Nov 11, 2009 – A U.S. military color guard at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, DC – Chip Somodevilla / Getty Images

• Thousands of beautiful monuments memorialize fallen soldiers.
  But this one really stands out
• “In war, there are no unwounded soldiers.” —José Narosky
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• Military service takes men and women all over the world.
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• Where can you find some of the most moving, significant war memorials in the nation?
  Right here

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial is a national war memorial in Washington, D.C. It honors members of the U.S. armed forces who fought in the Vietnam War and who died in service or are still unaccounted for.

Its construction and related issues have been the source of controversies, some of which have resulted in additions to the memorial complex. The memorial currently consists of three separate parts: the Three Soldiers statue, the Vietnam Women’s Memorial, and the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall, which is the best-known part of the memorial.

The memorial was inspired by Jan Scruggs, an infantryman who served in Vietnam with the U.S. Army’s 199th Light Infantry Brigade. In March of 1979 he saw The Deer Hunter, which reminded him “of the people he’d seen suffer and die in Vietnam”. That night he decided to build a memorial with the names of everyone killed in the Vietnam War.

The main part of the memorial, which was completed in 1982, is in Constitution Gardens adjacent to the National Mall, just northeast of the Lincoln Memorial. The memorial is maintained by the U.S. National Park Service, and receives around 3 million visitors each year. The Memorial Wall was designed by U.S. landscape architect Maya Lin. The typesetting of the original 58,159 names on the wall was performed by Datalantic in Atlanta, Georgia. In 2007, it was ranked tenth on the “List of America’s Favorite Architecture” by the American Institute of Architects.