Soldier’s Letter

Press, Volume CIX, Issue 32302, 21 May 1970, Page 11

Soldier’s Letter

(N Z Press Assn —Copyright) SALAMANCA (New York), May 20.

When Private Keith Franklin, aged 19, was home on leave late last year he handed his parents a sealed envelope and told them not to open it until after his death, the Associated Press reported. His mother, Mrs Charles Franklin, recalled having joked about “You’ll be back after your two years in service,” she told her son, ’‘and we’ll open the letter, read it then and have a good laugh about it.” Private Franklin, a medical orderly, went on to Seattle and from there to Vietnam.

Last Saturday, the Army notified the Franklins that their son had been killed in action the previous Tuesday. They opened the envelope and found a letter addressed to “Dear Mom and Dad.” “The war that has taken my life, and many thousands of others before, is immoral, unlawful, and an atrocity unlike any misfit of good sense and judgment known to man. . . . “So, as I lie dead, please grant my last request. Help me to inform the American people—the silent majority who have not yet voiced their opinions. “Help me let them know that their silence is permitting this atrocity to go on and that my death will not be in vain if by prompting them to act 1 can in some way help to bring an end to the war that brought an end to my life.”