Northern Alliance Radio is gearing up for the autumn festival in Minnesota. In preparation, Mitch Berg did a segment interviewing two veteran’s groups that will be there.

Why is this a local story? Well, the prize visitor that Mr. Berg interviewed was Ed ‘Doc’ Pepping who is a WWII veteran having enlisted soon after the attack on Pearl Harbor. He initially enlisted as a parachutist in the 101st Airborne,  506th PIR, Easy company… better known as the “Band of Brothers”. While in the Army he trained to become a medic because as he says in the interview, he “didn’t know whether he could shoot people”.

…err I should say memorials because there are many different mobile Vietnam Memorials. One in particular that visited Oak Grove, Ky during Memorial Day weekend is called the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall. The only complaint we had was attempting to find the memorial. There were no signs at all on Ft Campbell Blvd. A story I found in the Leaf-Chronicle said only that it was a tenth of mile from the Oak Grove Wal-mart but it would have been more helpful to say it’s next to the Viceroy Performing Arts Center on Walter Garrett Lane.

Similar comments about disabled access to the wall.

We got to the memorial, and our problems were not over yet. You had to walk over an area that was not wheelchair-friendly. I started to push the chair toward the memorial but had to give up. Next time, why not have the memorial alongside the concrete trail so my wife and other disabled people could view it? Having it on grass is not a good idea unless it is disabled-friendly.

This whole post seems very negative but that’s not the way it’s intended. Seeing the memorial was a good experience and brought home what the Vietnam War means.