The longest memorial wall for war veterans is the 150.42-m Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington DC, USA, completed in 1982 according to the designs of American artist and designer Maya Ying Lin. Vietnam Veterans Memorial consists of a 75.21-m-long wall made of dark gabbro granite, onto which the names of 58,191 servicemen and women were inscribed in a highly regular font spacing and 1.35-cm height, listed in chronological order of death. The wall is sunk into a crevice in the ground, reaching 3.12 m in the middle and descending to just 20 cm at the two edges. Costing around US$4,284,000, the wall is supported by 140 concrete pilings driven 11 m into the bedrock below. Conceptually, Maya Lin has described how she “imagined taking a knife and cutting into the earth, opening it up, an initial violence and pain that in time would heal”. After Lin’s competition win, some negative criticism led to the 1984 addition to the design of the more conventional “The Three Soldiers” sculpture to one side of the memorial wall.A half-size replica of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial, the “Moving Wall” was also constructed in 1984, touring the USA.