Dear Editor:
I am writing this to respond to an article on the opinion page in the Jersey Journal which dealt with some of the problems vets returning from Iraq were experiencing. In some instance, jobs they had before were gone. In other instances, wounds they got in combat made it impossible to resume the same job again. In one instance, a cop could not get his job back because he had been wounded in the foot and could no longer chase down criminals.
I was in the army during the fifties. We were getting ready to go to the Czech border to prevent the Russians from crossing into West Germany.
The Korean War had ended and we were getting Korean vets as replacements. One of the replacements was Sgt. Yelverton. Candy was made the squad leader in my squad.
I was the jeep driver and Candy was my radioman.
I noticed that he had trouble getting the radio into the jeep and I asked him if he was having trouble with his arm. He rolled up his sleeve and showed me that he had no biceps in his right arm. He told me that he had been hit with a hollow point bullet. I asked him what a hollow point bullet was. He told me that a hollow point bullet was made by hacksawing part of the front part of a bullet so that when it is fired, it makes a small entrance wound, spreads out possibly hitting a bone and makes an exit wound large enough to take out an organ. He took off his tee shirt and showed me the entrance wound which was about the size of a nickel and the exit wound which had blown out his entire biceps. I said “Jesus Christ Candy, I’m sorry.”
He said it was okay because he only had to serve 10 years and he would get a full 20 year pension. He told me that he had wanted to go home after his two year service but he couldn’t because he was black, he lived in Mississippi and the only work a crippled black man could get was digging ditches, working on a garbage truck or becoming a field hand, none of which he could do.
Candy had three medals, a Purple Heart and a combat infantry badge, and he couldn’t go home. The army found a humane way to deal with his problem.
I hope that returning Iraq vets are given the same consideration. I kind of doubt it because in Florida today armed state troopers are visiting the homes of elderly black people to influence their vote.
Florida’s Governor is Jeb Bush. Leo Genese