DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: A milestone this week for the National Park Service. It has collected 100,000 mementos left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall. If you've visited the site, you've seen the cards, candles and framed photos people have placed along the granite wall. The objects tell stories of the war, the dead and those left behind.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: Among the offerings the park service has collected during the past 24 years - an empty champagne bottle with two goblets; a backpack full of rocks with a note attached that reads, Finally I am able to put down my load; a motorcycle with the names of 37 POWs and soldiers missing in action painted on it; and someone left behind a package of M&Ms. The candy first gained popularity with soldiers in World War II because it traveled well and melted in their mouths, not on their trigger fingers.</s>DEBBIE ELLIOTT, host: But Duery Felton, curator of the memorabilia at the Vietnam Memorial, told us another story. During the Vietnam War, he says, medics sometimes used M&Ms as placebos when they ran out of pain medication on the frontlines.
The National Park Service has now collected 100,000 mementos left at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial Wall in Washington, D.C. Most have a touching story behind them.