When the Star Spangled Banner rang out across the Fallen Heroes Memorial in Lawrenceville on Sunday afternoon, one man sniffled and a woman clutched the elbow of another man who was wearing a cap that said “Vietnam Veteran.”
The Veterans Day service in the flag-ringed circle behind the Gwinnett County government complex offered time to remember America’s wars and those who fought them.
A booming voice came over the microphone. Command Sgt. Maj. James Nelson Jr. of the Georgia Army National Guard, his chest covered in ribbons, was speaking. He said veterans believe in a concept greater than themselves — the prize of freedom.
“Our country is forever indebted to our veterans,” he said.
There was a metallic click as an honor guard chambered cartridges in the nearby woods, then fired their rifles several times.
Taps played under an overcast sky.
Dark granite slabs etched with the names of residents who died in the line of duty stand at the edge of the site. It may be that solemn reminder that changed this ceremony into a more somber affair.
A decade ago, before the formal space was built, Gwinnett honored veterans with lively re-enactments in the adjacent parking lot. Men pretended to raise the flag at Iwo Jima and paraded in black pajamas, their necks connected by rope, like prisoners of war in Vietnam.
“It’s a little bit more somber now, a little bit more of a remembrance,” said Jim Argo Jr., who flew a Marine Corps helicopter in Vietnam and whose father, a World War II vet, served with the first wave to hit Omaha Beach on D-Day.
Argo was there Sunday with fellow Corps Vietnam veterans Mike Finch and Rich Olsen, who fought that war with the Navy.
It was Olsen and Finch who paraded in black a decade ago. They wanted to remind people that men were imprisoned in Vietnam, Olsen said, adding, “as far as we know, they still are.” (Three POW names are etched into the granite.)
Argo, Olsen and Finch are part of the group that raised the money to build the Fallen Heroes site.
Olsen was wearing dog tags and a jungle camouflage tunic. He was gratified by the roughly 150-strong turnout Sunday.
For those who didn’t come, he had this message: “Remember. … Acknowledge us.”
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