American values are the driver that kept Vietnam prisoners of war going during their captivity, retired Lt. Col. Barry Bridger told a crowd assembled Tuesday morning in Lady Lake for the official opening of the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall.
The wall, a replica of the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C., is a three-fifths the size of the original wall and contains all 58,300 names of those who died in Vietnam. It will be on display at the Rolling Acres Sports Complex through Thursday. The Villages chapter of the Disabled American Veterans raised funds to bring the wall to the community.
Ceremonies also will be held at 9 a.m. Wednesday, which is Veterans’ Day, and on Thursday to open each day’s viewing of the wall.
Bridger, a U.S. Air Force pilot who spent six years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam, described a Hanoi prisoner rebellion in which the inmates gathered for a prohibited church service and to sing patriotic songs and hymns.
Services continued even after 36 so-called ringleaders were removed and placed in solitary confinement. Finally, North Vietnam authorities gave up and let the services take place.
A robust prisoner communication network also survived despite efforts by their captors to eliminate it. He said obstinate and pig-headed people made some of the best POWs.
“Vietnam POWs learned that they can destroy the mind and body, but they cannot touch the values of the heart and spirit,” Bridger said.
They were the same American values held by our country’s founders and the books they read “became the grindstone that sharpened our founders’ appetite to have a free nation,” he said.
Bridger also quoted the late Adm. James Stockdale, who wrote that integrity should never be sacrificed.
Today’s challenge of global terrorism is more difficult than prior wars, he said, because “they are a hidden enemy that attacks the innocent.”
Liberty is everyone’s God-given right, Bridger said.
“The cost of freedom is high but liberty is priceless,” he said.
Several other speakers followed Bridger’s talk.
Retired U.S. Army Col. A.J. Welch talked about the faces of people that appear when he recognizes names on the wall. He wore a missing-in-action bracelet for one fellow soldier from the early 1970s until 2008, when the man’s remains were found.
Retired U.S. Navy veteran John Marcus presented a litany of facts about those memorialized on the wall.
Among the names are three sets of fathers and sons as well as 31 sets of brothers. Nearly 40,000 of those killed were age 22 or younger while 8,283 were 18. A dozen were age 17, five were 16 and one was 15. The wall includes the names of eight women.
The earliest casualty was June 8, 1956, Marcus said.
