warmemorial

    The color photo below shows a war memorial on the "parade ground" that is next to the student Union building on the campus of Louisiana State University, in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, USA.
      There is an interesting story about when it was made: it was built by veterans of WW II immediately after the movie Saving Private Ryan appeared in movie theatres. That film's shockingly-realistic portrayal of the horrors faced by USA soldiers during WW II (during the Normany invasion, and during later fighting done to end the Nazi's dominance of Europe) caused a widespread reaction of grief/remembrance among USA veterans of WW II.
      Veterans local to the LSU area then quickly raised funds sufficient to create this memorial. This impressive memorial is modeled after the Vietnam war memorial in Washington DC. Like that memorial, this one has a name engraved on its walls for every soldier being honored. In this case, for every USA citizen who died in WW II, the Korean war, or the Vietnam war, or the Persian Gulf war, and who also was affiliated with LSU somehow, either as a student, a staff member, or a faculty member.
    The memorial currently (as of 31-OCT-2001) shows 503 names for WW II (with 7 that have been added at the end), 42 for Korea, and 42 for Vietnam (with 2 that have been added at the end), and 0 for the Persian Gulf war..
     Saving Private Ryan is the only movie that has ever made me feel ill. I almost vomited during the first 10 minutes, when seeing soldiers from my country being cut to pieces on a Normandy beach by Nazi machine gun fire. I've concluded that my almost-vomiting was due to the combination of this great film's gory-realism and my own strong identification with the cause being fought for.
     Defeating the Nazis was desperately necessary. I'm sure I would have been one of those soldiers (I hope, anyway), or, at least, a war journalist or something else like that (I was born 12 years later).

<<== This photo shows the beginning of the names for the WW II dead.

<<== The name Edward V Loustalot, shown at the bottom of this column of names, is the 278th name among the 503 (total) names of WW II dead. Edward was the USA's first WW II european casualty, according to an article in the Baton Rouge Advocate published in Sept. of 2001.

This photo shows the 42 Korean
war names. ==>>

<<== An oddity: a woman's name appears as the 329th name in the list of WW II dead. Her name is Dorothy Mae Nichols.

This photo shows the 42 Vietnam war names. ==>>

Two War Memorials

"We can let Nazis rule the world, or we can fight a war to defeat them. There is no third option..." George Orwell, October 1941

This photo shows the travelling Vietnam War memorial. In this photo it is set up around 80 meters southeast of the memorial shown in the photos above.