More than names on a wall

Many of those in the crowd Friday night for the opening ceremony for The Moving Wall at the Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center were too young to have served, too young to have known anyone memorialized there and too young to know anything firsthand about the Vietnam War.

It’s a solemn sight to be sure, the names of 58,195 warriors imprinted on the wall in the order that they perished.

But without a deeper context, the wall may seem to the younger set like nothing more than a long list of names.

There is so much more here, reminded Vietnam combat veteran Joseph Fields, whose role Friday night was to introduce The Moving Wall.

“I see my friends as very much with us here tonight,” he told the audience. “I know these guys on 9E are looking back at us tonight.”

By name he told their story, a crew of 10 men listed on panel 9E who perished in a jungle valley in Vietnam on July 27, 1966. Their Huey No. 64-13571 was flying in the No. 8 position in formation when it pitched up to a vertical position, falling off to the left, completed a 270-degree turn while descending rapidly and exploding on impact with the trees.

Fields was the crew chief of the recovery helicopter on that day 45 years ago. It was his job to follow the Huey in and recover survivors or bodies. In this case, everyone on board perished — WO1 Rutherford J. Welsh, WO1 Joseph C. Sampson Jr., SP5 Harold W. Reinbott Jr., PFC James W. Collins, SSG Joseph F. Hunt, PFC Joseph D. Kegley, PFC James L. McCrystal, PFC Melvin W. McDowell, PFC Carlos D. Moore and PFC Jerry L. Schemel.

Sampson was the pilot.

Collins was the gunner, a young guy who was a wreck after receiving a “Dear John” letter a week or two earlier.

Reinbott was a young married guy with a pregnant wife at home.

Welsh was a Canadian who joined the U.S. military to fight in Vietnam. Fields said Welsh’s father told him about the many Americans who came to Canada to enlist before the U.S. joined World War II.

Schemel was an aspiring singer who’d signed a contract with Motown.

“I know the last moments of their life they were committed,” Fields told the audience Friday night. “I remember these particular guys were laughing and so confident.”

Never forget that each name on the Wall belongs to a person who was someone’s beloved son, daughter, husband, wife, brother, sister, father or mother, he said.

“There are 58,195 souls represented on this wall — each one is like an unfinished stanza in a great American poem,” Fields said.

Who: Palmer Elks Lodge No. 1842 will lead a combined closing and Flag Day ceremony.

What: Closing Ceremonies for The Wall

When: Noon, Thursday, June 14

Where: Curtis D. Menard Memorial Sports Center in Wasilla