On May 2, 1968, 2nd Lt. Robert C. Ransom Jr., whom his family called "Mike," wrote to his mom and dad from "a little hooch" somewhere in Vietnam. He described the dangers and rewards of being a platoon leader, of recently losing several men in a minefield, of having the respect of his men. He asked for his Newsweek subscription to be forwarded to a new address, and added in a P.S.: "You might tell any friends you have in Washington to get off their fat asses, quit quibbling, and start talking about ways to end this foolishness over here. Aside from being opposed to the damn war, it really gives me a case that LBJ, who claims to want peace and who says he'll go anywhere any time to talk peace, has taken over a month without being able to find an acceptable site. Anywhere, according to his promise, ought to be 'acceptable.' " The next day Ransom stepped on a mine. He died nine days later. He was 23.

On Sept. 8 the same year, in the same province, Richard Sito wrote to his aunt and uncle: "Yesterday we got into a fire fight, and one guy got killed and we had eight wounded. But I managed to come out alive again with flying colors. Like I always do. HA!! HA!! Like I told Mom, if you have eight or nine months, you know what's happening. It's mostly the new guys that get hurt. So don't worry about me. My biggest Xmas present will be just being home with my family and seeing you." Sito was killed in action two months later. He was 24.

Air Force 2nd Lt. Richard Van de Geer of Lorain, Ohio, was a helicopter pilot who took part in the evacuation of Phnom Penh and Saigon in 1975. In a tape to a close friend, he described a series of harrowing close calls on the way to pulling 2,000 civilians and soldiers out of harm's way. "I really don't care one way or the other in regard to who is right and who is wrong, because that's a waste of time, a waste of thinking," he tells his friend. "I am in bits and pieces, fairly incoherent only because it's been such a fast pace. I assure [you] that I am in one piece. It could have been a different story. But I may have told you before that I am somehow fatalistic about believing that I shall never come to serious harm in the military. I can envision a small cottage someplace, with a lot of writing paper, and a dog, and a fireplace, and maybe enough money to give myself some Irish coffee now and then and entertain my two friends." His friend received the tape the morning of May 15, 1975, the day Van de Geer's chopper was blown out of the sky. Richard Van de Geer was officially the last American fatality of the Vietnam War.

On February 13, 1984, Eleanor Wimbish left a letter, one of many over the years, to her son at the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington: "I came to this black wall again to see and touch your name, and as I do I wonder if anyone ever stops to realize that next to your name, on this black wall, is your mother's heart. A heart broken 15 years ago today, when you lost your life in Vietnam."

In a few years, a book will come out collecting soldiers' letters home from Iraq the way "Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam," the source of the excerpts above, did in 1985. Stone and metal memorials to the dead of that war will go up and, by the time Memorial Day rolls around every year, politicians and profiteers of self-importance will use the occasion to make speeches as hollow as most of the wars they'll commemorate. Vietnam was a waste of 58,000 American lives and, going back to the time when the French made a mess of it, upwards of 3 million Vietnamese lives. Iraq is a useless war now and a waste, so far, of 800 American lives and upwards of 6,000 or 12,000 Iraqis, depending on who's counting -- a mass grave of its own either way, this time compliments of the United States.

Two lofty claims will be leveled at U.S. servicemen and the American public in this weekend's speeches. The first is that American soldiers are fighting to preserve America's freedom. The second is that the war is making the world safer. Two lies to the survivors of 800 Americans whose names will be misused as was their service to the country. Two lies to a public condemned to memorializing the dead of yet another war that should have never been fought. Losing it is the least of the loss.

Tristam is a News-Journal editorial writer. Reach him at ptristam@att.net

© 2004 News-Journal Corporation

###