US Presidency
1966

If there is any doubt among some here at home about our purpose in Vietnam, I never find it reflected in those letters from Vietnam. Our soldiers, our Marines, our airmen, and our sailors know why they are in Vietnam. They know, as five Presidents have known, how inseparably bound together are America's freedom and the freedom of her friends around the world. So tonight let me read you from a letter that I received from an American father, a warm friend of mine of many years, about his son, a young Army captain. He said, I have never known a man at war who showed less bravado in his communications with home. When he was not flying missions in his helicopter or working out of the battalion headquarters he and some of his buddies on their own visited the orphanages as individuals and played with the kids.