What a wonderful story about a remarkable young lady you have given us, and I cannot tell you how profoundly I appreciate it.
Just when the Swift Boat Vets have dredged up the treasonous conduct of Kerry after the war, and my own memories of related things, you have her breezing across our landscape strewing hope - - thank you.
Watching Bob Dole say Kerry owes us all an apology for what he did, smearing hundreds of thousands of good and decent men with a common tar brush, labeling them war criminals, sent me through the roof, wholeheartedly agreeing.
My husband was one of them, and I knew why he was there (then in the Air Force, as a forerunner of their Special Ops) and what he did personally for a year, alleviating misery and terror inflicted upon the the villagers around his base by communist forces.
As for Kerry's three Purple Hearts for paltry scratches, every man who was hurt in battle should be deeply offended.
There were many thousands who shrugged off wounds and never made mention of them - others with worse ones who never had them written up.
I happen to live with a man who in Korea as a Marine, going up the spine of the country on foot, night after night survived small units of them overrun by thousands of drugged up Chinese combatants.
In one of those, he played 'dead' in the frozen winter mud while they bayoneted him three times in the side. The scars are there still.
The Chinese quickly moved on, ill-equipped with WW II fire power and starving, and he sucked it up and the few remaining Marines simply went on. Who would be able to stop and write up such things on the move?!! They were fortunate to have even archaic radios to transmit information, before the electronic age.
They had few corpsmen, and helped patch up one another, and shoved pain and the memory deep down where it ceased to hurt... without enough chopper support to evacuate other than the fully incapacitated, they reverted to being MARINES...
Did you ever stop to think why so many men in WWII and Korea do not and will not talk openly of their experiences?
(He did not speak of Korea for 20 years, and then only to me for a long while.)
And Vietnam veterans and Desert Storm and the present campaigns?
Only self-obsessed types stick their thumb in their vest and brag - - and even the actual heroes who speak of themselves are regarded by Their Own as wrong.
I can tell you that is the reason why McCain lost to Bush in South Carolina, confident coming in he had the heavy veteran population here in the bag.
The turning point was in the debate with Bush where McCAIN spoke of his P.O.W. status!
Among the military, it is an unwritten code that only OTHERS should speak of such heroism, and it was deeply resented that he **used** it for political gain.
We veterans and Southerners saw that, and handed George Bush his first win on the road to the White House!
Thank and hug as many veterans as you can, and pray not only them, but for all those out there taking 'their turn' - - -
