Hi Mom and Dad
This letter is going to be dirty because it’s been over a week since I’ve washed. We get three canteens of water each night and that has to last us until the next day unless we run into a creek but they’re few and far between. Over here you could use up 3 canteens of water in just one morning and to top it off the water that they give you is hot and it gets hotter as the day goes. In our C rations we have coffee and cocoa. We make one of them each night so by the time that I get home I’ll learn to love coffee. I kind of like it now.
Well I’ve made 2 air assaults since I’ve been here. That’s when the company is picked up in copters and when everyone is in the air, two copters shoot the area where you are going to land with rockets. Each copter has 48 rockets. Then the copters with us aboard circle the area, then come in for a landing and as they come in two M60 machine guns, on each side of the copter, start shooting until just before you start to land, then we jump out. Sometimes the copters are as far as 5 feet off the ground and you have to jump down with about 60-70 pounds of gear and boy do you hit the ground.
Well this makes this the second day that we’ve been on this same hill. This morning we walked about a quarter of a mile and waited to see if anything might happen, nothing did so we came back about noon and now all we’re doing is sitting here.
You don’t know how us guys long just to have a cold or cool glass of water.
I didn’t know what the date or day it was until I asked a guy and I still don’t know the day. It could be Sunday for all I know; they’re all the same here.
Everything is fine except the hot weather. This country is sure beautiful, I’ve never seen anything like it. Sometime if you think of it send me some film that will fit in a 104 instamatic Kodak camera until I can buy one myself and some shaving cream.
Letter home: 22 June 1967
How Goes the Battle? 