West Virginia

West Virginia is another of those states that combines its war memorials. Located on the capitol grounds in Charleston, this one honors WWI, WWII, Korea and Vietnam. Each war is represented by a monolith with a serviceman in appropriate gear. The Vietnam representative is a Marine.

On the reverse of his portion on the memorial are listed the 732 MIA/KIA's from the war. The state's Medal of Honor awardees are also honored inside the memorial.  Included among these are the nine from Vietnam. One of these was a conscientious objector who served as a medic and was killed while trying to save others in the field.

This magnificent tribute was begun has a private mission but the state later added funds from lottery sales to help enable earlier completion.


The Mountain State has the distinction of being the state that had the greatest percentage of losses during the war, at nearly 40 per 100,000. They are remembered here. West Virginia counts the war as from 64 to 75 and in that time period more than 36,500 of her sons and daughters served. All of these numbers might be different if the state counted from the "Official" start date of 1959, or the date of the first soldiers death in 1956.

Next time, on the 7th we will visit a small site in Logan. See you then.