This letter reproduction is a day late. Sorry – had a busy day yesterday. Anyway there is no date on this letter. When I decided to do this I went through the letters to make sure they were in proper order. Since this one had no date and I wasn’t sure it was in the right place, I pulled it and read it so I would know where to insert it later. Well I messed up. This letter should have been inserted a few pages back, before the action of the March 31st letter to Rob. I’m not taking the time to move it back, so here it is out of order.
“Dear Momsy, Popsy, and sis, It’s your number 2 son reporting again from the land of fun and sun. Today we cordoned a village while the ARVNs searched it. They came up with a few VC – one who admitted being in on the attack on us a few nights ago. Fun! Fun! Did I tell you my promotion is official? When we go to LZ Terry (day after tomorrow), I’m going to try to make some arrangements to send home a larger allotment so that when all my debts are paid, you can throw the rest into a savings account – ok?” Since we had not yet been to LZ Terry, we must have been working from Rita or maybe we were actually working out of Terry.
“Received letters from Brenda, Rodney K, and you yesterday. Now I’ll answer your questions. My new rank of Spec 4 is the same pay grade as Rob’s. The difference is that he is an NCO where I’m still an enlisted man. On my R & R, I don’t intend to take it for at least 3 months and prefer to take it in Sept. Since it’s so far away I have not decided where I want to go – but Australia looks good right now.” I ended up going to Hong Kong, but have always wanted to go to Australia. If the opportunity had come up then, I would have taken it. I don’t believe it did. My options at the time were Bangkok or Hong Kong and I chose Hong Kong.
“I haven’t received any package mail yet, but the reason is simple. Package mail is not sent to the field. It is held for us at LZ Terry until we go in – in this case day after tomorrow.”
“I think you’ll find that when I come home that I will not sleep my life away. We get up around 7 o’clock – daylight. It all depends when the sun comes up.”
“There’s not much else to write about. The offensive is supposedly still going strong in this area. Rob hasn’t written, Steve hasn’t written, Dean hasn’t written, Susan hasn’t written. But received a letter from John McRae, Debbie and Casey M today. So I’ll cut this short in order to get off some lines to these other noble people. Rest assured that I am in good health, I feel fine and am in reasonably good spirits. Mail always cheers me up. In your next letter be thinking about a comb and something else which I forget. And what might be nice is the monthly issue of Playboy. Have to keep up with the sexual revolution you know.” How many guys actually asked their mothers to send issues of Playboy to Viet Nam? Looking at it now, I can’t believe that I asked for that, and don’t like the fact that I did. It’s ok to be an idiot at 21, right? This letter must have been written in early March.
“My watch. One of the pins came out about 3 months ago. I hadn’t worn it since. Yesterday I found a papa-san who actually had some pins. He sold me one for 30 cents plus installation and my watch seems to be keeping relatively good time.”
“I trimmed my moustache today and combed my hair so I look pretty decent now, or so everyone says. I shaved, too. Now all I need is a 24 hour shower. Take care all. I miss you. Love Dave”
Just another day in the life of a grunt in Viet Nam. I may have been a little light headed when I wrote this one. Too much sun. See ya next week.