Steve Mason and The Wall Within

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Steve Mason was a decorated Vietnam War veteran whose poem “The Wall Within” became a powerful voice of healing at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial dedication in 1984.

Steve Mason, born in Brooklyn in 1940, served as a U.S. Army captain during the Vietnam War. After returning home, he became a poet and advocate for peace, channeling the trauma and complexity of war into verse that resonated deeply with veterans and their families.

I met him in 1976 at the India Street Poets Theater gatherings at what was called the India Street Artist's Colony at Five Points in San Diego. Those at the readings knew him as Vito and his contributions to those evenings stood out from his strength of character and the demons that were residing in him that echoed through his poetry. I only knew that he had been a special forces soldier in Vietnam. He became a regular and a friend to poets David and Paula Banks that hosted the readings in their home in the colony perched over the Five Points on India and Washington streets.

By 1980, with the death of David from lung cancer, he showed up and read a poem for David at the inauguration of the Installation Gallery at 417 Fifth Avenue on skid-row in Downtown San Diego.  Skid-row was soon to become the Gaslamp district. That was the last time I saw him.

At that time I did not know who he was beyond his voice as a poet and twenty-five years later I found out he was the poet laureate of the Vietnam Wall in Washington, DC.
-Gary Ghirardi

 An 11-month investigation reveals culture of violence, criminality and sexual abuse at army training centre for teens

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November 14, 2025 / Sian Norris / openDemocracy - The British Army is the only military in Europe that still recruits 16-year-olds.

That’s how old Hamish* was when he joined last year. As is required of all 16- and 17-year-old sign-ups, who are legally still children but are given the titles of ‘junior soldiers’, he moved into the residential Army Foundation College Harrogate in the north of England to begin his military training.

“In the first couple of weeks, it’s brilliant,” he said of his early days in the army, explaining that most teenage recruits “see it as a brilliant way of earning money”, particularly “if you haven’t really got any GCSEs”.

“But then things start to break down,” he said. Hamish soon witnessed boys being repeatedly punched in the head during fights with their peers or whipped with belts during initiation rituals, as well as other physical violence, including extreme bullying. Junior members of staff, he said, told the teenage recruits they did not need to know about such incidents, even encouraging them to physically “fight it out”.

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 Nov 6, 2025 / Justin O'Conner / The Shreveport-Bossier City Advocate -  The Bossier Parish School Board is once again dedicating money to bail out the federal STARBASE program at Barksdale Air Force Base, this time due to the government shutdown.

 

STARBASE is a Defense (War) Department  program at military bases across the country designed "to expose our nation's youth to the technological environments and positive civilian and military role models found on active, guard, and reserve military bases and installations," according to its mission statement.

At Barksdale Air Force Base, there are programs for age blocks starting at fifth-grade, centered on STEM education, their website says. All Bossier elementary schools participate in the fifth-grade program, which involves five days of instruction and hands-on activities at the base. The STARBASE Advanced program for older students includes activities like building carbon dioxide-powered dragsters using CAD software, designing efficient wind turbines, programming a robotic arm, and more.

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