Letters to Home: Part One

 

I had planned, because I have all the letters that I sent home, to publish them periodically here. I have watched those documentaries in which the letters of the soldiers from the Civil War, World War I and World War II give such a nice feel for what was happening. Unfortunately, the letters I sent home were not great slices of history as seen through the eyes of a nineteen-year-old soldier. They are, well, to be blunt, pretty awful.

There are a few paragraphs here and there that do make up for the lack of anything substantial. On September 30, 1968, I wrote:

I arrived safely in Vietnam. As you can see by the return address, I have been assigned to the 116 Assault Helicopter Company. We are known as the Hornets. Our base is Cu Chi, near Saigon.

There are five of us here from the 2 WOC [Warrant Officer Candidate Company, which was my flight school class], Overholt, Plunkett, Anderson, Barr and myself. At least I know a couple of people here…

Saturday night there was a party at the Officer’s Club. They had a rock band and even some girls [I suspect these were nurses from the 12^th Evac Hospital that was not all that far from our company area]. Hard to believe we’re in a combat zone.

Not much happening here. I’m supposed to be home 22 Sept next year. See you then.

Then it what was apparently the second letter that wrote home, I mentioned the trip from my home in Denver, telling about the time in San Francisco. I wrote:

I left Oakland Sunday. I was only officer in my group. We spent Sunday afternoon [when we returned to the Bachelor Officer Quarters and I was notified that I was on a late night flight] on Haight-Ashbury. You should have seen all the hippies…

My stick buddy from Rucker [meaning the other warrant officer candidate that often flew with me during training] has been killed. He’s the first and only one to have gotten zapped. [Later I wrote it was Ed Weiman who was killed.]

Rainwater [Preston B. a good friend from flight school] went to the 145 [assault helicopter company, but in reality, he went to the 334^th and he and I would fly together once much later in our tour]. That’s supposedly the best assignment.

We fly between 5 and 10 hours a day on combat support and direct combat support. Don’t let the names fool you, it means that we pick up troops and land them. I’ve only been shot at once…

On October 18, 1968, I wrote:

Yesterday we were released at 3:00 [p.m.] and I almost got to the company area before they found us another mission. We waited on the flight line for 3 hours before they cancelled it.

The war isn’t doing much. The other day we captured 25 VC [which is to say that the Infantry soldiers captured them]. We were hauling them in to be questioned. One of them took off his blindfold and the crew chief nearly shot himself trying to load a weapon…

I almost got a Purple Heart yesterday. Fell off the stinger on the helicopter while making a pre-flight. Hurt me foot… [This, of course, would not have made me eligible for the Purple Heart.]

[To my sister, in a PS, I wrote] – All tapes by the Association, Stones, Cream, Deep Purple, etc. will do.

For those interested, during the pre-flight, you climb up on the stinger, which is a rod on the rear of the aircraft, designed to prevent you from sticking the tail rotor into the ground as you flare out for landing. It’s something like four or five feet off the ground, and you climb up on it to check the gear box and the linkage to make sure that nothing has come loose or has broken.

The stinger is that rod sticking out under the tail of the aircraft, designed to prevent
damage to the tail rotor as the helicopter flares out on landing.

Two days later, on October 20, 1968 (thank goodness that I dated the letters) I sent a short letter to my sister. I wrote:

Everything in Vietnam is awful. It has rained all day. Tomorrow it will probably be so dusty no one will be able to see. All in all, this is a miserable place…

Boy, have some neat stuff for your morbid book. I’ll tell you about it when I get home.

Although it has nothing to do with Vietnam, my sister, for a time and probably inadvertently, was collecting some “morbid” stuff. One of the things she had was a hotel receipt signed by Bobby Kennedy when he was in Denver, not long before he was assassinated in California. She doesn’t remember the morbid book, but here is documentation that it existed at one point.

Then, just four days later, I wrote home again:

I have Bruce’s story about shooting down the B-29 beat. [This was my stepfather who was a World War II Navy vet. He told of those on his ship firing at a high-flying aircraft while serving in the Mediterranean Sea, shooting down a B-29.] Today American Artillery shot me down. The Artillery shell went off at 2500’ and wiped out the tail boom, both rotors and nearly hit the fuel cells. No one was hurt [and yes, I count this as being shot down].

There’s an article about us in this month’s Aviation Digest. It’s about the 269^th Battalion (The Black Barons). We are, of course, in the Battalion.

Things changed at some point after those first letters. On November 24, 1968, I wrote home:

Well, I guess someone decided to start a war over here. We’ve been on standby alert for about the past week. Nothing’s happened, but its hard to sleep in a cold helicopter

Would you believe it actually gets cold here? I almost froze the other night. Sure am glad I brought my flight jacket. … The days are hot. Like in burning.

There are two other Coloradans [here]. One other officer and an enlisted man. The EM is from Colorado Springs. There is a nurse at the 12^th Evac also from Colorado Springs…

Tell Roquel or Kay that Robert [Roquel’s brother] couldn’t have been in the Green Hats and the 4^th WOC. Kay said that he was in the 4^th. The 2^nd is Green and the 4^th is brown.

Sadly, Roquel’s brother was killed in a traffic accident shortly after he returned from Vietnam.

These are pretty routine letters*. I suspect I didn’t put anything in them that was too bad. I found nothing, for example, about my arrival at Ton Son Nhut. As I have mentioned, we got off the airplane and were nearly overwhelmed by the heat, humidity and smells. We were taken to a bus that had these screens over them with huge squares that wouldn’t keep out the insects. Someone said it was to keep out the grenades.

And I found nothing about the first mortar attack that wounded five officers, one critically. He was eventually evac’ed to the US for treatment of a neck wound. He never returned, but we did learn that he had recovered.

I thought these provided a glimpse into the boring times among the periods of high tension. I found one letter that explained that the enemy used green tracers and we had just recently seen a lot of them. I’ll get to that later. For now, these are some samples of the boring stuff between missions.

*For those interested, there are some very disturbing things in these letters that I had not thought about or remembered until I began going through them. Many of the things in the letters refer to managing my bank accounts in the US, giving instructions about what to do with my pay. There are also suggestions for things that would make life a little easier. At one point, we hadn’t seen any Coca Cola for weeks… just beer and this really lousy Kool-Aid type drink.