Visit to wall is emotional<br>for Vietnamese survivor

SOUTH PORTLAND -- Lilly Pyle's visit to the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington a decade ago came as a surprise. She and her fiance were visiting his family in the area when he decided to bring her to the monument.

The words of her fiance, a naval officer, came as a blow to Pyle, who came to the United States from Vietnam as a girl in 1972.

"First thing out of his mouth was, 'Look, all these people died for you,' " Pyle recalled. She was angry, hurt and filled with thoughts of the Vietnamese who also died in the war. "I didn't even touch the names. He ruined it for me."

The relationship ended on that trip. Pyle has not been back to the monument since. But on Wednesday, Pyle stood before a three-quarter size replica that was being erected at Southern Maine Community College. She traced her neatly manicured fingers over the names etched into the panels and dissolved into sobs.

"Their names are here. It means they're not here on earth," she said. "I'm so sorry ... All alone in a country you don't know." The arrival of the Dignity Memorial Vietnam Wall in South Portland is giving Pyle another chance to honor the sacrifice of the 58,175 Americans who died or went missing in the Vietnam War. Pyle, who has a hair salon in the Old Port, is one of the many volunteers involved in the project. She helped raise money and is serving on the hospitality committee. "I'm in it heart and soul right now," she said Wednesday as crews assembled the walkway in front of the wall and unloaded potted plants for decorating the area.

The traveling replica will be displayed Friday through Sunday at the Spring Point Light Shoreway. Visitors will be able to see the wall 24 hours a day for free.

The wall is a 240-foot long replica of the 493-foot long memorial in Washington. The replica was created by Dignity Memorial, a group of funeral homes, cremation providers and cemeteries.

As a child growing up in the village of Dong Ha, the horrors of war struck close to home for Pyle. Memories include rockets falling around homes and helping to collect dead bodies after a Viet Cong attack. Pyle's gratitude to the United States and American veterans and their families is undying. She is a fierce American patriot who becomes upset when people say the Vietnam War was a mistake.

"Americans went there for a good purpose," she said. Pyle related how she and the other villagers had a lot of interaction with Americans, many of whom she knew only by their first names. Dong Ha, near a strategic waterway and the demilitarized zone, was next to a U.S. military base. Villagers, including Pyle, got work with the U.S. military. She filled sandbags and also worked as a cleaner. The children would also go to the base fence, sing to the Americans and swap food with them. The children wanted anything that came in cans, while the Americans liked rice paper-wrapped foods.

One day, the children were assembled and brought to the river. South Vietnamese soldiers working with Americans trained them to use guns and booby traps. A bamboo fence was erected and the children helped guard the village.

In 1972, the Viet Cong took over the area and the U.S. presence disappeared. Pyle's family went to a refugee camp in Da Nang, where she met again a soldier she knew in Dong Ha.

They decided to marry, and Pyle joined him in the United States later that year. She did not know her new home would be so far away. The couple divorced eight years later. Pyle raised a son and a daughter, went to school and became a hairdresser. She opened her own business in the early 1990s.

Driving to the replica site with a small American flag dangling from her rearview mirror, Pyle acknowledged that she worried some people might react to her the same way her naval officer fiance did at the memorial in Washington years ago. But after more than three decades in this country, Pyle considers herself more American than Vietnamese.

"I aggressively love and protect this country," she said. "When people say something bad about this country, I can't stand it."

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