To the editor:

I read in the newspaper that only 13 percent of the voters voted in the last election we had here in some parts of Missouri.

That is a very slim margin. That tells me 87 percent of you were too lazy or too busy to go to the polls and vote. Is this what I fought two wars for?

At Iwo Jima, we had enough casualties to fill Busch Stadium — somewhere around 24,000 — and I thank God I missed that one. At Okinawa, the Japanese had a garrison of 122,000 troops and we only took 10,000 prisoners. That means we had to have killed 112,000 men. I don’t know how many men we lost there, but if it was one, it was one too many.

My great-great-great-grandfather was killed on Oct. 16, 1780, in the battle of Camden in the Revolutionary War. He and many others fought and died for what they believed. They took the bullet so we could take the ballot.

I was going to end it there, but then I turned on the TV and the first thing I saw was people fighting and dying just to have the right to vote.