![]() Both my mother and my father were Navy, my mother as a nurse, and my father as a water tender on board two different destroyers. I stood with classmates when others of our class came home from Vietnam, letting them know we knew them as people, and supported their families and friends when they came home to be buried in the small town cemeteries where we live. Thank goodness, even then I was able to differentiate between policy and the soldiers, sailors and airmen carrying it out. Though I never participated in any demonstration or outward protest, I was against the war, not believing all the policy decisions of the several Administrations were made with the real best interests of our country in mind, and not really understanding the philosophies of communism and socialism in fact, there was a point where I thought that my family’s wealth ought to be shared, that no one really needed that much money. I grew up in the 1960s, graduating from high school in 1970, perhaps the height of the protests against the Vietnam War, and I was in college during some of the worst demonstrations of the era at the University of Minnesota. ![]() Whether you served in combat, or as a mess cook, or in the Medical Corps, in the Army, the Navy, the Air Force, the Marines or the Coast Guard, thank you. The letter is unsigned as she wishes to remain anonymous. My colleague said that she has learned more about the war and its warriors through my website and she wants to dedicate it to me, and all Vietnam War brothers and sisters. It was written while she accompanied her father on an Honor Flight to Washington DC, and she’s held on to it ever since. I was contacted by a woman on my Linkedin page who ask if I would be willing to publish a letter she addressed to Vietnam Veterans four years earlier.
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