MAURICE Clarke writes that Americans first used napalm in the Korean War (Letters, March 12).

Napalm was actually first used by the Americans during the liberation of Tinian from the Japanese in 1944.

Mr Clarke then goes on to say the British 'kept out of Vietnam'. We actually marched into Vietnam in 1945 at the end of the last war to find the Vietnamese had already disarmed the Japanese and that Vietnam was unified under the leadership of Ho Chi Minh and the Vietminh forces.

We forcefully took control of Saigon and expelled the Vietminh. We maintained our occupation for three months until large numbers of French troops began arriving whereupon we handed Saigon over to the French imperial forces and withdrew. At that point, the brutal French Indochina War began - the war that became the 'Vietnam War'.

Apart from these couple of errors, Mr Clarke's letter is intelligent, well-resourced and adroitly written.

I have been following the Iraqi crisis with much interest and I must say I preferred the old way of starting wars. We used to announce who we were going to declare war on, give them a day or two to get ready and then fight them whether they liked it or not.

I do admit, though, that the current policy of only fighting countries that can't fight back is much more sensible.

Howard Bellaby

Badger Brook Lane

Astwood Bank