I just got done with my 4 days of training Wednesday noon.  They got us up about 6am Tuesday and we walked about 5 miles to our training grounds outside of the barrier we had classes, shot our M-16 rifles, then in late afternoon we started setting up camp for the night.  We had 4 men in each foxhole.  1 man would guard for 1 hour and sleep 3 all night.  Then Wednesday morning we got up about 6 and then went on patrol about 8 for about 3 hours and is that jungle thick and hot.  We then went back to our camp grounds and from there we went and threw 1 grenade and then went back to the base.  As soon as we got back there we were done with our training, so me and another guy went to the PX and then we went to the Red Cross to get some cold kool-aid to drink because it’s hard to get anything cold to drink.  We then went back to our company to clean up and take a shower but when we got there a sergeant said that we were going to leave and go to our company in the field, so we only had about an hour so there went the shower.  The plane was to leave at 3:30PM and so when we go there the plane was leaving so they told us to wait and they’d make a special flight to take us there (6 men). Well they flew us to LZ Uplift (LZ means a landing zone of copters) it’s about 30 miles east of Quy Nhon, on the other side of a mountain is the South China Sea.

We had to pull guard duty here, 3 men to a bunker.  We thought that we would go to our company in the field (this place is only a company base or headquarters, the company doesn’t stay here).  Well the company is on the move so we won’t go to the field until Friday afternoon maybe.

Letter home: 15 June 1967