The Vietnam Memorial

Originally published March 3, 2009

The Vietnam Memorial Wall in Washington, one of a three-part monument, is a wall upon which are inscribed the names of all the US soldiers killed and missing in action in the Vietnam war. Measuring 150 meters long, the monument is formed of two triangular sections leaning on each other back-to-back, each measuring 3 meters high at their apex and tapering to 20 cm at their extremities; by joining them alongside their hypothenuses, we would obtain a 75 x 3.2 meters rectangle, or 240 m2.

58 260 names were engraved on it as of february 2009; divided by 240 m2, we have 1 name per 41 cm2, or a little less than 243 names per square meter.

If we were to add the 220 357 south-vietnamese, 4960 korean and other american allied soldiers, we'd have a total of 285 831 names: we would then need 1176 m2, or keeping the same height, a 735 meters long wall, and it would have been necessary to move the Lincoln Memorial to give it room. If their north-vietnamese opponents would get the idea of building their own memorial to put their 1 176 000 losses, they would get a 4839 m2 wall, or 3.02 kilometers long.

At the other end of the scale, a monument dedicated to the 4251 GI killed in the Irak war would be 17 meters square, or 11 meters long and would easily fit in a shipping container; as for the 390 Coalition casualties of the Gulf war, they give us a 1,6m2 wall or 50cm long, or rather should we say wide as this monument wouldn't look so much like a wall than a stick actually.

The 417 american soldiers killed in Afghanistan would fill 1,8m2; the 107 canadians, a 12 cm wide post.

The 45 300 canadian soldiers fallen during WW2 would give us a 116 meters wall; meanwhile, with 416 800 killed in action the americans would fill a monument 1,07 kilometers long.

The french wall with its 215 000 names would measure 552 meters; or by keeping the original length, a 11,39 meters high monument which could perhaps suffice to outshade another wall, of shame this one, where would be inscribed on 102 meters the 40 000 french that fell under german or Vichy flags.

Speaking of walls of shame, the names of the 5 533 000 fallen germans would have covered 6,23 kilometers of the Berlin Wall, or a little less than 5% of its length.

The exact length of the soviet monument more than any other is open to debate, but it is certain that with somewhere along the lines of 10 and a half million casualties, the Red Army would deserve the Mother of all Walls, of which the 4,3 hectares of names would fill a monument as long as 27 kilometers; one extremity would be situated in the middle of Capitol Heights, and the other would end in Arlington, somewhere between Mason District Park and Barcroft Lake; its construction would have taken 10 years. If it was built with the original length, its summit would culminate at 288 meters, twice the height of the Washington Monument. For every meter separating Moscow from Berlin, six soldiers of the Red Army gave their lives.

Concerning World War I however, the Russian Empire yields the top step to Germany, with a 4,7 km wall compared to 5,2 km. France's wall measures 3,6 km, England and Ireland's 2,3 km, the U.S. 300 meters and Canada 167 meters.

667 000 americans were killed in action in the course of all the wars of the 20th and 21st centuries; a 1,7 km wall, compared to 2,7 km for all the americans victim of homicide during the same period. In total, about 34 000 000 soldiers have fallen in the 20th century, a wall nearly 85 km running between Manassas and the Chesapeake Bay; 14 hectares of names which would end up costing over 2 billion dollars upon its completion slated for 2035.

As for the civilians... you know what, I don't even want to talk about it.

WikiPedia (Vietnam Veterans Memorial, World War I casualties, World War II casualties, Iraq War, Coalition casualties in Afghanistan, Gulf War)
Google Maps
Twentieth Century Atlas.