LETTERS: MEMORIES OF ANOTHER WAR, PROTESTS

To the editor:

The apprehension in the young reservist's voice, sitting in the adjacent barbershop chair, wrenched my stomach into a knot. He had received a phone call to report to his St. Louis reserve unit in 72 hours. A deeply seated memory of the same trepidation flooded my senses, transporting me back to 1970 as I sat with a group of classmates listening to draft numbers on the radio. Alarm spread through me. Do we need to sacrifice our youth again in someone's civil war to satisfy the vainglory of a draft dodger wanting a legacy? Whether it is based on political belief or ethnicity, it is a civil war, and people die in civil wars. There is no aggressor nation involved, no million-man army flooding into an independent country to plunder its wealth. What is our stake? What is at risk? Nothing but the lives of our nation's young men and women. We must win. Win what? Your son, daughter, husband or wife in a body bag. We won 200-plus a week during Vietnam. My idealistic naivete is gone. I will sign up this time again to protest, to buy bus tickets north, to picket with every fellow Vietnam-era veteran I can find. I refuse to "be the first one on your block to have your son come home in a box. Well it's one, two, three what are we fighting for? Never mind I don't give a damn, next stop is ... ."TOM GERBER

Cape Girardeau