LEWISTON – Even before the firing squad’s salute opened the replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial to visitors Friday, the mementos began appearing.

Yellow roses sat at the base of one panel. There were photos and handwritten notes to sons and fathers who died decades ago.

There was also a note scrawled in crayon, mounted on construction paper and addressed to Thomas J. McMahon, a Lewiston man killed in Vietnam in 1969.

“…We never met. I still want to say, ‘thank you,’ and you are the hero to save people,” the child wrote.

The sentiment was echoed again and again Friday, as soldiers, former soldiers and civilians gathered to remember the 58,256 who died during the war.

In a 90-minute ceremony, there were songs, salutes, speeches and silences. A P-3 Orion from Brunswick Naval Air Station began the event with a flyover, twice passing over the wall and the audience of more than 300.

At the podium – whose GPS coordinates had been plotted the night before for the Navy pilot – a retired command master chief from the Brunswick base addressed the Vietnam veterans in the crowd:

“I have two words: ‘Welcome Home,'” said Roger Dumont, himself a veteran of two tours in Vietnam.

Lewiston Mayor Larry Gilbert, who also served in Vietnam, talked about losing his best friend and helping to ship the caskets of fallen soldiers when he left the Army.

Auburn Mayor John Jenkins asked people to support the Iraq war’s soldiers in hopes that future walls may not be needed.

However, this wall is needed, said visitors, who began arriving at dawn despite gray clouds and sometimes steady rain.

“I’m so glad I came,” said Paula Allen of Harrison. She’d never seen the wall in Washington nor seen any of the replicas that travel the country.

Standing beside the wall, she was struck by the sheer number of names, more than she could have been from just hearing the numbers.

“You feel that a lot of people died,” she said.

In a few minutes, she found some of her schoolmates from the Class of 1967 at Oxford Hills High School and two uncles. She held a rubbing of one in a hand and her voice broke slightly.

“They were never coming home,” she said.

Dennis Allen of Greene (no relation to Paula) said he spent several minutes looking up names of classmates from school and buddies he’d known.

He did two tours there, serving aboard an amphibious assault ship in the South China Sea. He’d take his liberties in Vietnamese ports, but most of his time was spent on the ship, he said.

“The guys in the jungles were the heroes,” he said quietly. “I wasn’t like that.”

He was grateful for the wall’s visit, though. The last one to come was in 2001.

“It’s been a long time coming,” he said.

With the rain, fewer people than expected turned out Friday, said Michael Martel, one of the organizers of the visit. More were expected today and Sunday, when weather forecasts called for sun.

However, crowds were steady. And some veterans even found haven beside the wall, in a tent staffed by counselors from local veterans centers.

By noon, as many as 10 people – from a variety of conflicts including the war in Iraq – stepped inside to talk.

“We’re here to support the vets and let them know that there is a place to talk,” said Tina Higgins, a counselor from the Lewiston center.

The wall acts as a catalyst for some vets to seek help, she said.

“It’s touching them all deeply,” she said.