This letter is in response to the editorial in Oct. 19 Sun Journal titled “When orders go bad.”

Thank you for drawing attention to the ongoing problem of our military men and women not having top-of-the-line equipment and vehicles to do their jobs properly. Safety should be of the utmost importance.

Why did it take a couple in Massachusetts who lost their son in a Humvee attack to put pressure on local politicians who in turn put pressure on the Defense Department to get the Humvees armored-up so that other soldiers would have a better chance of staying alive?

And why did it have to take the generosity of the wonderful employees of Bath Iron Works to supply one battalion of the Maine Army National Guard with steel-cutter tools to put plates on the Humvees to make then safer? To them, I will always be grateful.

The president is the commander in chief for all our military men and women. I respect that. But I hope that the incident of the soldiers refusing to go on their mission due to safety issues is a wake-up call for this administration as well as the Defense Department to put safety at the top of the list.

We don’t want to see any more of our sons and daughters dying. They need to complete their missions of returning some sense of normalcy to the Iraqi people and then return to their families safe, sound and soon.

Peg Mattor, Mexico