Madam, - It is considered bad form to speak ill of the dead, but I must make an exception regarding General William Westmoreland of the US Army. Dead at the age of 91, it must be said he went to his grave as self-righteously patriotic as when he commanded all US forces in Vietnam.
Although I voluntarily served a tour as a Marine Corps sergeant in Da Nang, Dong Ha and Quang Tri with the 1st and 3rd Marine Divisions and was down on the Batagnan Peninsula south of Chu Lai with the Republic of Korea Marine Corps, I never saw the great man himself. A West Point graduate, unlike MacArthur, he was not fond of Marines and our earnest attempts at pacifying the countryside using medical teams and civic action projects.
He wanted "search and destroy" missions. He put his blessing on "free fire zones" and gave his imprimatur to "reconnaissance by fire". His over-reliance on B-52s, Agent Orange and the dreaded "Puff the Magic Dragon" AC-47 flying gunship, which could put a bullet into every square foot of a football pitch within three seconds, contributed to 500,000 innocent peasants being killed in their fields. Westmoreland must duly be recognised as the godfather of modern-day "shock and awe".
Always ramrod stiff, immaculately groomed, in clean, starched combat kit with spit-shined boondockers, he bore little resemblance and even less sensitivity to the plight of the 525,000 soldiers and Marines who wallowed in the fetid heat and dust far from his air-conditioned MACV (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam) headquarters in Saigon.
So, goodbye "Westy". He must have taken some solace going to his grave in the knowledge that his legacy lives on. That his love of high-tech killing machines and his stern, silent indifference to "collateral damage" among civilian populations remains alive and well in both Iraq and Afghanistan today.
May he rest in the peace that he has finally become a statistic in the grisly body counts he so valiantly espoused. - Yours, etc,
BRYAN KENNEDY, Rushbrooke, Cobh, Co Cork.