Mother I Am Cursed

War has been on my mind recently, or, more exactly, I keep remembering that it hasn't. It's easy to forget about our men and women fighting in Iraq in a conflict I still don't fully understand. With that in mind I recently went down to 55 Water St. to visit the Viet Nam Veteran Memorial Plaza.

In front of the memorial is a huge black slab of marble with a metal map of South Viet Nam with stars that mark major battles in places like Khe Sanh and Da Nang where thousands were killed for a war no one wanted.

They dedicated the Memorial on May 6, 1985. They held a ticker tape parade for Nam vets and over 25,000 of us marched over the Brooklyn Bridge and down the Canyon of Heroes. I had tears in my eyes as I saw the signs and people yelling the words we had waited a lifetime to hear: "Welcome Home."The Memorial is a 16-foot-high and 66-foot-long wall of glass blocks with letters sketched in, written home by soldiers fighting in Viet Nam.

For a while it was well-visited but by the early '90s it had become a hang out for crack-heads. In 1997 the city finally cleaned it up and added a "Walk of Heroes"-12 stone pylons with the names of the 1,741 citizens from New York City that were killed in Viet Nam. A water fountain was added and the plaza looks beautiful these days but still gets few visitors.

These dead New Yorkers are forgotten.

The names at the Memorial begin with Rosario Abbate, 23 and end with Andrew G. Zissu, 26. I looked for some guys I had known as a child, good men from the Bronx who deserved to be remembered. I saw that the Irish and the Latin kids took a lot of hits. There were 49 Mcs, starting with McBride and ending with McQueen. There were 13 dead Os from O'Brien to O'Toole. 17 Riveras, 12 Rodriguezs and 7 Perezs. Most of the dead were 18 to 23.

I read some of the letters etched in the wall:

Mother I am cursed-I am a soldier when soldiers aren't in fashion.

-Major Thomas Oathut.

Everybody is just trying to stay alive?

-Cpl. Dennis Lane, killed May 21, 1968.

I can only hope and pray that you harbor few regrets over the many long years waiting for me. I'll Make it up to you, Debby. I swear.

-Major Ed Brudno, Air Force, shot down in 1965 and held as a POW until he died in 1973.

You'd be amazed at how much a man can age on one patrol.

-George Olsen killed on March 3, 1970.

America take one moment to embrace these gentle heroes you left behind...

-Major Michael O'Donnell, killed March 24, 1970.

I'd had enough, went back to the names. An older white-haired man standing there thanked me for visiting the memorial. I asked him his name.

"Lucky. You want to know why? Because I was over there and my name isn't on those pylons. You see any Trumps, Bushs or Rumsfelds on those plaques? You won't. I've looked. Just some poor kids fighting for a war that made no sense.

"America forgets soldiers. Only when they need us do they like us. Even those 1,900 kids who died in this Iraq war are forgotten. Ask anyone to name one of them. We're still at war and we already forget them." I walked away agreeing-I had trouble coming up with one name.