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To the editor:
Quick, grab a calculator -- ready? Enter 17 and divide by 330. The resulting number is quite small, insignificant really.
There were roughly 17 million living veterans that, at one time or another, protected 330 million American lives. To paraphrase old "Winnie" Churchill from World War II, never have so many owed so much to so few.
Large Polish families in the early 1900s, in a form of social security at that time, produced numerous uncles, aunts and cousins. More than a few of them served in the military over three generations.
In herringbone green or blue dungarees they visited such exotic vacation spots as Bekkeau Woods, France, the tropical isles of Rei-Namur, Guam, Tinian, Saipan, and the lovely sulfurous sands of Iwo Jima.
Imagine riding the surf in a Higgins boat into mysterious Inchon, Korea, or gazing at the ancient citadel of the old provincial capital of Hue, Vietnam.
There were no "wish-you-were-here" postcards from my family's five Marines and four sailors, but there were letters attempting to describe the indescribable.
At age 75, I am the last of the family to serve in the Vietnam era. My brother Mike passed on at age 76 from Agent Orange exposure. He was considered 100% disabled by the Department of Veterans Affairs.
It took nearly 50 years for our government to admit they knew that dioxin poisoned our own troops. Every American should know by now that corporate profits always come before caring for our sons and daughters in uniform.
And now, another generation of working class sons and daughters have returned from 20 years of combat in the Middle East. Many of these vets are suffering the toxic effects of open burn pits, even though Halliburton Corporation was given hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to build incinerators to dispose of toxic waste. How long will these veterans wait for our government to provide treatment for their maladies? How long will these troops wait for the cabal of oil billionaires to formally apologize for lying us into another war of corporate-military-adventurism?
Don't hold your breath, kids.
If you can't afford to care for veterans, stop corporate wars that profit the few at the expense of many.
Peter Mazurkiewicz
Beaver Springs