Readers React: Vietnam War, how it began and how it ended

To the editor: Steve Brodner’s cartoon reminds me of the adage, “The young men fight the old men’s war.” I was drafted into the Army in August 1966. Reporting to Ft. Dix, N.J., my fellow draftees wondered who would come home and who wouldn’t. (“Remembering the Tonkin Gulf incident,” Op-Ed, Aug. 1)

The Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington is a roll call of the soldiers who gave all. Those of us in uniform had become the “enemy” of the public by 1968. We never understood that. We answered our country’s call to duty, as did generations of young guys before us.

After the Tet Offensive in 1968, Walter Cronkite said it was time for the troops to come home. A few months later, my little brother and two other Marines were killed at Khe Sanh by a direct artillery hit from the North Vietnamese.

We had a closed-casket remembrance. That’s when the war ended for my family and me.

Brodner’s Tonkin cartoon is a good portrayal of how the war began.

Gary Washburn, Chatsworth

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To the editor: Please give us a similar illustrated history: “Iraq Ghosts: the weapons of mass destruction.”

Ricardo Nicol, San Clemente