Live Veterans Can Find Their Names Among the Dead

Fourteen Americans can visit the Vietnam Veterans Memorial and find their names carved in black granite among those who died in the war.

“It was kind of scary,” said Eugene J. Toni, who lost part of both legs in Vietnam. “It’s like seeing your name on a gravestone.”

Toni’s name is there because a government clerk typed a wrong number into a computer. All 14 computer records have been corrected, but the names can never be erased from the polished granite.

“It’s a very sobering thing,” said former Spec. 4 Andrew J. Hilden, who found his name on the wall. “But I guess we have been able to laugh about it--that we’ve got a walking dead man around.”

There are 58,175 names of dead and missing carved on the V-shaped wall. The fact that it lists 14 living Army veterans as dead was buried in computerized Defense Department records at the National Archives. Only three of those errors have been publicly acknowledged before--four years ago.

As it learns of the errors, the government removes the names of the living from the alphabetical directories that visitors use to search the panels, which are arranged by date of casualty.

The only way a name could be removed from the wall is if a panel cracks and is replaced.