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An Apology: Why We Are Late

By VVAW

This issue of THE VETERAN is late—very late. We apologize, particularly to those of you who keep track of when the paper comes out. We appreciate hearing from many of you, even though you were complaining, and rightly so. As you can see from the contents of this paper, the time since the last issue was filled with activities by and of interest to Vietnam vets and our other readers. We believe in both the importance of these activities and of THE VETERAN's reporting of them.

Here's what happened. VVAW has no paid staff or officers; we all have full-time jobs, not particularly connected to veterans' affairs; we have families and other interests in addition to VVAW. And we sometimes wear out.

In the past series of events outside our VVAW work—deaths, births, changes in address, other activities which have made it difficult or impossible to get out a newspaper. We doubt that such a collection of events will happen again; we plan to come out on a better schedule in the future because we believe what the paper says and reports is important.

For those of your who have missed an issue, we will extend your subscription. For those of you who have asked about the paper, thanks for your interest. A lot of your letters have not yet gotten answered either.

Finally, there is a way you can help avoid this kind of problem in the future. We have before used this space to ask for money to help keep the paper and the organization alive; we still welcome contributions (tax deductible). But we also need contributions of articles. "Recollections" always needs your remembrances of Vietnam or other experiences. And all the time there are local events of activities which would be of interest to the readers of THE VETERAN. Please write them for us. In this issue, the book review by Rick Tingling-Clemons, and the article about the Westmoreland trial by Danny Friedman are contributions from readers of THE VETERAN. Please think about what you can write for us and send it in—we'll use it if we can, perhaps with a little editing. And we'll put your name on it.

So, we're sorry we're so late. We'll do better in the future. And please help.

—The VVAW National Office.