Letters

I was enjoying the “Glory Days” article about the early days of the VVA, until Paul Wallenstein was mentioned and it had new meaning. I met Paul at the Fort Wayne Vet Center and we became friends. He’s in the background of the picture of Bobby Muller on page 30. He was an intense person, and you can see it in the picture. The veterans community was shocked at his passing and the sad way it happened.

He encouraged me and others to write our experiences on paper to get it in perspective. I encourage veterans to follow his advice: It does help.

Dennis Norton
By Email

I was surprised to see a photo on page 30 in the July/August 2018 issue in which an unknown-to-me person was identified as me. I wasn’t at the Founding Convention, and my daughters tell me that I was much better looking than whoever this person might be. My first appearance at a National Convention was two years later in 1985.

No harm. No foul. Just thought I’d set the record straight.

Marv Freedman
By Email

I want to thank Delinda Hanley for “Liberty’s 51-Year Cover-up” in the last issue, which shed light on the truth of what happened to the men of the U.S.S. Liberty and the cover up by our spineless White House and Congress who were in the pocket of the pro-Israel lobby. The White House placed a gag order on the surviving men of the U.S.S. Liberty: They would be punished if they spoke to the press.

Unlike the attack on the U.S.S. Cole and Benghazi, where there were extensive congressional hearings, the attack on the Liberty was swept under the rug.

Americans need to know the truth. 

Carmelo Burgaretta
By Email

Bro Rowan: I was in Vietnam in 1971. I became a Mason in October 1974. I applied for membership to the Masonic War Veterans of New York in 1975. They turned me down. They would not even give me an application. The Masonic War Veterans did not accept Vietnam veterans.

The MWV will always be on my sh!t list.

Lance Rommerdahl
By Email

I appreciated Maureen Elias’ article, “The Battle for Veteran-Centric Health Care.” I am 74 years old, recently diagnosed with prostate cancer. My primary doctor continued to order PSA tests through my late 60s and early 70s, noticing slight increases each year until he finally referred me to a urologist for a biopsy. I will be starting radiation treatments shortly.

I urge all fellow Vietnam vets to be proactive in their health care and ask for a PSA test once a year. Thank you for a very informative article.

Ron Miller
Folsom, Pennsylvania

I am a veteran and the brother of a former POW who endured 7-1/2 years of captivity in North Vietnam only to lose his fight for survival just 4 months after he made it home. President Trump said that he doesn’t like when people get captured. Well, neither do I. My brother’s death imposed a life sentence of grief on my family. So, you can imagine how angry I became after listening to President Trump speak at Ft. Drum before he signed the John S. McCain National Defense Authorization Act. This huge defense bill, which Trump took credit for, was named for John McCain simply because that honor was earned. Trump thanked everyone attending the Ft. Drum event except the local dog catcher, but he couldn’t put aside his pettiness to thank someone who has given so much of his life in service to his country. 

Trump will eventually be gone, but some of us will find it hard to forget the silence that followed his latest outrage. How can veterans be silent when Trump humiliates a former POW simply because he can’t stand any criticism? This has nothing to do with Hillary or Obama or Pelosi or Sanders or Warren or Mueller or the FBI or global warming or Putin. It is about right and wrong. Those who say nothing about Trump’s willful insult to John McCain embolden Trump. It makes them complicit.

It would have taken so little for Trump to have mentioned John McCain’s name—before he passed. As one commentator said, “John McCain is everything that Trump is not.” And being elected President doesn’t seem to be enough for Trump to, for once, just do the right thing. 

John McCain had the backs of all veterans for many years. We should have had his back.

Robert J. Brudno
Washington, D.C.

I take exception to Dennis R. Murra’s letter in the last issue. He wrote that one “did not have the option of asking the doc to overlook [some disqualifying condition] so he could serve.”

That is patently untrue. When I reported for duty in 1967, I was told (only then) that I had not passed the physical. I had terrible vision (20/800+ uncorrected in my right eye due to a childhood trauma). I was determined to serve if possible and asked for a second medical opinion. I was sent to a civilian doctor, who told me that no, I didn’t pass but, yes, he could pass me if I really wanted to go into the Navy. My response was, “Sign me up!”

And, by the way, I consider 20/800 vision (nearly legally blind) as serious as a bone spur in the greater scheme of things. If one wants to serve, it seems, there is a way. There are plenty of positions to fill beyond that of infantryman.

Gary Haslop
By Email

Dennis Murra took issue with Donald Trump being referred to as a draft dodger during Vietnam. While Murra is technically correct, it must be pointed out that most veterans, myself included, would not have made such a big deal of it were it not for the fact that Trump outraged so many of us by not only mocking John McCain, but also by having the audacity to claim veteran status for himself, just because he attended a preppy military school.

According to Murra’s definition, Trump may not deserve the title of “draft dodger,” but I think most clear-headed veterans would agree that he certainly deserves to be called a “wannabe” and a “chickenhawk.”

Lynn Scott
Soudan, Minnesota

Dennis R. Murra’s claim that the draft rules in 1966-68 show that Trump wasn’t a draft dodger is ridiculous. It’s worse than comparing apples and oranges; it’s comparing oranges and orangutans.

As Hamilton Gregory points out in his book, McNamara’s Folly: The Use of Low-IQ Troops in the Vietnam War, in 1966 Defense Secy. Robert McNamara lowered mental standards and drafted thousands of low-IQ men and sent them to Vietnam. In addition to low-IQ men, tens of thousands of other substandard troops were drafted and sent to Vietnam, including criminals, misfits, and men with disabilities. All of them were approved for service by military physicians.

Murra needs to look into how many strings Trump pulled so he would be ruled unfit for service because of a bone spur.

Thomas Mangan
Brockport, New York

There is a misconception that heel spurs were found on Donald Trump’s pre-induction physical. He did not have this exam. Instead, he saw a private physician who, according to Trump, provided him with a letter—a very strong letter—on the heels. Perhaps one out of three Americans has heel spurs, but only 5 percent have pain. X-rays are required for diagnosis.

Young, active men don’t usually have problems. Wealthy people can hire a physician to search for something such as heel spurs to get them out of the draft—“Fortunate Son” diagnoses.

In addition, Trump remembers receiving a very high Draft Lottery number while in college in 1967 or 1968. But the Lottery didn’t begin until December 1969!

I am a contemporary of Donald Trump. My local draft board was kind, providing me with student deferments to continue my education. Two weeks after graduation in December 1967, I was in the Army, bad knees and all.

I served in Vietnam all of 1968, walking a dog at Pleiku. I am proud of my service—the friends I made, my good dog Hanz, the good times and the bad. I deeply respect all those who served, and I respect those who did not.

Those who used questionable efforts to avoid the draft will have to live with the decisions they made. Trump is not the only one who did this, but he is the one who has criticized and belittled true American heroes and patriots such as John McCain. He is also closing down the program that provides foreign-born American military volunteers a pathway to citizenship. I expect more from a Commander-in-Chief.

Allen Huseby
Rochester, Minnesota

Trump underwent an Armed Forces physical examination (with a result listed only as “DISQ”) on September 19, 1968, and was reclassified 1-Y (qualified for service only in time of war or national emergency) on October 15, 1968. No condition is listed in Trump’s draft record as the cause, nor is there any record of a doctor’s letter diagnosing bone spurs. He has always been vague about the details and sometimes has referred to a high number in the Draft Lottery, which didn’t start till December 1, 1969.

Do foot bone spurs go away? Not by themselves, and the foot pain can only worsen unless you do something about it. A heel spur is a tiny bone growth from calcium deposits developed at the base of the heel. Some of the other symptoms of heel spurs are swollen and inflamed Achilles tendon or plantar fascia.

Trump has never had surgery to remove bone spurs and currently shows no signs of bone spurs. He did have an appendectomy as a child. However, there’s no definitive evidence for any certain conclusion about why he was classified 1-Y, and then eventually 4-F on February 17, 1972.

Gerald Alan Ney
By Email

In response to Dennis Murra’s and Al Wartner’s letters, I would like to add my observations, from my pre-induction physical exam in mid-1965. I was accepted, despite a mild heart murmur that I had disclosed. I was both surprised and happy to have been qualified, and I enlisted that week.

I do not have negative feelings toward those who did not serve because they were rejected due to their pre-induction physical exam. Many potential inductees were rejected for what I would call ridiculously minor conditions. These were not determined by those individuals, but by the government. This would include our current president, Donald Trump.

Then there is Bill Clinton, who was eligible. According to Slick Willy, by Floyd G. Brown, Clinton went to his draft board in Little Rock, Arkansas, to ask for a deferment because he had been offered a Rhodes Scholarship in England, a rare opportunity. Clinton promised that, if he were to be allowed to go to England to participate, he would present himself for induction upon return to the U.S. Unfortunately, this agreement was done on a handshake with the head of the draft board, and nothing was in writing. Clinton took advantage of the naïveté of the draft board official, a military retiree, with whom he was familiar.

Subsequently, while Clinton was in England, the Draft Lottery was implemented. Clinton’s birth date drew a very high number, ensuring that he would never have to be involuntarily drafted. Since Clinton had not signed anything when he made his commitment to the Little Rock draft board, he did not technically break any law. But where was Clinton’s honor? What was his word worth?

Assuming Brown’s account is accurate, comparing President Trump to President Clinton is unfair. Since the draft was done by quotas, it would be fitting, if it were possible, to identify the individual who was drafted in Clinton’s place. Then the former president should apologize to that veteran. Hopefully, that person survived his military duty.

In my own opinion, besides being a native-born American citizen, to qualify to be the POTUS, a presidential candidate should have to have served on active duty in the U.S. military. To allow a non-veteran to be the military’s Commander-in-Chief is ludicrous.  

Bruce Graber
Millsboro, Delaware

Dennis Murra’s and Al Wartner’s letters contain inaccuracies that I will not detail. I will give two examples from my personal knowledge which may provide more perspective. I was drafted in July ’65 and spent my tour in Vietnam in ’66-67. This was called the biggest draft call in U.S. history.

I do not know if this is totally accurate except to note that it was more like a cattle roundup. I was processed through the Oakland Induction Center and underwent a perfunctory physical. They were getting as many bodies as possible into the Air Force, Army, Navy and Marines. The only draftee that I saw get out had an uncorrected club foot, and this guy had three or four doctors clustered around him to make sure he wasn’t faking it.

There is a distinction between getting a deferment and getting physically disqualified after an induction physical. I was color blind and half deaf and made the grade. It was very hard at that time to be reclassified by the induction physical. More often, reclassification came from the local draft boards for various reasons: some, I assume, legitimate. However, I know of two examples that smell otherwise. 

The first example is from my home town. A wealthy grocery magnate’s son tried, like many of us, to avoid combat by signing on with the National Guard. The waiting lists were very long, hundreds of applicants long, and impossible to get into before the draft board harvested you. Some connection was made for him at a Guard unit in Colorado. I do not know if it was a personal connection, but it was enabled by wealth. The son probably jumped the applicant line (as did George W. Bush). The son made the weekly or monthly Guard meetings by taking a plane to the unit. (My first plane ride was provided by the Army to Ft. Lewis.) This dodge was beyond the means of lower- and middle-class families, thus an economic filter to sort out the privileged. 

The second example comes from a relative in Minneapolis. He did not have time for his civic responsibilities and searched for a way out of the draft. He finally found out that he could get a deferment from his draft board if he wore dental braces. But he was too vain to have uppers and insisted on lower braces only. The local draft board was only too happy to oblige his rich CEO father. The son got a Stanford MBA and joined the herd that brought us the 2008 financial debacle.

Draft boards were made up of local city fathers (no city mothers). Some were strictly by the book as written by Washington, D.C. Others used their wide discretion and gave favors to the local powers that be. We will never know how many corrupted choices were made.

You would think that by this time I would have cut these dodgers a break. But every year I find myself getting angrier. Every year I look at the names on The Wall and think of the dead and the hundreds of thousands of physical wounds and the uncounted mental wounds, and I wonder who died or was hurt because of these feckless dodgers.

Lou Foletti
Sonora, California

Dennis R. Murra asserts that Trump did not dodge the draft by avoiding military service due to bone spurs. I submit the confusion (if there is any) arose from Trump’s arriving for his Selective Service physical examination with doctor’s statements alleging bone spurs. The condition was not problematic enough to keep him from his many ski trips. If he could wear a ski boot, he probably could have worn a combat boot.

He was unable to report whether he had a bone spur on his left heel, his right heel, or both heels. Trump gave contradictory responses over the years as to the location and number of bone spurs. He didn’t dodge the draft by fleeing to Canada. But he might as well have.

I am ashamed to have this jerk as President of the United States and Commander-in-Chief of the Armed Forces.  

Michael Burton
By Email

First of all, AFEES during the draft functioned in an entirely different way than MEPS does now. Pro-Trump forces are even pushing the story line that Trump was actually in the National Guard.

Trump was a draft dodger bought out by Daddy’s influence. Dodging STDs in the New York sex scene is not combat. To even insinuate that his special treatment was justified is a slap in the face of the millions who did answer the call.

Michael Broshear
By Email

Pete Peterson wrote about the latest acts that have been passed, including the MISSION Act, and what they are supposed to do for our veteran community.

These changes will, I imagine, find their level like water finds its own level, and I am glad that someone is thinking about veterans who must travel two and three hours just to get to a facility.

However, when I read the statement, “not permit unfettered choice so that veterans can go to whatever private care provider they choose, with the VA picking up the tab,” I said to myself, “Why not?”

The veteran community has always been at the mercy of bureaucrats and committees that have determined the future and placed limitations on America’s moral obligation to veterans.

Those decisions have not always been the best. Many have been politically influenced, and the collateral has almost always resulted in a veteran’s life being lost. These “dispensable” souls were either offered money to take experimental drugs, died from botched operations by student doctors from nearby universities, or they died in the streets for lack of shelter, while the West LA VA allows a private school and a university baseball field to take more and more of the old home for disabled veterans.

The matter of budget and cost is not the responsibility of the patient. That BS has been brought up every time reasonable and logical treatment is suggested, especially for the mentally ill veteran. “VA can’t afford that,” or “How do you propose to get the funds for that?”

Space prohibits listing all of the fraud and mismanagement cases by the stewards of the Sacred Trust that have been proven only to move, not fire, senior bureaucrats to take focus off of short-changing veterans.

Please don’t write back and tell me about how good your doctor is or how VA saved your life. This is not about an individual. This is about the history of fraud that I am certain makes Abraham Lincoln turn in his grave.

Not until the VA’s feet are held to the fire of truth—how it is allowing wealthy and politically powerful third-party, non-veteran, non-profit, and for-profit entities to degrade service to the rank-in-file veteran—will America genuinely deliver on the Acts of the 1800s that not only established the Old Soldiers Homes, but gave beachfront property in Santa Monica, California, for disabled veterans to heal at.

Don’t grab your towels, bikinis, or trunks yet: That Deed of 1888 never materialized. Bureaucrats of that time were just as disingenuous as those of today.

Francisco Juarez
By Email

As a life member of VVA and 100 percent disabled, I think all veterans need to step up and say that a two-tiered health care system is wrong. All veterans—with financial stability or not—need to have the same services offered. To further drain the VA budget trying to carry a first-rate VA system as well as support the privatization of health care for the wealthy or the distant driver is wrong.

First, I would remind everyone that Medicare is my money, not the government’s. I put that money aside through payroll deductions for fifty years as well as equal employer contributions. It is not available for government redistribution; that’s why the funds are broke. Just like SSA and the highway trust fund, our pathetic legislature has squandered the trusts for purposes other than those intended, and all of them are irrevocably broken.

The VA should focus exclusively on the current system and make it the very best it can. I needed a neurologist and since the Syracuse center did not have one, I got a specialist appointment outside. The physician was very good, did the evaluation, and further follow-up will be made at the pain clinic. The same with orthopedics. If the VA does not have a specialist as required, each patient should demand to see someone outside for treatment.

I asked the chief of staff at Syracuse why the VA could not have their own specialists. His answer was that two primary care doctors can be hired for one ortho. So, he asked me what I would do. The choice is easy. Two primaries for triage and then get follow-up care outside, trumps one new specialist.

VVA must work very hard to see that all VA hospitals address issues and not bury them. In my opinion as an example, the Syracuse VA pain clinic was, at best, inept. And I was not the only one to say so. At this time a new pain clinic build-out is in process with, I think, two new staff to be hired. Change can happen.

What all of us need to do is to demand that a Veterans Advisory Board be put in place at every VAMC to put forth the veteran’s perspective. And, in a working group, together in a constructive, respectful, business environment, work on objectives together with administration and stop throwing grenades.

The Syracuse VA has remote clinics all over New York State to relieve drive times. If Mr. Fleming can make a business case for a remote primary clinic closer to his home, then do so. It’s my understanding that that the VA hands out travel pay anyway, so what’s the beef? I travel forty miles one way for health care, and I am very blessed to have the opportunity and pay the expenses out of pocket. It’s my choice that I live in the boondocks, and for that choice some sacrifice is required.

I am not saying that VA does not have issues. But let’s fix the issues, not trash the administrators within it, most of whom do care. Get rid of the charlatans absolutely, but don’t disparage the good people within who do care very much.

William Molloy
DeRuyter, New York

My hat’s off to Paul Miller, who wrote about being honored as a veteran at a Milwaukee Brewers baseball game. I had a similar experience at Target Field at a Minnesota Twins game. My daughter found a connection and nominated me to have the honor of raising the flag at the start of the game. I was accepted for the July 8 Saturday afternoon game. At first I was hesitant about doing it, but then I thought: What an honor.

More than fifty family and friends accompanied me to the game. Two close friends and three nephews—all veterans themselves—helped me raise the flag. It was an absolute honor to be able to do this. I will never forget that moment.

Also, the Twins have what they call the kiss cam. I was able to give my wife a kiss and everyone at the game saw it on the big screen. So hats off to the Minnesota Twins for giving me the honor. Finally, three grandsons were given passes to get on the field. They were able to meet some of the Twins ballplayers and get autographs, which they will cherish.

Dennis Maresh
Valley City, North Dakota

Just read “Meeting the Former Enemy.” I can certainly see how the Vietnamese can call me an enemy, but I never felt any Vietnamese citizen, north or south, was my enemy. How could the Vietnamese be my enemy? It was us who invaded their country, wreaking historic destruction on those people north and south. I don’t blame them for firing mortars at me and my unit.

My enemy was Lyndon Johnson and his warmonger administration of the privileged: McGeorge Bundy and Robert McNamara. Bill Westmoreland was my enemy, along with his incompetent and ignorant war camp clueless brass. My enemy was the draft board, who were certainly “selective” as to what kid got nailed with “liability of military service,” and who were favored with deferments. In my view, upon coming home, another enemy was the VA Medical Center who told thousands of suffering Vietnam vets, “Ain’t nuthin’ wrong with you, boy.”

I joined the Navy because the draft was hot on my trail. At Great Lakes boot camp, I thought I’d dodged Vietnam. But the Navy sent this E-2 seaman to Vietnam, land duty at Sa Huynh, a fishing village on the South China Sea. There, we threw concussion grenades 24/7 into the water to ward off sapper swimmers attaching charges to our fuel barges. I’ve always wondered: what ecological damage did we do to those Vietnamese people, who were trying to scratch out a living, fishing in their ancient, primitive skiffs, doing it in 1969 the same way as thousands of years before?

Those poor Vietnamese people were not my enemy, but I, most definitely, was theirs.

Philip Watson
Dallas, Texas

When I read “A Pod & A Program,” I was thrilled to see that someone has finally “discovered” the problem and has put together a program to help solve it. I wish this program would spread throughout our country. I’m positive that Arizona is not the only place that has incarcerated people who have run into problems with the legal system and also are veterans.

I wish there were something I could do to help grow the Pods. I am a retired teacher who would like to continue to serve in my own way, whatever that might be.

Many thanks to David Linderholm for starting the program and to Gregory McNamee for writing about it.

Ellen Hoffman
Indianapolis, Indiana