Vietnam Veterans Memorial replica visits Oklahoma city
Visiting The Wall takes Patrick Nelson to a place where he can remember.
“It’s respect, it’s remembrance for the guys that didn’t ... come back,” the 67-year-old Army veteran said Thursday, ahead of a ceremony formally opening a fourday stop at the Oklahoma History Center by The Wall That Heals, a halfscale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial.
“A lot of good kids didn’t make it back,” said Nelson, who served in 1970 and 1971 as crew chief on a UH-1 Huey helicopter in Vietnam. “What would the world be like had they made it back?”
The Wall That Heals is open to the public 24 hours a day through 2 p.m. Sunday on the grounds of the Oklahoma History Center, 800 Nazih Zuhdi Drive.
The Veterans Day weekend visit marks the first time the traveling exhibit has been displayed at the Oklahoma State Capitol Complex.
Nelson, who lives in Choctaw, grew up in Moore and was inducted into the Army in Norman.
He was sent to Phu Hiep in Vietnam’s Central Highlands where his unit, the 134th Assault Helicopter Company, flew out of a small Army airfield.
As a crew chief, Nelson had a helicopter that was his to maintain and look after. In-flight, he said, “I was pretty much a door gunner and adviser.
“I could tell the different pilots that came through what that particular helicopter’s gas mileage was, so to speak,” he said. “Don’t be lifting more than it’s supposed to lift.”
One night, working on a helicopter, his crew took a lunch break at midnight. The guys were playing basketball when Phu Hiep’s airfield was attacked.
“The first three mortar rounds that came in hit right on the basketball court,” Nelson said.
Among the six on the court, one was so seriously wounded that he “went right out right away and went to Japan, is all I ever heard.”
Also wounded, Nelson thought his friend was dead.
58,000 names
Etched into the polished stone panels of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, near the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., are the names of more than 58,000 American servicemen and servicewomen killed in Vietnam.
Inscribed with those same names, The Wall That Heals travels throughout the country, having been displayed in more than 400 cities and towns. It was created by the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund.
Displayed alongside are photos and memorabilia left at the original memorial.
An associated effort seeks to collect photos of every individual named on the Wall.
When Nelson returned to his helicopter and to flying after two weeks in the base hospital and six weeks on light duty, he said, “I was not the same person.”
He said he was looking for payback, for himself and for the buddy he thought had been lost.
Survival, redemption
“I was not a very good person when I got back in that helicopter,” he said. “I just wanted to basically kill ‘em all, let God sort ‘em out. That was my attitude.
“Thank goodness,” he said, “I had a woman that loved me.”
Patrick and Connie have “been married 47 years now,” he said. “That’s my best accomplishment.
“If it wasn’t for her, I wouldn’t be here today. I probably would have stayed in Vietnam until I died.”
Nearly 20 years after leaving Vietnam, Nelson wrote down his experiences and, in doing so, realized, “I wasn’t alone. I spent many years denying that I was a Vietnam veteran.”
Pulling together his recollections “made me realize that a lot of the things I thought were dreams were not dreams; they actually happened,” he said.
“What I found out is that we’re never going to get over it, but we have to learn to live with it.”
Five names
Some years after leaving Vietnam, Nelson learned that his buddy on the basketball court who had “a hole all the way through the middle of his body” had lived.
When Nelson goes to The Wall now, he looks for five names, all soldiers he went through basic training with, including two Oklahomans.
About 200 people attended Thursday’s ceremony. Dignitaries’ remarks centered to an extent on the injustice of the hostile reception many Vietnam veterans received when they came home.
“It’s so nice that the Vietnam veterans are finally getting to come out and say we’re proud of what we did,” Nelson said. “We didn’t choose to do it, but we’re proud of it.”