58,195 names are etched into the Vietnam Memorial in Washington, D.C.

The Memorial sits in the National Mall along Constitution Avenue. The Three Soldiers statue sits overlooking the scene between the Washington Monument and the Lincoln Memorial.

The Wall is made up of two black, mirror-like granite walls, each measuring 246 feet long. The two meet in the center to form a wide V-shape; the center stands more than 10 feet tall.

The letters in the names are little more than a half inch in height. Each of them is inscribed on one of 140 separate panels split evenly between the two walls.

One of those 58,195 names on the Memorial stood out in particular to retired U.S. Air Force Sgt. Verdel Pearson.

President Barack Obama spoke in front of cadets at the U.S Military Academy in West Point, New York on Tuesday night. There, he laid out his plan for the war in Afghanistan.

“… as Commander-in-Chief, I have determined that it is in our vital national interest to send an additional 30,000 U.S. troops to Afghanistan,” Obama said.

The move will bring the troop total to nearly 100,000 in Afghanistan, with another 100,000 currently deployed in Iraq. The first wave of Marines is expected to hit the ground by Christmas.

The President explained the reasons for sending the men and women to Afghanistan: The 9/11 attacks, the Taliban regime that harbored al Qaeda and still threatens the Afghan government, the need to train Afghan forces.

He also announced his plan to have all of the troops back home by the end of 2011.

Five days before that speech, the day after Thanksgiving, Pearson took his first trip to D.C. to see the Vietnam Memorial.

The Sylacauga native dressed in his hat and jacket, signifying he was a veteran of the war. He and his companion searched through the book of names, trying to find which panel McArthur Gaffney’s name was on.

A reporter from CNN radio approached Pearson. He asked what Pearson, as a veteran, thought of the pending escalation of the war in Afghanistan.

“I told him we should do everything we possibly could to support our troops,” Pearson said. “Not let them down like they did for us, like the people back here did for us when we were in Vietnam. When we came back we had no fanfare, no parades, no nothing really.”

“Just now, since the Iraq-Afghanistan war transpired, we get some recognition. But the effects and everything else are still there for us. I would hate to have to see them go through what we went through.”

Mac

“It’s really about these guys on the Wall,” Pearson said. “It’s really not about me or anybody else.”

Pearson’s voice trembled as he spoke about his friend, almost whispering as he recalled his memories from more than 40 years ago.

Gaffney, or “Mac,” went to East Highland High School with Pearson. The two played football together, where Mac started at center.

Pearson said Mac was both smart and athletically gifted. He told of how Mac was a strong presence for the team inside the huddle.

He said Mac was the unofficial captain of their team as an underclassman. He did not go out for the pre-game coin flip but, during the game, he made sure everyone was in their correct positions and assignments. After finishing high school, Mac went to Alabama A&M to earn his college degree and became a teacher.

“Mac was teaching school in St. Louis and volunteered for the draft,” Pearson said. “He volunteered. He didn’t have to go. He volunteered.”

Twenty-year-old Airman Pearson went to Vietnam in 1967 as a member of the 460th tactical electronic warfare squadron. He served 12 months out of Tan Son Nhut Air Base. Early in 1968, he saw first-hand the Viet Cong’s attack that would come to be known as the “Tet Offensive.”

“They were shooting at the plane when I left,” Pearson said. “You could see the tracers. I said, ‘My God.’ All this time and it still doesn’t want to let me go.”

He returned home in the summer of 1968, as Mac was readying to leave.

“We got together and we talked,” Pearson said. “I told him about the benefits and I told him about how bad it was over there. I told him, if there’s any way possible, you need to get out of this — you know — get out of it. Don’t go.”

Pearson suggested Mac join as an officer. Mac told him he was going to go ahead as an enlisted soldier. The two friends agreed to meet each other the following year, in August, when Mac came back to Sylacauga.

“My mother called me that next year in May when I was stationed in Kansas,” Pearson said. “She told me he had gotten killed.”

“That really did something to me. He was the last guy you would think would get it because he was always a leader in everything. He could have been an officer; he was very smart, very intelligent. He was patriotic to the core.”

Pearson saw other names on the Wall he knew too, other friends.

”One guy saved my life,” Pearson said. “He crawled about three feet before he got it.”

PTSD

“I did one tour, and that was more than enough,’ Pearson said. “We all gave some, some gave all. To have their life snuffed out, a person at that young age, it makes you feel guilty.”

Pearson suffers from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, or PTSD. He has attended a group therapy session at the VA Hospital in Birmingham for nearly ten years.

“You would think that after all these years, things would level off and you would start forgetting,” Pearson said. “But there’s always something that can trigger it.”

“I can’t smell garlic. They used garlic in everything over there.”

Both the symbolism and the celebration of Independence Day are also difficult.

“I can’t stand the Fourth of July,” he said. “I can’t handle the Fourth of July. I want to get as far away as I possibly can from fireworks. And it was a long time before I could handle lightning. It’s just like a rocket going off.”

Pearson dealt with what so many soldiers who come home do: he was not able to readjust. He recalled breaking down on the cab ride to his mother’s house when he first got back to Sylacauga, trying to “get it out.”

Pearson pushed down his feelings. But he could not change his mindset.

He suffered with alcoholism for many years and suffered with family troubles.

Pearson sought out help through therapy after decades of struggling. He joined a group but saw many of its members come and go, looking for their 100 percent disability payments.

But eight months ago he was invited to a new group. Many of the men already had their full disability. He said this group was there for themselves and there for their fellow veterans.

We’re a very close group,” Pearson said. “We understand and support each other. In everything, we’re there for each other.”

“If one member doesn’t come then somebody is going to call. That means a lot.”

One of the things the group encouraged its members to do was to travel.

The Wall

“My main purpose of going was to see the Wall,” Pearson said. “From what I understood, it was a moving experience. And it really was. I’ve got several friends on that wall. I didn’t know how I was going to take it.”

Pearson recently took a trip to Salt Lake City, traveling by train. He wanted to see the Rocky Mountains.

On the train he met a woman named Ceceil Belong. Belong was retired from the U.S. Department of the Interior and lived in Washington, D.C.

Pearson and Belong struck up a fast friendship. The two drew so close traveling west that she invited him back east, to spend Thanksgiving with her and her kids and grandkids.

“She was very gracious, very understanding,” Pearson said. “She knew all about PTSD. She knew all about Vietnam. She was a history buff.”

The two went on a tour of D.C. and the surrounding area, visiting Antietam National Battlefield, the U.S. Capital, even his first NBA game.

“It was my first trip on a subway, I never had been on one before,” Pearson said. “She helped me experience all that. For somebody to do something like that, take an interest, it resonated with me.”

And they went to see the Wall.

“While we were at the Wall he knelt,” Belong said. “When we got up, as we were walking away, I asked him did he want to sit for a while. Just to regroup. Just to think about what he experienced. He said, ‘No, that’s OK, we can keep going.’”

“He said that some of the other men that he knows had commented they had come to the Wall, that it was very healing for them. And he said that perhaps he would have that same kind of experience.”

Pearson expressed how grateful he was for the trip, and the company.

“She was very patient,” he said. “Everything up there was just moving.”