March 5, 2025
Dear Congressman Golden,
I just finished reading The Frozen Hours by Jeff Shaara, a gut-wrenching account of the thousands of soldiers, primarily Marines, killed by Communist troops at the Chosin Reservoir in 1950. The novel describes in excruciating detail the bravery and valor that came from resisting an overwhelming onslaught of Chinese Communist and North Korean forces that surrounded them on all sides. Another historical novel I read back in December was entitled, Matterhorn, an equally devastating account of Marines laying their lives down in the forbidding jungles of Vietnam. Again, their mission, like it or not, was to interrupt the supply lines of Russian-backed Communist insurgents. Try reading either book without tears coming to your eyes.
Those two books meant more to me than anything I’ve read in years. My father, a veteran of WW2, was called up to serve again in 1952, this time with the First Marine Air Wing in Korea. Because WW2 was over, he, by then, had a wife and four children. Reupping was difficult, but off he went to fly 101 low altitude combat missions over Korea—not 25 sorties like the pilots in WW2, a hundred and one. I have his flight book. During that time, my father wrote lengthy letters to my mom every day of his tour, which I also possess, and in them he talked of the brutal cold, of being hit with 20mm antiaircraft fire, and fellow pilots who were shot down. Was he scared? Hell, yes, but to my father, duty always trumped fear. Of the soldiers who made it back, more than a few credit their lives to US airpower. (Anecdotally, two of the other pilots who were stationed with the air wing included baseball icon, Ted Williams, and Johnny Carson’s sidekick, Ed McMahon.)
And then there was Vietnam. My brother, like the old man, also served in country, and while Tom is still alive today, he has lost most of his scalp and half of both ears from ongoing surgeries that began over 20 years ago, all related to Agent Orange. Most recently, he has required skin grafts as there is no more tissue on his crown. Sadly, the cancer has metastasized to his brain, accounting regrettably for cognitive decline.
Why do I mention this? My father and brother are not exceptions. Their comrades and contemporaries, most who’ve passed on, number in the hundreds of thousands, soldiers who put their lives on the line in our county’s effort to thwart Communism. And as everyone who grew up from 1950 through 1980 realizes, the Russians were the drivers of Communism, advancing it throughout eastern Europe and Asia. Vietnam and Korea may not have been popular wars, but you’d have been hard-pressed to find a veteran of either harboring any sympathies for the Russians. And in my neighborhood and all throughout the US, you didn’t have to be in the military to know who the enemy was.
Sure, the Soviets were allies in WW2, but FDR and Churchill always harbored distrust towards Stalin, their embattled leader. We shared military secrets and armaments with him without which the Russians would never have erased the Wehrmacht from Stalingrad and beyond. And what’d “Uncle Joe” do almost immediately after the cessation of hostilities? Everything in his power to overwhelm us militarily and economically, including clandestine operations, until his death in ‘53. Stabbed us in the back, as it were, not to mention what he did to his own people, which amazingly included his former soldiers.
Mind you, the Russian duplicity didn’t stop with Stalin. I will always remember the Cuban Missile crisis where Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev attempted to deliver nuclear armaments to Cuba, threatening the US with annihilation—Armageddon some called it back then. As a kid, I remember air raid drills where classrooms would empty with teachers instructing us to crouch in the corridors, arms over our heads. Other times, we were instructed to duck under our desks. People were afraid to go to sleep at night fearing nuclear attack, which could’ve happened had it not been for JFK’s risky maneuver of blockading Soviet ships loaded to the gunnels with weapons of mass destruction.
The Russians are not and have not been our friends. They are still at it, testing advanced high-orbit satellites capable of knocking out Western communication networks as well as delivering tactical nuclear weapons from on high. To assume that Putin could be a friend is beyond naivete. Vladimir Putin is a former KGB operative straight out of the Stalin era and bent on returning Mother Russia to the obsolete, imperialistic world of the mid-20th century. I am heartsick, even dazed, to think that we, the United States of America, the long-term bastion of democracy and leader of the free world, are willing to risk being hoodwinked into believing we can trust this dictator.
I am aware, Mr. Golden, of your exemplary service in the Middle East with the Marines. Thank you for that. As such, I may be wrong but I have faith that down deep, as a Marine and an American, you recognize the existential peril we are in by offering an olive branch to Vladimir Putin. We are in an era where individual integrity has taken a back seat to maintaining power at all costs. To me, integrity means everything, and as a leader, moreover a representative of Maine, the Marines, and the United States of America, I ask you, when it comes time to vote on resolutions related to Russia, that you avoid equivocation by standing strongly for our country, remembering your service as well as the countless veterans throughout our history who have sacrificed for a democracy that, perhaps until recently, has been the envy of the world.
Sincerely,
Jeffrey T. Leonards, Ph.D.
Buxton, ME
