FAMILY OF VIETNAM VET BELIEVES UTAH MEMORIAL IS 1 NAME SHORT

The name of Pat Wiggins won't be among the 364 inscribed on Utah's memorial to its Vietnam War dead. After all, he made it home alive and died in Denver, not the Mekong Delta.

But his family sees him as no less a casualty of the war, mortally wounded by the guilt that drove him to suicide five years to the day after his Army unit's murderous pass through an enemy village."All down through family history we've gone to war," says Wiggins' mother, Charlotte Wilson. "We've always said, `God first and country second.' "

On Monday she will attend groundbreaking ceremonies for the Vietnam memorial on the State Capitol grounds at 2 p.m., much as she honors her ancestors who fought in the Revolutionary War. But she feels a nagging pain for her son and others like him.

"They were every bit as much a victim of the war and they ought to be recognized," she said. "It seems like they suffered even more than those who died over there."

Ferrel Blaine Wiggins Jr., nicknamed "Pat," was the only son of a career Army master sergeant. At the relatively advanced age of 27 - too old to be drafted - he volunteered for reasons of patriotism and family tradition for a war he didn't really believe in.

Fresh out of Brigham Young University, a political science graduate, he was an accomplished debater, a reader, a thinker. More pacifist than warrior, he envisioned a political career.

"He was a real gentle person," said his widow, Jeanette Wiggins of Belen, N.M. "He didn't like any hunting or killing of any sort. He didn't even like to go fishing."

With his spit-and-polish background, Wiggins took his military training seriously, winning soldier-of-the-month honors before being assigned in April 1968 to the 9th Infantry Division in the Mekong Delta.

A few months later, his hometown newspaper, The Daily Herald in Provo, published a letter Wiggins wrote in response to a young girl's letter to the troops. His unease was apparent.

"I want you to understand that we are just a bunch of scared young men who want very desperately to come home and in one piece," he wrote. "We don't want to be here and it seems that most people, both Vietnamese and American, don't want us here either, but we were sent here with a job to do, and with or without their help we are going to do it."

When his tour of duty completed in the spring of 1969, Wiggins returned to a family that didn't know him. "My first thought when I saw him was total shock - the weight he had lost and the look in his eyes," said his sister, Nedra Riley.

He couldn't sit still and aimlessly walked the streets of Provo. He didn't talk much about the war, but when he did it was evident he felt guilty to be alive.