Two days after New Year’s 1967, Dennis Kubic of Mt. Pleasant Township was wounded, and a friend and fellow infantryman was killed by enemy gunfire in Vietnam.

That fateful encounter came back vividly to Kubic on Thursday morning as he located the name of his wartime buddy — Frederico Perez of San Diego, Texas — on a panel of the Vietnam Traveling Memorial Wall.

“We got caught in an ambush,” said Kubic, 79. “The night before, I was in a foxhole with him. And then the next day he got killed and I got wounded at the same time. He was right in front of me.

“When you’re a young kid like that, you didn’t think the war was real — until you got into a firefight. Then you know. Everything was hell after that.”

The wall, a three-fifths scale replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C., lists the names of more than 58,000 Americans who gave their lives in the Vietnam War. It arrived in Mt. Pleasant’s Frick Park on Wednesday and will remain on view there around the clock until 2 p.m. on Sunday, Sept. 1.

The wall honors those who made the ultimate sacrifice in a war thousands of miles from home. Speakers at Thursday’s opening ceremony for the wall display said it signifies the importance of service to one’s country.

“Events like these allow us to not only honor and thank those individuals, but hopefully to inspire the next generation,” said Brigadier General John Pippy, director of joint staff with the Pennsylvania National Guard. “We’re going to need another generation of men and women to put the uniform on and defend our freedoms. We’re always going to need that.”

Others pointed out the wall also is a reminder that many Vietnam veterans who returned home from combat during divisive times in the nation weren’t recognized for putting their lives on the line.

“You should have been celebrated, not denigrated,” Retired Army Col. Gregory Ritch of Connellsville said to the Vietnam veterans in attendance. “Welcome home.”

Vietnam veteran Nick Gallick of Mt. Pleasant Borough served with the Army Special Forces, known as the Green Berets, in 1967-69. He searched the wall to find the names of other soldiers he’d befriended who didn’t make it home alive from Vietnam — including fellow Uniontown native Daniel Fike, a Marine Corps rifleman who was fatally wounded on Oct. 18, 1968.

“I’ve got six grandchildren now,” Gallick said. “It’s too bad these guys never lived to see it.”

The wounds Kubic suffered in January 1967 — a bullet grazing his chest and shrapnel slicing into a vein on his arm — weren’t serious enough to send him to a hospital, though it was a close call.

“I had a lot of pieces of shrapnel that hit all around me, on my canteen and in my shirt,” he said.

Still, both Kubic and Gallick are among the many Vietnam veterans who still are struggling with the ill health effects of their time in the service — including exposure to Agent Orange herbicide.

Kubic is battling cancer. Gallick has been cured of skin cancer but is troubled by back and eye problems. Both said they have benefited from Veterans Affairs medical care.

“Almost everybody who served in Vietnam has something,” Kubic said.

Vietnam veteran Dale Laughlin of Shanksville, who served in an Army infantry unit in 1967 and 1968, stopped at the Mt. Pleasant park to see both the Vietnam wall replica, where a neighbor from his native Derry Township is listed, and other memorial panels dedicated to the casualties of 9/11 and the wars that have followed.

“Every time friends come to visit us, we take them to see the Flight 93 Memorial,” Laughlin said. “We’ve been to the wall in ‘D.C. and the traveling wall when it was in Florida. Because it was so close to home, we thought we’d stop and see it again.”

Laughlin said his wartime Agent Orange exposure is a factor in his partial disability.

“Every year, something else pops up,” he said.

The traveling wall’s stop in Mt. Pleasant was sponsored by local pub owner and military veteran James D. Gallagher Jr. — in honor of his father, the late James D. Gallagher Sr., a 20-year Army veteran who completed one tour in Korea and two in Vietnam.

The wall arrived in town Wednesday with a large motorcycle escort along Interstate 70 that included members of the area charitable group Bikers Helping Others. The ride was dedicated to group member Kirg Rupert Jr.’s late father — Kirg Rupert Sr., a West Newton native who served as a machinist’s mate in the Navy, from 1964 to 1969.

Mt. Pleasant Township resident Stephanie Soflak brought her grandson, Marek Puskar of Bullskin Township, to see the wall. At 5, he’s a little young to appreciate the full meaning of the memorial.

“I still thought it was important for him to come and see something like this,” Soflak said. “It’s very moving, kind of the feeling you get when you go to the 9/11 memorial.

“It’s just overwhelming.”

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