Also remember Cold War veterans

With Memorial Day coming up along with all of the conflicts that the ultimate price was paid for our freedoms that we enjoy, thank you to all of those brave veterans.

However, there is one group who also paid and have been neglected for far too long and that is the Cold War-era veterans (the Cold War was from Sept. 2, 1945, to Dec. 26, 1991). You may not be aware that 382 Americans were killed as a result of direct enemy actions during this period (that's around 3½ times the number killed in the first Gulf War - Desert Storm). This was our longest-running conflict, and 382 died (or killed) as a result of hostile enemy action in a war that wasn't supposed to be a shooting war (as one veteran group leader told me about us Cold War vets; how ill informed and crass and disrespectful to the 382 that little statement was.)

There are no memorials for us in Washington (I see where the Desert Storm is now going to get one, they felt a form of disrespect that it took 25 years.)

There have been proposals for Cold War vets to receive the Cold War victory medal, but it stays eternally stuck in the Senate. So, if any group is disrespected, it is us of the Cold War era.

So I hope this letter opens some eyes that we who served during the Cold War weren't just on one jamboree. During the time I served (1977-1980), the country wasn't so patriotic. People didn't change plane seats or buy us a beer. If not in uniform, our hair cuts alone made us stand out. I hope that attitudes toward us of the Cold War from other vet groups are more of a welcoming nature.

David Kumpula

Hoffman Estates