting the wall is tough for many Vietnam veterans. “It won’t be as difficult for me as the men on the ground,” said Vietnam veteran Mary McGuirk of Westbrook.
McGuirk will visit the wall Friday. Serving as a nurse, McGuirk was a major in the Air Force. She helped evacuate patients wounded in the war. She would go into Saigon and help load wounded victims from an Army field hospital into a cargo plane. They would fly them to hospitals in the Philippines, Japan or to California.
Two of them stand out in her memory. One, a teenager, had lost both his legs. But he had to be taken off the plane because of his condition. “He put his arms around me and pleaded with me to take him home,” McGuirk said.
Later, he would become her patient. “He hugged me and said ‘I knew you’d come back,'” she recalled.
Another was a man from New York who had lost his eyes. He told her was married with two kids. “What am I going to do?” she said he asked her.
“I remember those two guys,” she said.
Vietnam veteran Paul Boivin of Gorham plans to visit the wall. “I lost a lot of friends,” said Boivin, who was a sergeant.
But, he doesn’t know their names. “We all had nicknames,” Boivin said. “I was sergeant Bo.”
In Vietnam, many GIs didn’t want to know names of friends, many of whom were destined to die. “Good friends, but not too close,” said LaBrie, who served with the regular Army in Vietnam.
LaBrie, who also served in Iraq, will probably visit the memorial. He said soldiers in Vietnam couldn’t allow themselves to dwell on the loss of a buddy. “You knew you had to move on,” said LaBrie, who is now a member of Headquarters Company of Maine’s 133rd Engineer Battalion.
He said a half dozen times he didn’t think he would survive in Vietnam but accepted it, adding that many become resigned to it, thinking, “if you die, you die,” he said.
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