Dear Mom & Dad,
Greetings once again from Vietnam. Today is hot. Almost too hot to write.
The ink in my pen is melting but I will try. We are still in the same
location and it looks as if we will be here for awhile. As I told you last time, we
are about 5 miles Northwest of Cu Chi. As you can see on your map, we are still
basically close to Saigon. As you can see too, the Cambodian border comes relatively
close to the Saigon area at this point (Parrot's Beak).
The war is going good. It's been getting pretty hot lately. According to
news reports here, units like the 9th Infantry, 101st Airborne and 25th Infantry have been
catching hell. Charlie has really stepped up the war. It's been quiet for us,
though. Still no sign of Charlie. If it weren't for the news, I wouldn't
believe that there was a war going on. I'm still cooking and enjoying it. Next
month our Mess Sargent rotates to the states. His 12 months will be up.
The last letter that I received was from you Dad of Memorial Day. In your letter
you heard that the 101st Airborne Division was quite a bit North of us when I told you
that we had some with us. You must remember, these divisions like the 101st, 173rd
Airborne, 25th Infantry, 1st Infantry, 9th Infantry and others are large and have their
men all over Vietnam attached to other units. Where we are now, we have two
companies of 25th Infantry soldiers with us to provide security to one company of
engineers who are repairing roads around here. So you see, every unit works with
another and each has a primary job to do.
Mail just came in today and there were two letters - one from Aunt Lucy and one from
you Mom dated the 2nd of June. It takes about one week for your letters to arrive.
Lucy's letters are quite long and hard to decipher. I have received one of
her packages in a series of four so I will look for the other three. She gave me a
list of what to expect in them. they sound quite interesting. When they come I
will let you know what was in them.
Yesterday, I mailed my first tape to you. I hope that you will have a recorder to
play it on. It is quite interesting I think. You might get a bang out of it.
I will start another tape soon. If you would care to mail a few more blank
tapes I could use them. I am starting a diary on tape. I will make brief
entries each day on the tapes and when I come home you can here my day by day account of
my adventures here.
Well, as far as living conditions are going here I am making out all right. It
rains about every day now. During the day the temperature soars into the high 90s
but the heat doesn't bother me. Three of my buddies and I have a card club going.
Every evening we play a couple 500 games of Rummy. We have a lot of fun.
The guy from Gardiner, Maine (Dave Mansir) is a character. He's quite a
comedian. Me and him hit it off real well. He rotates only 14 days before I
do. So we kid each other about how short we are. Our rotation dates are so
close that he says when he gets to Travis AFB he will light a cigarette and I will put it
out for him when I get there. He's really a nice guy. When I get home on leave
after here, I will look him up in Gardiner.
I haven't received any mail lately from anyone other than you and aunt Lucy. I
would like to here from Dick more often. Oh well, I guess he's quite busy.
It's beginning to cloud up so I will hurry to get this finished so that it won't get
wet. It doesn't look as if we will be getting back to Blackhorse very soon.
We seem to be getting one mission after another. They really push these troops over
here. It's a shame though. If we could only get more men over here to relieve
some of the strain but surprisingly enough though, our unit is up to full strength - 100
%. If they could only bring whole units over here from the states like another
armored cavalry regiment, they would be doing something.
Oh well, I should quit dreaming. I guess I just think that because I'm here,
everybody else should be too but it doesn't work that way, ha ha. Well, I'm going to
sign off now. I will try to send you mail as often as possible and try to make my
letters as interesting as possible too. I hope that I've succeeded. Well, I
will sign off now.
By for now!
Love,
Bob
PS: I didn't make it. It's raining like hell.
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