Reunion 2014 preview DAY TWO
Breakfast will be served from 7-9AM on Saturday
At 9 AM on Saturday morning we will be leaving for Green Hill Park
in Worcester, 20 miles away from our Reunion Site.
We will be touring the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans Memorial
The site was dedicated in June of 2002. Ron Bergeron, Tom Matteson and I met in Worcester for the ceremonial opening of the park. We were all impressed with the well thought out layout of the memorial site. There were three distinct focus areas identified as the Place of Flags-Place of Names-Place of Words.
MEMORIAL ENTRANCE
MEMORIAL LAYOUT
PLACE OF FLAGS
* click on the picture to learn more
PLACE OF WORDS
again, click on the picture to learn more and read what is engraved on the granite stones
*letters written by 13 Massachusetts veterans who were killed in Vietnam during the war.
Much of what they wrote will be very familiar to us
PLACE OF NAMES
*Click on photo for listing
This is where the names of all 1,546 Massachusetts Veterans who were killed in Vietnam are etched in stone.
Here we will pay tribute to the two Massachusetts 2/12th veterans who were killed while serving during the 1967-68 period.
William Coggeshall, a medic, was killed while serving in B/2/12 on February 25th, 1967 in the border region of War Zone C. You will remember the battle by the feature that I did on Bob Gold. On the day before the battle that killed Bob, B Company was ambushed by a platoon of VC. Coggeshall was killed on that day with a man named Leon Eckhart who was walking point when the ambush was triggered. Leon was association friend and B/2/12 veteran, Clark Hamm's best friend and he will be joining us to pay tribute to Coggeshall who was from Marshfield MA.
The other man killed in 1967 was of course, Tom Nickerson, A/2/12 veteran.
We will pay tribute to Tom's memory and I'm sure many of our men will fondly recall the the time that they served with the Chatam MA resident.
There were a total of five additional Massachusetts men who lost their lives while serving in the 2/12th during the remainder of the war.
All took place during the 11 month period from July, 1969- June 1970.
We will be joined by a guide who is also a Vietnam Veteran who will point
out the distinctive features of the memorial and its history.
We are planning on leaving the memorial site at 11 AM
and arriving back at the hotel by 11:30, allowing us time
to prepare for lunch which will be served at Noon