DoD honors Relic Room for Vietnam commemorations

When you enter the South Carolina Confederate Relic Room and Military Museum, you will find a new certificate recognizing its extraordinary efforts to commemorate the service of South Carolinians in the Vietnam War over the last few years.

The museum received the recognition because the U.S. Department of Defense found it to be in the top 15 percent of 13,000 Vietnam War Commemorative Partners across the country. That includes recipients who have since 2012 hosted five or more events commemorating the 50th anniversary of the Vietnam War.

Of course, the Relic Room has done far more than five events. Its most substantial achievement was the opening on Veterans Day 2022 of “A War With No Front Lines: South Carolina and the Vietnam War, 1965-1973,” a sprawling new exhibit filling the museum’s Cistern Gallery, and filled with items that tell the stories of South Carolinians’ experience in Vietnam during that period. And it’s not just artifacts. You can hear the voices of actual Vietnam veterans from 70 interviews conducted by former Curator of History Fritz Hamer.

And that doesn’t even consider the free events it has staged for the public that have brought in South Carolina veterans to tell their Vietnam stories, such as:

• “Miracle Workers: American Medical Personnel in Vietnam, 1965-1973,” featuring three veterans of that experience – then-Capt. C.A. Sweatman, surgeon; then-Capt. Linda Sharp Caldwell, nurse; and then-Lt. Alex Miller, who was a severely wounded soldier.
• “Air Force Intelligence in Vietnam,” featuring Moss Blachman, an Air Force intelligence officer in Vietnam from September 1965 through the next September.
• “Angels from the Air: Vietnam Helicopter pilots,” featured six helicopter pilots in two panels: Navy Lt. j.g. Alan James “AJ” Billings; Army Pilot Ron Claypool; Army WO1 Jud Brodie; WO1 Dennis DuPuis; Graves Wilson, who served in III Corps; and 1st Lt. Alston Gore.
• C-SPAN aired nationally a previous lecture from the museum, “From High School to Flight School,” that also featured pilot Dennis DuPuis, who served not one, but two combat tours in Vietnam.
• “Land Clearing in Vietnam” featured Keith Albert of Florence, who served in combat areas playing a critical role other than direct combat.
• “Tunnel Rats of Vietnam,” featuring C.W. Bowman, who was one of those men who volunteered for the chilling task of crawling alone into Viet Cong tunnels armed with nothing but a .45-cal pistol and a flashlight.
• Retired Col. Myron Harrington, USMC, whose combat fatigues are on display in the Vietnam exhibit. He received the Navy Cross for the way he, as a young captain, led his company through the bitter fighting to save the city of Hue during the Tet Offensive.

Those were all just some of the offerings since the Vietnam exhibit opened on Veterans Day 2022. The museum offered many similar free programs in the years before that, all relating different experiences South Carolinians had during that conflict.

The Relic Room also hosted a national reunion of veterans of the Battle of Firebase Ripcord, the U.S. Army’s last major battle of the war, which is documented by a large diorama in the museum’s atrium.

The museum is proud of all its exhibits that teach upcoming generations about all conflicts that South Carolinians have been involved in throughout American history, from the Revolution to the present. But the Vietnam programs have a special quality, because they bring living veterans before the public to tell their own stories – through the Vietnam exhibit’s artifacts, including things they themselves carried into battle, and through their live lectures.

Our participation in all this has been its own reward, deeply meaningful to our staff as well as our visitors. But we also appreciate this recognition from the Defense Department. We know the DoD shares our determination to fully “recognize the service and sacrifice of this generation of veterans.”