This letter of February 19th is kind of like the calm before the storm. It starts like this: “Here I am again, reporting from exotic Viet Nam. Nothing very newsy to report.” So if anyone is looking for excitement in this letter, find something else to do. But if you remain interested in my journey, read on. “Our stay in Rita has been filled with details and patrols. So the truth is I’ve had more time to write in the field than we’ve been getting in here. However I did manage to get cleaned up, showered and shaved and I feel much better. Tomorrow we’re due back out in the field. The week of TeT has been uneventful in this part of Viet Nam, but I don’t know about other areas. Charlie company who also works out of LZ Rita ran into a platoon size element of gooks, but I don’t know how that turned out. There is supposed to be 3 gook battalions operating alternately in this area, but like I said before we haven’t had any contact to speak of.” This might be a good place to point out that the punctuation and spelling between the quotes are exactly the way the appear in the letters. I don’t correct or clean up.
“I’m going to try to get the film off to you tomorrow, and if I do, I’ll send a note explaining the pictures, then I want you to send me some of the pictures. This is all providing they come out.” I don’t remember ever receiving pictures from home. I think several pictures on previous pages were taken in the LZ Rita area of operations, but most were from the base at Phuoc Vinh and the area around it.
“In about a month I’ll be ready to go on R+R. It seems to be the only thingI have to look forward too, so I think about it a lot. May go to Bangkok or Singapore if I don’t go to Hawaii.” At the time I didn’t realize that low ranking grunts like me did not get to go to Hawaii. “Finally got a letter from Peni. That makes 3 since I’ve been here, and average of one a month. She’s got me completely baffled. Susan sent me some cookies and brownies and a book. I thought that was really nice. Peni didn’t even send a Valentine card. I guess she’s just too busy to waste her time on a grunt on the other side of the world.” I met Peni while I was working a summer job at the Shawme-Crowell State Park in Sandwich on Cape Cod. She and her family had come there for a camping vacation and we hit it off. They were from Canada, so our relationship became a long distance one. Spoiler alert; my relationship with Peni and Susan ended badly. More about that in a later letter. Not ready to share that yet.
“We got paid day before yesterday, but there’s no place here to spend any money so I guess my $24 will sit in my wallet until I can use it. Some guys gamble it away or make more, but I don’t play any cards except for “funsies”.
The next part of the letter is my commenting on the weather back in New England and I express my preference for “cold stormy New England” over “this hundred degree plus temperature, …..but what is harder to believe is that I still have 9 (months) to go.”
“I’ve heard some rumors that troop strength over here is to be reduced to 200,000. If it’s true then maybe there is some hope. I know we’re sick of it here, and if the people at home would get sick enough of it – maybe we could all come home. We’re winning over here, but what are we winning? I don’t know – and has it been worth the price – no, definitely not. But it’s true what they say – nobody really wins in war.” That last sentence was probably not one of my more enlightened statements.
I finished with this: “Say ‘hi’ to Brenda for me. I really appreciate her writing and if I were back there now, perhaps I could appreciate her. I guess I’m just girl crazy, and it’s worse now because there aren’t any up here. Love to all.” Brenda was a good friend who I think really liked me and if I’d had any sense that relationship might have developed into something. Things are difficult right now, my wife and I are divorcing and my older brother is in the hospital 90 miles north of here in Sherman, TX. I have a move out date of Dec 1. But! I shall keep my shit together and keep this blog going. I mentioned this being the calm before the storm. I don’t preview these letters until I actually start writing, so basically you see ‘em at the same time I do. Soon the shit hits the fan in Viet Nam as as it has in my personal life. On to Cu Chi.