No One Here Gets Out Alive: Memorializing, Mourning, and Reconciling the Vietnam War Dead

“No One Gets Out of Here Alive” examines the way in which the Vietnam War era (1955-1975) transformed how Americans managed and mourned the deaths of those lost during the armed conflict. Before the conflict in Vietnam, military burials changed very little between World War I and the Korean War. Excluding Korea, these “good wars” were conflicts in which the United States was on the winning side with many of the deaths in Europe. In contrast, with no American owned cemeteries in Vietnam during a controversial war, the U.S. Army disregarded previous practice and adopted new tactics to help the bereaved cope with their loss. The process by which American casualties were identified, prepared and interred changed substantially from previous wars. At the same time, memorializing the deaths of those who perished in the war became ambiguous as public support for the conflict began to wane considerably. As a result, the bereaved increasingly chose to mourn privately. During this war, memorializing deaths in service to the nation, the Vietnam conflict’s lack of political transparency, its ambiguity, its declining public support, and the socioeconomics of those who fought and those who protested made the deaths of Americans part of an ideological conflict. The outcome was a new way in which those who died in the war were processed and memorialized. The Vietnam War changed the way Americans accepted and reconciled the deaths of their military dead. See also:  http://scalar.calstate.edu/no-one-gets-out-of-here-alive-burying-dead-the-american-way/index