HE'S GOT HIS OWN WALL

This song came from an article I read in Newsweek ("My Turn"), by a man whose brother had been a prisoner of war in Vietnam. After he was released to come home, he committed suicide within a year of his return. The writer blamed the anti-war protesters who greeted him when he came back, but I felt that suicide is serious enough that it took a lot more than that. This song provides one possible alternative explanation, even though, of course, I have no way of knowing. The part about asking to have his brother's name put on the Vietnam Memorial, and their refusal to add it because his physical death did not happen there, was also in the article. The title line came to me as I was reading that, and then I had to write the rest of the song. After I wrote it, I saw a video by George Jones ("Wild Irish Rose"), which showed a statistic that over 110,000 veterans had committed suicide since the war ended -- an amazing number, since it's almost twice the number of names on the Wall. This song is dedicated to them, and to the millions of Vietnamese who died during that war (and after it, from its effects), none of whom are recognized on any official memorial.
A later addition: I recently (May, 2004) happened to hear a news item on CNN about a Vietnam veteran, who had committed suicide after returning home, whose name was going to be added to the Wall. I thought that it would be too much of a coincidence for this to be the same person that had inspired this song, but when I found the original Newsweek column, which I had saved, it turned out that it was. So in one way, you could say the the song is now wrong, since you will "see his name in D.C."-- but it should also be obvious that this song, although inspired by one man's story, is about much more than that. And while I welcome the long-overdue decision to add Alan Brudno's name to the Wall, there are so many more names, like his, that you still won't see.

VERSE 1:
When he came off that plane in Oakland, I thought his nightmare was finally through;
Ten years in Vietnam, five in prison, and deeper wounds than I even knew.
He left that war, but it never left him; seem it killed off all his hope.
Then I came into his room, to find him hanging by a rope.
Now they've got a Wall in Washington, for the ones who gave their all;
But they don't know he really died there, so they won't put his name on that Wall.
But…

CHORUS 1:
He's got his own Wall, and his name couldn't be any clearer.
I see it in all of my dreams, carved there in that black mirror.
It took a long time after he died over there, for him to finally fall;
So you won't see his name in D.C. - but he's got his own Wall.

VERSE 2:
I thought back on all he'd told me of what he felt about that war --
How he wasn't certain, any more, what we'd been fighting for.
He hadn't seen that girl on fire, or the bodies at My Lai, till he came home;
He said it might have turned him against the war, if he'd only known.
He'd felt, all those years in prison, that his country had an ideal;
But now, after seeing what some of us did, he just didn't know how to feel.

CHORUS 1

VERSE 3:
I had to make my own pilgrimage, to the land where he really died.
I saw the bomb craters in Hanoi, the Peace Park in My Lai.
I saw mass graves where whole villages had died there in that war;
But they didn't hate me, and I found that I couldn't hate them any more.
And now his Wall has thousands of names, American and Vietnamese;
After too many years of war and killing, at last they're together in peace.

CHORUS 2:
They've got their own Wall, and their names couldn't be any clearer.
I see them in all of my dreams, carved there in that black mirror.
We don't even know how many died over there, or where they had to fall;
So you won't see their names in D.C. -- but they've got their own Wall.

END:
No, you won't see their names in D.C. -- but they've got their own Wall.

The sound sample on this song is different from the ones for most of my other songs (except for The Greatest of These Is Love, which is similar) . It's a professional studio demo, done by Brice Henderson, and I think you'll be as impressed by the sound of it as I was. It's also full-length, since I only had the full RealAudio file that he made, and couldn't cut that to a shorter time. So it takes a while to download, but I think you'll find it's worth it.

Questions? Comments? Please send e-mail to jbearden@ieee.org
Material Copyright © 1998-2003 by Jim Bearden