Four names added to Vietnam Veterans Memorial

Visitors to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington are reflected in the Wall as they watch stoneworker James Lee sandblast the name of Marine Lance Cpl. Raymond C. Mason onto panel 41E. Mason died in May, 2006, of complications from wounds he suffered on a combat mission in South Vietnam in 1968. The addition of his name and three others to the Wall this week brings the total of the honored fallen to 58,280. Among those on hand for Wednesday's ceremony was Mason's widow, Priscilla.


Four names added to Vietnam Veterans Memorial
By Joe Gromelski, Stars and Stripes
Stars and Stripes online edition, Wednesday, May 7, 2008

WASHINGTON — The names of four U.S. servicemembers who died years after they were wounded during the Vietnam War are being added to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial this week.

Wednesday morning at the Wall, the widow of one of those added — Raymond C. Mason — was on hand to talk about her husband and watch as stoneworker James Lee sandblasted the Marine lance corporal's name onto panel 41E, line 64.

"I can't even put it into words," Priscilla Mason, from Riverside, R.I., said after watching Lee at work. "My first reaction was, he's finally home.

"They were able to put him chronologically where he would have been if he had died Feb. 28, 1968, when he was shot. My first thought was, I wonder how many of those names (on panel 41E) did he know.

"I'm sure he feels he's home, too."


Rest of article at: http://www.stripes.com/article.asp?section=104&article=54635

How do you die of complications from something that happened 38 years earlier?

I looked at the article but if the answer is there I missed it.

he was able to spend 38 adult years with his family and have a life.The other names on the memorial wall didn't have the luxury of ......well lets just stop there..Something just doesn't seem quite right here