Read the following accounts of two different Vietnam veterans’ first visit to the Wall, the Memorial on which the names of all those killed in the Vietnam War are inscribed. “First Visit to the ‘Wall’ . . .” by Rex Rutkoski is a prose account; “Facing It” by Yusef Komunyakaa is a poem. Discuss the effect that genre has on the two authors’ descriptions; what does the poetic version do that the prose version does not? Use evidence from both accounts in support of your thesis. The essay should be approximately 500-600 words and should have a clear beginning, middle and end. FIRST VISIT TO THE “WALL” WILL NEVER BE FORGOTTEN (from WQED Vietnam Stories ) By Rex Rutkoski Dale Shultz was two years younger, but old enough to take part in our neighborhood games. Freeport Borough Field and its play areas often were the focal point for afterschool evenings and weekends and our summer days. In the winter, if we got there before the salt truck, the alley behind Dale’s house was great for sled riding. A good, slippery day would get us all the way to Third Street, maybe beyond, if we went down piggy-back, although we made sure we were extra cautious after we heard that Freddie down the block slid unhurt under the tail end of a passing car. I remember Dale as one of the nice guys. If there were arguments in our games, I don’t recall him being part of them. He was quiet, somewhat shy, somewhat, in those days, like myself. Because we were in different grades in school, I did not get to know Dale that well, but I liked him. Everybody seemed to like him. In 1970, our games became reality. In February of that year, as a belated college graduation and wedding present from the Army, I went to Vietnam. Dale, who also had enlisted, left on Mother’s Day. He volunteered for training in sniper school and ranked third in his class, earning a Bronze Star and Combat Infantryman Badge with the First Battalion of the 14th Infantry. He transferred to Chu Lai and two days before Christmas was killed in action when he stepped on a booby trap. Just as my wife and family were receiving word in Freeport that I would be coming home, Dale’s family and fiancée received a knock on their door from Army representatives letting them know that Dale also was on his way home. He had become the 71st Alle-Kiski Valley (Pittsburgh suburbs) serviceman to lose his life in Vietnam. I thought about Dale and those other men when I was in Washington, D.C, with my family a few weeks ago and we made our first visit to the Wall, the Vietnam Veterans Memorial. I wanted to go to the Wall for myself. Though it soon will be two decades since I spent a year in Vietnam, I’m still trying to come to terms with what that time meant. I wanted to go to the Wall for our children, too, so they might understand the impact of war apart from their school textbooks. I wanted them to understand it in the way the young boy we saw there that afternoon began to understand it when he asked his dad, “Are all those .