‘Soldiers’ and Real War

Regarding Kenneth Turan’s review of “We Were Soldiers” (“Battle Saga at War With Itself,” F1, Feb. 28): The logic displayed in his review is flawed at best, and displays a fundamental lack of knowledge of war and its participants that is common among those who have never experienced the hell of combat. Turan says the movie: “ ... deftly sidesteps the messy question of why we were in Vietnam in the first place in favor of giving deserving soldiers the old-fashioned heroic warrior treatment.” He misses the point of a film titled “We Were Soldiers.” As a Vietnam veteran, wounded in action at age 19 during a furious firefight in the 1968 Tet offensive near Khe Sanh, I can tell you with no doubt that the typical ground soldier (grunt) in any war does not really know or care about the politics that brought about the war or the political decisions that put him there. All you know is the sheer terror of you and your buddies facing off against another armed group of young boys who probably don’t know why they are there either.

Just because Vietnam came to be an “incorrect” war, do you think the dying soldiers that fought there did not, or had no right to, cry for their mothers, say good-bye to wives or be proud to die for their country? There have been many movies about the whys and how-comes concerning our role in Vietnam. These films tend to cast the soldier into the role of an abstract extra or sideman, the pawn of those politicians. This film is not titled “Why We Were Soldiers,” so it should portray the reality of a soldier’s life.

TERRY SCHAUER

Sherman Oaks