Emotions high as traveling Vietnam Wall visits South MS. Here’s when, how to visit

Jerry Delahoussaye leaned against the granite wall, touching his forehead directly to one of the names engraved on it. With tears in his eyes, he tapped his fist against the wall. In his hand he held a rubbing he made of the name: One of his friends he lost in the Vietnam War.

“God brought me home,” said Delahoussaye, who served in the 101st Airborne Division, 3rd Battalion of the 506 during the war. “But these guys, these are the heroes that are on this wall here.”

Delahoussaye was one of many visitors to The Wall That Heals on Thursday morning. The Wall That Heals, a three-quarter-scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington D.C., is transported from city to city across the country, giving veterans and others a chance to visit it without having to travel to the nation’s capital. The Wall That Heals is on display in D’Iberville until Sunday.

For Delahoussaye, a D’Iberville native, being able to see the memorial in his hometown means a lot. Delahoussaye says he did get to see the original Vietnam Veterans Memorial in D.C. decades ago, but he was glad to have another opportunity to honor three of his friends who died in the war.

“It’s the same wall, same memories, the same men,” he said. “It brings back a lot of stuff that I tried to forget, but I wanted to see their names anyhow, just to remember them. It’s good that people still remember.”

What it was like in Vietnam

Delahoussaye says he joined the army at age 18. He trained at Fort Campbell in Kentucky before being sent to Florida and Georgia to do what he called “jungle training” in preparation for the environment of Vietnam. He was then shipped off with his battalion from California. He turned 19 on the boat trip to Vietnam.

“I had no idea what Vietnam was. All I knew is that we were doing jungle training,” he said. “I had no idea what I was getting into.”

According to Delahoussaye, he arrived in Vietnam in 1967. He stayed for four and a half months doing reconnaissance work. He says he still has nightmares about the things he saw.

As the Tet Offensive, one of the largest military campaigns of the Vietnam War, was getting underway, Delahoussaye was injured on Feb. 28, 1968, and taken out of the country. Some of his friends were killed after he left.

Coming back to the states after that was hard, Delahoussaye says. One day he was in a firefight for his life and the lives of his battalion, he says, the next he was back in the U.S. and confronted with anti-war protesters burning American flags and anti-war sentiment among the public.

“You come back and people don’t even want to talk to you,” he said. “A lot of guys took their uniforms off. I wasn’t about to take mine off. I was proud of it then, and I’m proud of it now.”

How to visit the wall

The names of Delahoussaye’s three friends are now memorialized among the over 58,000 names on the memorial in D.C. and on The Wall That Heals.

The Wall That Heals will be on display at the D’Iberville Sports Complex at 10706 Kajja Drive in D’Iberville until Sunday afternoon. The memorial is open to visitors 24 hours a day until 2 p.m. Sunday when it closes.

Volunteers and tour guides will provide information while the memorial is on display. A welcome ceremony was held at 6 p.m. on Thursday and a ceremony honoring those exposed to Agent Orange will take place on Friday at 7 p.m. A closing ceremony will take place at 1:30 on Sunday and taps will be played each night at sunset.

“It’s an honor for us to be able to do this,” said Rodney Gonsalves, the site manager for The Wall That Heals. “We want to be able to honor as many veterans as we can.”

According to Gonsalves, the wall has traveled to every state except Alaska since it was created in 1996.

The wall was last in Mississippi in 2022 when it was on display in Bay St. Louis. It will be on display in Crystal Springs, Mississippi, in November.

Gonsalves says volunteers are still needed to dismantle the wall at 2 p.m. on Sunday. He estimates it will take about four hours and no registration is needed.

Hannah Ruhoff

Sun Herald