Bringing Home the War

Thank you for featuring Patrick J. McDonnell’s article “Their War, My Memories” (Dec. 4). Strangely reminiscent, in his eyewitness account, of “All Quiet on the Western Front,” McDonnell took us away from the television screen and the newspaper article and into the daily grind, the gnawing fear, the uncertainty, the juxtaposition of the burning heat and frigid cold of the desert, the dust and dirt and carnage of war, the “just-in-case” letters written to loved ones before battle, and the bravery of troops operating “as instruments of someone else’s grand ambitions.”

McDonnell has to be commended for accompanying the Marines into Fallouja, and for bringing the stark reality of the experience home to us.

G. E. Infante

Costa Mesa

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Why wasn’t McDonnell sent to Iraq to witness the people’s misery during Saddam Hussein’s tyrannical rule?

Bob Risher

Monrovia

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How can anyone read about the transformation of Iraq into a place of pervasive fear, death and destruction and not experience anger, sadness and outrage? I have to wonder: Would President Bush or members of his administration be able to get past their personal defenses if they spent a few weeks or months in the shoes of McDonnell, or those of a soldier or an Iraqi citizen? Maybe not, but it would be worth a try if it resulted in their achieving a better understanding of this insane war.

Rebecca Nunnelee

Santa Monica