The work of the intelligence services is by nature secret, but veterans of the Army Security Agency — which served in World War II through the Cold War — are hoping to find some recognition for their service to their country in the form of a monument.
Cecil Carver, a Vietnam War-era ASA veteran, said the idea started when he visited Arlington National Cemetery a few years ago and saw the 101st Airborne Division Memorial.
“I went over and looked at it,” he said of the monument. “I read about the accolades.”
The sacrifice of those soldiers is widely known, but the work of ASA veterans, Carver said, is nearly invisible.
He wants to share the stories of his fellow veterans. So, he’s on a mission to install a monument at Arlington, like the one he saw that day more than three years ago.
Carver has learned, however, it’s not an easy process.
In April, a new stone monument was dedicated at Arlington. It pays tribute to the nearly 5,000 American helicopter pilots and crewmembers who died in the Vietnam War. And it nearly took an act of Congress to get it approved.
Army officials gave the OK to an initial request by the association for a memorial tree, which was dedicated Aug. 28, 2015. The tree was planted within eight feet of a sidewalk along Memorial Drive, a space considered unusable for burials.
The Vietnam Helicopter Pilots Association leaders later asked to place a granite monument, at the association’s own costs, on the same site. Their request was denied, and the project stalled.
The association went to Congress. Two years later, a bill was unanimously passed in the House, but before it went on to the Senate for consideration, military and legislative officials came to an agreement.
“Without the Congressional approval, I don’t think it would have ever happened,” Bill “Moon” Mullen told the Pocono Record in Pennsylvania.
“If we were just a tree with a ground-level marker, you wouldn’t even stop and notice,” he told the newspaper. “Those 5,000 deserve to be thanked for their sacrifice. It will remind people, maybe for generations, that these were the people who fought the ‘Helicopter War.’”
Carver’s reasons for a monument are similar. He doesn’t want Army Security Agency veterans to be forgotten.