The American Wars in Vietnam and Iraq at a Memorial, Cemetery, and a Traveling Tribute to Veterans

Abstract

This chapter considers the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq as remembered and curated at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC, and its traveling Wall That Heals, plus Section 60 of Arlington National Cemetery. Of interest are memory-bearing objects communities of loss curate that show dead soldiers as ordinary people who lived civilian lives before and during their associations with the military and one of its two failed wars. In Arlington Cemetery, some ordinary curators have insisted on exhibiting their memories of killed family members and friends in violation of cemetery rules. A different, heroic framing of military loss is curated at the mobile Wall That Heals. All of these memory exhibits undertaken by “ordinary curators” re-curate aspects of the American wars in Vietnam and Iraq through civilian displays of the war they experienced.