AN OPEN LETTER TO DONALD TRUMP FROM A VETERAN
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/08/02/1555560/-AN-OPEN-LETTER-TO-DONALD-TRUMP-FROM-A-VETERAN?detail=facebookAN OPEN LETTER TO DONALD TRUMP FROM A VETERAN
By CrashW
Monday Aug 01, 2016 · 9:06 PM EST
You did not serve. I do not begrudge you your student deferments, or your high number in the draft lottery. It’s the very suspect period in between that gnaws at me. You got a medical deferment for “bone spurs” in your foot, and you can’t remember which foot it was. Could that be because you went to the draft physical with someone else’s x-rays? That could account for you not remembering which foot was so bad it kept you out of the Army. That kind of thing was done regularly and I have personally known people who faked x-rays with the collusion of their family doctor.
Those of us who did serve did not, for the most part, really want to be there. We did what was expected of us and some, like myself, found ourselves in Vietnam. I’m not complaining. I had an easy job in Saigon. I was what they call in the Army an REMF (Rear Echelon Mother F…), and the worst kind! A Saigon Warrior! But there is something I share with every man who’s job was to risk his life every day - I had a mother who sat at home and spent a full year with her heart in her throat.
Did you, Donald, ever do something that had your mother as nervous as a cat, for one year straight? Even we who were in Vietnam by and large never thought about it at the time. We came to realize it as we got older.
This gives us, and anyone else who had to serve in a war zone, a special bond with Gold Star Mothers. There, but for the grace of God, goes my mother.
I can weep for Mrs. Kahn who felt that dread every day her son was at war. I know because of the living hell my mother went through while I was gone overseas. But there was no relief for Mrs. Kahn, she was sick with worry and was paid for her pain with the worst pain of all for a mother.
You, Mr. Trump have no conscience, and never had the need to develop one. I pity you. As I said, you are now beyond the pale. You have removed yourself from the society of decent people.
US Army Draftee 1967-1969
= new reply since forum marked as read
Thank you, babylonsister, for posting this. 
Then she got the telegram notifying her that I'd been seriously wounded. After I was medevac'd back to the States, mom's youngest son still had another 9 months to serve in-country.
Especially when a Gold Star Mother tells me she's glad I made it. 
no idea telegrams like this were sent out. Your mom must have been a wreck! And I am so glad you're here to tell the story!
As accurately depicted in the movie 'We Were Soldiers,' where a Cav unit was fighting a major battle in Vietnam in '65 and the unit commander's wife stopped the taxi driver who was delivering telegrams to families on the post and instructed him to deliver all the telegrams to her so she could deliver them personally.
The Army was very good about keeping families informed about wounded troops. They sent followup telegrams to my mother and brothers when I was medevac'd to an ICU in Japan, and again when I was medevac'd from there to California a week later.
Mom was afraid to come to see me at first, until my older brother and his wife were able to drive her from L.A. to San Francisco for a visit. Unfortunately, they walked into my hospital room just when the shoulder bandage was off and the medic was irrigating the wound. My older brother, a former Marine, staggered out of the room and grabbed onto a drinking fountain in the hall to keep from passing out.
This is all long ago and far away for me now, but I can't forget how my family was affected just by my being wounded. Even my little brother, who finished his remaining 9 months in Vietnam. At that point he had his choice of great assignments in Europe. Instead, he chose assignment to Oakland Army Base in California, a real pithole of a place, just to be near me at Letterman Army Hospital in SF, where I was still hospitalized.
For 9 months my mom was making trips to SF to see me in the hospital while still worrying frantically about her youngest, who was still in Vietnam.
That's what I put my family through. And we weren't even a Gold Star family. Mom is gone now, but I still feel guilty knowing what I put her through.
Your mother must have been frantic.
While her baby was still in Vietnam. I saw some of the effects then, and saw a lot more in hindsight.
My only question is - was he ever part of that society?
Excellent letter
