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Sir: President Nixon has stated that the U.S. ground combat role has ended in Viet Nam [Nov. 22]. We grunts feel that since we are still out in the bush, we should at least get credit for it or be pulled out. Instead, people back home get the impression that we're sitting on fire bases playing volleyball and getting stoned. There are still Americans being killed and wounded out here, so to us the war is still very much alive.
SP/4 J.P. CAMPBELL and the men of Delta Company 2/8 1st Cav. Div.
Sir: I wonder what our American P.O.W.s still being held in North Viet Nam think about this "Doppler war" that "recedes" into the past [Dec. 6]. This will be my husband's seventh Christmas as a P.O.W. If all the men being held were sons of our esteemed Congressmen, I wonder if my man would be experiencing the Doppler effect at home this Christmas. I guess you could call this my Christmas wonder.
MRS. JAMES BOND STOCKDALE Coronado, Calif.
Sir: Let's get one thing perfectly clear: even after the American ground troops have left Viet Nam, American soldiers will still be there fighting from the air.
BLASE DISTEFANO Houston
Desert Fox or Dead Lion?
Sir: Having served in Field Marshal Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps (1941-43), I think I know somewhat more about him than some current historians [Nov. 29]. Indeed Rommel was no successful strategist, but he was a brilliant tactician. His campaign in North Africa is legendary and still unequaled. But those junior generals of today sometimes think they know better 27 years after Rommel's death. Are they kicking a dead lion with the hind leg?
OTTO BUCHINGER, M.D. Bad Pyrmont, West Germany
Hide! The Treadmill
Sir: Psychologist Edward de Bono [Dec. 6] must indeed be a young man to claim there is no dog-exercising machine.
Back in the early 1920s, when I was a youngster growing up in the hills of western New York State, our neighboring farmer had one. He put it to good use too. It was a treadmill affair for churning butter. Whenever he got it ready to use, the big collie dog would bolt out of the house and hide in the barn.
My sympathies were with the dog. I had to churn by hand.
FRANK M. BIRCH, D.V.M. Warsaw, Ind.
Insult to Motherhood
Sir: Your story "First No to Sex Bias" [Dec. 6] says somewhat disapprovingly that the courts have upheld laws that forbid women to work as bartenders. If a man bartender becomes rude or obnoxious, one can always slug him over the head with a beer bottle, but what do you do to a woman bartender under similar circumstances? Women tending bar are an insult to motherhood. They should be home looking after their children.
MICHAEL ZIAS Bradford, Pa.
Majority Rule in Rhodesia
Sir: TIME'S report on Rhodesia [Dec. 6] states that the procedure agreed to by Premier Ian Smith and Sir Alec Douglas-Home "gives the whites an effective veto at the crucial final stage" in progress toward majority rule.