Dear Dad,
I know this is a little late, but I didn't think of it until yesterday. I have had a lot of things on my mind lately. Well here goes anyway. Happy Birthday. I hope it was a good one. I wish you would write me too because if you don't there's no other way I can hear how's life been treating you.
I am just fine. The other day we got mortored once and thirteen men in our company got hit by scrapnel and one hundred in the Battalian got hit. Then the next day Delta Company got hit by an ambush with two fifty caliber machine guns and three men got killed and sixty more were hit. A fifty caliber bullet is about eight or nine inches long. So now we know the NVA. have some big weapons down here.
We are supposed to stop them from over running Cam Lo, a refugee Center right below the DMZ. We think they headed back up in the Mountains when they found out we had a whole Battalion of Marines after them. Plus the 9th Marines, Charlie Company 1st Platoon 2nd Squad 1st Fire Team.
There are four people in my fire team now. We are all good buddies. We work as a team and the work is really hard. I don't lay around on my ass all day like Billy does. I climb mountains, build landing zones for helicopters and look for NVA. to kill. I get two or maybe three canteens of water a day and three "c" ration meals a day. The other day we got some beef steaks sent to us from the rear. After I ate half of it we found out it had maggots crawling in it. But I ate it anyway because I was hungry. I just don't want you to think I am sitting around not doing anything like Billy.
We are the ones fighting this war, not the people back in the rear who sleep in beds every night and take baths everyday. My last bath was Aug 9th, I bet I stink like hell by now, but everybody smells the same so what's the difference? Last night I was sleeping on my poncho and covering up with a parachute I found in a tree. They are really warm to be so light. I woke up and there was a rat under my shirt. It scared the hell out of me.
Did Mom show you that picture I sent home? Well when we stay in a place more than a day we build tents like that out of our ponchos and sleep inside them. That one, we built in a bomb crater. You can only see half of the crater in the picture. They are about thirty feet wide and fifteen feet deep and everywhere you look in Vietnam you see them. The whole countryside is covered with them. And all you hear day in and day out is the sound of jets, bombs and guns. Our mission over here is to Search, Destroy and Kill. Most of the time we are Searching and Destroying. Every once in a while we get to kill.
Well I hope you are in good health and feeling fine and please write to me real soon and tell me how you are getting along.
Your son
P.S. Happy Birthday from me in VietNam. Write Soon O.K.
