"Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa

The Vietnam War was the longest war in American history. It ranged from 1968 to 1975, and there were over 60,000 American deaths. People today still ask if the Vietnam War was actually necessary or just a good gesture.
"Facing It" by Yusef Komunyakaa describes a Vietnam soldier that returns to a memorial several years after the war. He had prepared himself to see the memorial, “I said I wouldn’t, dammit: No tears. I’m stone. I’m flesh,” and yet he was not as prepared as he thought he would be. As he is standing there he describes a flash back of a friend who passed during the war. He describes a struggle he faces not only now but during the war; race. He leaves us with an open question of if he was white, would he have been treated differently during war, or took a different look upon it. Maybe his name would have been on the memorial.