Letters from Vietnam

My dad called me over to give me the stuff that he had collected from Grandma. Mostly Grandpa's medals his tobacco pipes, pictures and other various stuff.

Digging through the boxes I found a few old Vietnam letters That my dad had sent to his family during his time overseas.

I picked one to post here:

Nov 8 1967

Dear Big Brother:

How are you?

In your letter you asked if I was mad at you. If I was mad at you I would tell you about it. I don't mess around. I lost the knife you sent me while I was crawling on the ground in a fire fight.

I found a bayonet yesterday. A dead or wounded GI left it on a trail. I'll give it to you when I get home if you want it. It was too bad that the old guy didn't do the work on the Model A. If you can get the blue prints for the wood take them to a cabinet shop and find out how much they cost to make.

Answers to your questions:

The time difference is 11 or 12 hours. It's probably night over here when it's light at home. When the sky is clear it is full of stars, a lot more than at home.

Yes I heard about the big battle around where I was..I was in it

I did know that Mr Doug used to be a boxer

I've never seen a turkey here. Thanksgiving will be like any other day.

I sleep under the stars in the boonies usually in a hammock.

I haven't been in a building since I went to a special forces aid station at Dak Pek about four months ago. It sounds like you think I've been getting over. We don't sleep in tents. During the monsoon season we put two ponchos together to keep dry.

We get mortared about every five minutes so we sleep in a foxhole.

Why don't you hurry and send that knife, he will probably leave Vietnam before he gets it or I could give him his money back.

Yes I would like to have some peanuts.

I'd rather have some good comics and maybe some playboys. The other Playboys you sent are all full of shrapnel holes. I can still read them though. You should see what ACO did to a dead gook. they hung him upside down from this tree, stuck an empty plasma bottle in his leg and put a 173'rd patch in his hand.

These new M16's were ready to be issued to us last night. I remember mom sent us a piece in the paper about this. We didn't get them though, be cause we didn't have a place to zero them in.

I never use the sights anyway, they are usually so close you don't need sights and besides you can't see them.

The new M16 has 87 improvements. the only one that shows is the new flash suppressor and it's a pound an a half lighter.

Well take it easy brother.

Yours truly.