O'FALLON, Mo. — The National Fallen Heroes Memorial Wall has made its way to O’Fallon, Missouri and will be on display for several days before it travels to another state.
The 28-foot traveling memorial wall honors 7,118 US military men and women who died while serving during the Global War on Terror.
“Over four times that many veterans have taken their own life because of PTSD," Mid America Veterans Museum volunteer Jim Higgins said. "If you think about the number of people that this touches, the family members that are lost, and then the veterans, we lose, up to 22 veterans a day from suicide. The veterans need our help."
The dog tag wall made its way to the Mid America Veterans Museum in for the first time in 2022 and returned this year with seven new names added to the list.
“We lost three National Guardsmen in Jordan just recently. So very quietly, almost under the radar, our troops are still out there at risk,” Higgins said.
There are 50 gold stars on the wall and each one represents the families of the heroes and the sacrifice they made.
“It just breaks your heart when you look at this wall of what people have done to create the freedoms that some of us take advantage of these days,” Mid America Veterans Museum Executive Director Nina DeAngelo said.
The wall will be on display for 132 hours straight for everyone to visit at any time.
“There happens to be about 150 to 160 Missourian men and women on here and Metro East side as well. You got Jared Schmitz, who, three years ago on Aug. 26 was killed on a humanitarian mission at the Kabul airport,” Higgins said.
Veterans built the memorial and now DeAngelo and other volunteers like Higgins will do their part watching over the wall while people pay their respects.
“It's important to me because I'm a veteran myself, and so just getting the word out there to let people know we're here, we preserve and we tell stories of veterans,” DeAngelo said.
Higgins said it’s also important to him as several of his family members served in the military.
“If it wasn't for people like this who were willing to make the sacrifice we may have lost our freedoms,” Higgins said.
There will be a special ceremony at the museum Wednesday at 7 p.m.
The wall will move to another location on Sept. 8.