WASHINGTON (May 21, 2015) – Nearly a dozen Vietnam Medal of Honor recipients will help the U.S. Postal Service dedicate a limited-edition stamp folio honoring them and other Vietnam heroes on Memorial Day.
The “Medal of Honor: Vietnam War Forever” stamp folio sheets will be dedicated at a 1 p.m. ceremony, May 25, at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund and the National Park Service will host the ceremony, which is free and open to the public.
The prestige folio stamp sheet depicts 48 of the more than 50 living Medal of Honor recipients from the Vietnam War. Some opted not to have their photo or name on the stamp folio, Postal Service officials said.
The folio, which lists the names of the 48, is modeled after the World War II and Korean War Medal of Honor prestige folio stamp sheets issued in 2013 and 2014, respectively.
Several million Service men and women fought in the Vietnam conflict, which claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. Two hundred fifty-eight people from each of the service branches received the Medal of Honor for their gallantry in going beyond the call of duty during the war. More than half that number would receive the nation’s highest military honor for bravery posthumously.
The Vietnam War was a protracted conflict between North Vietnam and South Vietnam, beginning in the mid-1950s and ending with the fall of Saigon in the south in 1975. The first U.S. combat troops were committed to the defense of South Vietnam in March 1965, although American military advisors had been involved in South Vietnam since the 1950s. Several million Americans served on active duty in Vietnam until March 1973, when U.S. troops were withdrawn from the country.