Thanks for letter's support

Dear editor:

I wish to publicly thank Peter Humm of Mountain Home for the letter of support in the April 22 edition of the Idaho Statesman. I had written a letter describing first aid kits that were donated to the North Vietnamese Army, by subversives of the college in Berkeley, Calif., one of which I had removed personally from a dead Communist soldier in Khe Sanh, Vietnam, after one of our many firefights in the spring of 1968.

Some little dweeb in Boise, who probably wasn't even a gleam in her daddy's eye yet, wrote in to the Statesman and had the audacity to call me a liar. It wouldn't surprise me at all, if she herself was a former student down there, and one of our recent California transplants. At any rate, it was public slander. I was there, along with the entire 3rd Marine Division, and we ALL saw those kits.

I immediately wrote a rebuttal letter to the Statesman, which they refused to print. I talked one on one to the head of the editorial sections but he didn't consider it as slander and refused to print my rebuttal. I wasn't totally surprised, as the Statesman has always been a "left-wingish" rag, but I thought even the Statesman might have enough decency to at least let a person clear their name.

I got out of the Corps in 1969, enlisted in the Air Force in 1971 and made a career of it, retiring in 1988 after four tours in Mountain Home. But, I remember Vietnam like it was yesterday, and two things always come quickly to mind: the constantly-jamming M-16s and those first aid kits from Berkeley.

Thank you for your kind support, Mr. Humm, and as far as putting my life on the line," well, that's true, and I wish I could say it was for America, but unfortunately, it wasn't.

The first aid kits were real, though. Thanks again, Peter. Coffee's on me if I ever get to meet you.

Mike Bradbury