MEANER

Easton is off base in writing “brutality and violence (such as against women) have always been a part of the soldiers’ marching chants.�

No World War II GI would agree with those words. The songs we marched to were upbeat entries such as “For Me and My Gal,� “You’re a Grand Old Flag� and just about anything by George M. Cohan or Irving Berlin. The only slightly sexist lyric I can recall (in a long-forgotten thing called “My Girl’s a Corker�) ran: “She’s got a pair of legs just like two whiskey kegs . . . .� Crude and insensitive, yes, but pretty tame stuff in this era.

DAVID R. MOSS

Los Angeles