More On Vietnam

Your interesting article on Vietnam (“What Should We Tell Our Children about Vietnam?,” May/June) unfortunately contained opinions from some who should never be allowed in the same forum with our heroes. A silent rage still exists within those of us who worked for months on end with the wounded in their agony. Our rage is directed against the press who unfairly manipulated public opinion.

Most of us didn’t understand the tirade directed against President Richard Nixon by the press. He did do the number-one thing that he campaigned on in 1968, and that was to end the war. We had a large map of Vietnam on our wall at the Zama Army Hospital in Japan, where I was stationed as a general medical officer from August 1969 to October 1971. When we received casualties, we could see where the fighting was going on. We noticed that when our troops who were in the process of pulling out of the country were attacked by North Vietnamese coming in from Cambodia, Nixon sent troops in, wiped out their sanctuaries, and wiped out tremendous caches of food and armaments. Young dissidents at the universities were then whipped into a frenzy by the press, causing the burning of ROTC buildings and the Kent State affair. I am still amazed that this knowledgeable and experienced statesman must spend his remaining years in exile. No, the Vietnam War will not be seen from a proper perspective for a long, long time, and those of us who saw and lived what really happened are going to tell our children about it and reject the propaganda being put out as the history of the war by CBS, Time-Life, and others.