The Three Soldiers (Three Servicemen) Memorial; Addendum to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, National Mall, Washington DC

5 Henry Bacon Dr NW, Washington, DC 20002

Access: Metro stations:  "Foggy Bottom/George Washington University" on the Orange, Blue, and Silver lines. 

Sculptor:  Frederick Hart

Dedicated November 11, 1984

Visual description: The sculpture depicts three young male soldiers, side by side, gazing north in the direction of the centerpoint of “The Wall”, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by Maya Lin, which is about one hundred feet away.  All three uniformed (rank and service branch unidentified) soldiers are shown as fully able-bodied with no visible wounds or disabilities. They all look youthful and serious, gazing at an unclear point in the distance. 

They may be lost.

The artist attempted to represent the ethnic diversity of those who served in the US military during the Vietnam conflict: the left figure is said to represent a Latino male, the central figure a White male, and the right figure, an African American male. The latter figure is often said to be the first African American represented in sculptural form on the National Mall.

The Black male soldier holds an automatic weapon in his left hand; his right hand, behind him, holds a helmet.  The Latino soldier bears on his shoulder a M-60 machine gun and wears a bandolier of ammunition. The central White figure does not hold a weapon. The Latino soldier reaches out his left hand patting the white figure on his back, iinn an apparent act of support or compassion.

Historical Note:

The 1982 Vietnam Veterans Memorial designed by May Lin lists, in chronological order of death 58,318 American service personnel killed or lost in the Vietnam War, by far the most controversial conflict in American history.   Although Maya Lin’s structure  (dedicated November 11, 1982) is considered by many scholars and architects to be the world’s preeminent memorial, it did come in for some early criticism, especially from rightwing critics.  Lin’s use of abstraction, dark stone, and the embedding of the form within the ground, as well as her gender and Asian ancestry, confused or troubled some of Maya Lin’s adversaries, who hoped for a more conventional figurative design. To appease these critics, the realist sculptor Frederick Hart was commissioned to create a realistic figurative monument. Hart decided to depict the three major ethnic groups represented in US military forces: Latinos, Whites, and African Americans. The specific service branches in which these fictional figures serve is left ambiguous.

Some of Lin’s supporters argued that the attacks on her design were primarily motivated by misogyny and anti-Asian prejudice, and that Hart was chosen for the supplemental installation in part because he was a white male. 

Artist’s Statement

Frederick Hart states on his website: “I see the wall as a kind of ocean, a sea of sacrifice that is overwhelming and nearly incomprehensible in its sweep of names. I place these figures upon the shore of that sea, gazing upon it, standing vigil before it, reflecting the human face of it, the human heart.”

Interpretive Notes

An interesting irony is that while Maya Lin worked with great care to ensure that none of the war dead or missing were left unknown or anonymous, the Hart memorial necessarily renders its subject fictitious and anonymous, based on multiple models in each instance. Wikipedia states the Black soldier was “modeled after three men, Marine Corporal Terrance Green, Rodney Sherrill, and Scotty Dillingham.”

The three figures are considered by some critics to be sanitized or neuralized, showing none of the wounds or disabilities experienced by  so many combat veterans.  

Although some credit the memorial for including an African American, and celebrate the fact that this image is the first sculpture of a Black person to be erected on the National Mall, others have raised concerns that the logic of “equal inclusion” is banal and rather misses the point. There is no direct engagement with the disproportionate burden the conflict placed on Black personnel. Black soldiers were overrepresented in ground combat battalions, and were disproportionately sent into dangerous front line areas and subjected to military discipline.  During the war era, African Americans comprised about ten percent of the national population but comprised more than 23 percent of battle fatalities. Nor does the memorial touch on the post-deployment burdens faced by returning Black combat veterans, including mental trauma and discrimination within the Veterans Administration system and society at large.

It has at times been remarked that while the ethnicallyethically marked Latino and Black soldiers carry weapons, the white central figure carries no weapon. Does this perhaps indicate that he is an officer, in command of the other two men?

A memorial normally commemorates the Dead. This is clearly the case for the 58,318 persons whose names are inscribed on the two faces of the Wall. Yet it is unclear if the three soldiers represent individuals who died in the conflict or if they are survivors, who returned home.  Perhaps they exist in a kind of ambiguous shadowland, hovering between the domains of the Living and the Dead.

The most interesting feature of the statue may be the fact that the three soldiers are staring in the same direction, towards the center point of the wall memorial (which commemorates the dates on which the war began and ended.)  At the 1984 opening, an NPR reporter asked many veterans what they thought the figures were looking at. Some suggested they were watching the final helicopter depart from the battlefield or from Vietnam, leaving them behind. Several suggested that they were looking at the Wall for their names, but could not find them. This latter interpretation is fascinating, suggesting that the meaning of the figurative assemblage has been subsumed within the larger meaning and power of the Wall itself.  This interpretation also suggests that the three soldiers are in fact dead and risk being forgotten.

Prompts for closer looking:

• 1. To your eyes, do the three figures appear to be living or dead? Are they spirits of the departed, looking out at the living?> Are they among the missing, whose fate remains unknown? Alternatively do they represent individuals who came home to their loved ones, and who are now paying homage to their fallen comrades at the Wall?

  
  

• 2 Why is the white soldier the only one of the three not to bearbearing a weapon? Does this suggest he is in a commandis a command position, and imply a racial hierarchy within the grouping?

  
  

• 3.  Why does the Latino soldier reach out with his hand to pat the white soldier on his back? Does this suggest that that white soldier is in shock or in need of special support?

  
  

• 4.   Why might the African American be shown holding his helmet behind him? is this possibly an indication that his time in combat is complete (which might suggest he is no longer ‘alive’)

  
  

• 5.   What do you think the soldiers are looking at?  If they could speak, what might they say at this moment?

Learning Resources

Artist’s web page on the sculpture:  https://frederickhart.com/three-soldiers/

National Park Service page on the statue:  https://www.nps.gov/places/000/vietnam-veterans-memorial-three-servicemen-statue.htm

Wikipedia entry on The Three Soldiers statue: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three_Soldiers_(statue)

Book: Bloods: An Oral History of the Vietnam War by Black Veterans  By Wallace Terry. New York: Random House, 1984.

Journal article;   The Statue near the Wall: The Vietnam Veterans Memorial and the Art of Remembering  Karal Ann Marling  and  Robert Silberman   Smithsonian Studies in American ArtVolume 1, Number 1

Journal article:   The Vietnam Veterans Memorial: Commemorating a Difficult Past, by  Robin Wagner-Pacifici and Barry Schwartz.   American Journal of SociologyVolume 97, Number 2

Suggested Creative Exercise:  Compose a dialogue among the three serviceman

TO COMPLETE: