Names on the Wall

About

Names on the Wall is a free, no-login reference for finding the names of American service members commemorated on the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

What this site does

You can describe what you remember about someone — a name, a hometown, a unit, a rough date, a branch of service — and the site searches the public National Archives record for likely matches. Each result links to the VVMF Wall of Faces, where you can search by name to find photographs and personal remembrances posted by family and friends.

Aggregate views are also available: statistics by year, branch, and home of record.

Data source

The underlying data is the Vietnam Conflict Extract Data File from the National Archives Defense Casualty Analysis System (DCAS), a public-domain record. The file is frozen as of April 29, 2008. The version used here is the Excel reissue maintained by Duke University Libraries, which preserves all fields and includes panel and line locations for each name as inscribed on the memorial.

Canonical NARA record: catalog.archives.gov/id/2240992

About the count

The DCAS file contains 58,220 records. The Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund lists more than 58,281 names today, having added names after later determinations. The wall itself has been amended in person over the years. The two counts do not match exactly, and this site reflects the DCAS file as it stands.

Not affiliated

This site is not affiliated with the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Fund or the National Park Service. Photographs and personal remembrances belong on the Wall of Faces. We link to its landing page so you can search by name there. For the official memorial and its associated organizations:

Scope

This site covers deceased service members only, as recorded in the public DCAS file. It does not look up, identify, or aggregate data on living veterans.

Privacy

The site is read-only and does not require login. It does not set cookies and does not use third-party tracking. Aggregate counts of activity (page views, searches, clicks) are recorded server-side for the operator's view of how the site is used; search query text is stored only as a short cryptographic hash, not as readable text. Search queries are sent to Anthropic's API for ranking and are not retained beyond a short cache window.