I grew up in the 1950s next to one of the largest military bases in the world in North Carolina. World War II and Korea were fresh on everyone’s minds. My church had a couple dozen or more WWI, WWII and Korea vets, and one from the Spanish American War. Belleau Wood, Battle of the Bulge, Iwo Jima, North Africa, D-Day, on and on.

My wife’s father was in the Japanese Occupation Force. My uncle was a Seabee in the Pacific. My father, too old for military service, a postman, worked in a secret post office somewhere near Ft Bragg. My school had several kids whose fathers did not come home. I knew six men I grew up with or knew in college who died in Vietnam. My best boyhood friend, a sonar man on a battleship, died when his ship collided with an aircraft carrier in the South China Sea in the Vietnam War.

The idea that anyone who is an American citizen, much less the president of the United States, would refer to anyone who has ever worn a U.S. military uniform as a “loser” or “sucker,” deserves only our deepest and lasting contempt.

Dick Hoskins,

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