Voices of Vietnam War: “I am going to try to tell you what the war is like”

Voices of Vietnam War: “I am going to try to tell you what the war is like”

“Hello, this is a Friday, Friday the 23rd. We got back to camp today here in the Philippines. We left ship yesterday about 12:00. And as soon as we got back here, we had mail call. It’s the first mail call we’ve had since we went aboard ship. The first night we went aboard ship, we had mail call, and that was because we still had port we hadn’t left yet.”

“Today when we got back, we had all kinds of mail. Myself, I got 19 letters, mostly Christmas cards, and four packages. I got uh one card from uh Ruffle Kate, Mr. and Mrs. Ruffle Kate. A card from Don Shane, uh card and a letter from Grandma. A card and a letter from Wayne. A card from Jan. And uh let’s see, who else? Four letters, five letters from you, two from Stella.”

“I got Stella’s cigarette lighter. I got you a can of cookies. And uh I got you Sports Illustrated, and uh U.S. News & World Report, and the Sunday paper. We are living back in the same huts we were when we left, just sleeping on air mattresses, living out of a few bags. It’s quite a mess. Right now, everybody has taken off on liberty.”

“I don’t think we have any more training while we’re here. I got uh three letters from Stella. And one of them was what you might call a Dear John. She uh wants to quit writing me. And uh myself, I like the idea cuz she says she’s all confused about us. And uh we really haven’t known each other that long. She’s trying to get serious. I don’t want to.”

“To tell you the truth, I’ve been kind of leading her along. I didn’t want to do that, but I have to. And uh you don’t need to say anything at all to her about this. It’s myself. I think it’s a good thing we quit writing. Cuz it’s getting hard for me to find time to write. Too many letters now. Especially I go down south and I won’t have any time to write now.”

“I got your second tape. On that On that one mail call we had from when we were on the ship. I played it back and listened to it today. I got that One of your letters I got today was postmarked to November 24th. It took a long time in getting here. It’s uh the one that had the $30 in it. And the other letter I got from you today had $10 in it.”

“So, I’m pretty well fixed for money. We fix somehow. I have just about $85 on me. I don’t know where I’ll keep them. But tomorrow the first chance I get, I’m going to go to the PX and get it made into a money order. Or I might send part of it home. I haven’t decided yet. And to answer some of your questions in the your letters here.”

“One of them uh Don’t worry about everybody getting mail. Everybody gets plenty of mail. And uh Yes, we do have a feast on all the candy we get. We pass it back and forth. Between all of us. Really, tell you the truth, sometimes we get too much of it. Especially like right now, we got more candy and cookies than we know what to do with. Everybody got some.”

“One boy even got Santa portable record player with some records. And I got that back card that you made out there with that checklist on it. And I’m going to I’m going to sit down tomorrow check off all those things. I got a lot of things to do tomorrow, see. Saturday. Yeah, I have apples today. I lost count.”

“And uh I got to clean my rifle tomorrow. It felt like it got rust all over it. I couldn’t clean it on the boys’ ship cuz I didn’t have any steel wool. All I had was oil and toothpaste. You can’t get rust off a rifle like that. So, I followed the instructions we had on the ship. And I got to write a few letters tomorrow. Answer that dear John.”

“That’s for starters. That’s about it on the mail situation right now. So, getting to what we did on this operation. First of all, I wrote a letter to you on the boys’ was happy to get that after the operation that time. That knife that David Doner sent me for Christmas, I’m sorry to say I lost it. I hated to lose it, too, cuz I really got a lot of good use out of it.”

“One thing, we uh we put my rifle on it with a pair of pliers. We didn’t have any pliers. We needed pliers to repair my rifle. To make it shoot automatic. And that’s what I came in handy then. And uh now I just use it for a lot of things. And I’ll say again, I’m sorry I lost that thing.”

“I I hope hopefully I can get me another one. Just like it. Send it to me and I’ll fix it. I don’t think I can have it up. I tied it on my belt and stuck it in my pocket. This one I carried in my shirt pocket. I don’t know. I must have laid it down somewhere and somebody picked it up. And the razor they sent me, I got a little I took that with me.”

“It’s lots easier to carry than that. I had a regular size razor. And I got a lot of good use out of that. Anyway, about the operation. Uh our company, you know the company, it’s helicopter assault company. We go in by helicopters. The island we went on, this operation was on, it’s uh as far as I can tell, it’s just like the delta.”

“It’s all flat. There was there were no hills. There wasn’t too much jungle. There’s some little undergrowth, but not much. It was all palm trees. Well, not palm trees, coconut trees. It’s not like it was all coconut trees. Rice paddies. Swamps. Not really swamps, just marshes. It’s wet and muddy all over the place.”

“It’s full of rivers. Rivers all over the place. Talk about getting wet. We were wet all the time. First morning we landed and set up set up a platoon base camp right around a little uh maybe five they had there. There wasn’t any really There’s no real towns on the island. It’s huts all over the place. All of them are thatched.”

“Uh they’re built up on stilts. And we set up a 360° perimeter around it with these uh our big wheels and everything. They set underneath that hut where it was dry. And we had to set up in the water and stuff. And it rained just like all the time. I was soaking wet. No it rained. And both nights we were out there we had to sleep in the rain and stand 50% watch all the time.”

“First night we went out on a night patrol. There wasn’t much to that. It was kind of spooky. I was walking point and almost stepped on a water buffalo. I didn’t know they used water buffaloes all the time. I almost stepped on one. I couldn’t see him. God jumped out in front of me. Scared the daylight out of me.”

“I know now where they make make those movies from World War II of the Pacific campaign. I have been named on that island because I seen it in movies. One night as soon as I hit the beach there’s nothing but palm trees and that’s the way it is there. There’s no beach. It was the water in palm trees and coconut trees.”

“And it’s all flat. Most of the time we just sit around at the 10-day camp. All the time we ran different patrols. I only went out on one patrol and uh all the time the natives around there they sell Cokes to you and constantly coming up wanting you to buy Coke. We’re selling you our money. And I think the only words of English they know is uh “You like Coke, Joe?” or “Buy Coke.””

“And uh once in a while we jew them out of a Coke with some American money. We got saying here this diamond’s worth a peso. One peso I tell them “You know what?” Talk with them about half hour. Finally we talk them into it. Whenever uh we got hungry between meals all we’d do is just uh go find a coconut, break it open and if it had milk in it we’d drink the milk.”

“And uh then we’d eat the coconut meat. And uh it’s pretty good. I like those coconuts. We’d sit around with a knife, chip off coconut meat and we’d eat coconut. Second day we were there we went on a river patrol. That’s why we had that uh boat training. Yes, through Subic Bay force of five class boats. My whole platoon was out four or five boats. My squad. My whole squad.”

“And we had four or five boats and uh went patrolling the rivers. And uh yeah, it’s the suicide squad. What it is but they had that 125 aggressors out there. They don’t got to pick a lot of tunes. Which was like the enemy. And we got ambushed to pick up by them on those boats. And when you get hit in there, there’s nothing you can do.”

“It’s pure suicide, almost. And uh I think they decided not to use them down south cuz it’s just pure suicide, you know. So, we’re going to do away with that. Thank goodness. We were out there on an operation for 2 days, and then we came back to ship the helicopter. And when we got back to the ship, my platoon was uh in a tactical area of operation.”

“It’s on a 10-minute standby all the time. When somebody gets in trouble, they fly us in the helicopter, and we have to get them out. So, we were no more on the ship a half hour. We got all showered, cleaned up, and everything, and they called us out. So, we had to go jump on the helicopter, go back. And so, that tactical operation was last about 2 hours, and then we went back to the warship.”

“We were doing the same thing when we go down south on the Sparrowhawk. We’ll have to go and deploy and buy out and get them trouble. I told you a little about the ship that we were on. One of the letters I wrote to you, I said that it’s not as good as the other ship we were on when we came over here to Vietnam, the South Vietnamese.”

“It was all air-conditioned. We had mattresses on our canvas racks. We had pillows. We had linens. And uh each rack had a little reading light. You could read with. We had wall lockers. And the towel wasn’t as good. The towel was really terrible, though. You couldn’t get outside, either. The only place we were allowed to go was on the hangar deck.”

“And it’s kind of stuffy, you know. And then, all the time, they have a floor cleaner in there all the time. They have their own little squeegee that they used to uh clean the decks with. So, kind of gassy, you know, all the time. They had movies every night for us. On the hangar deck, that area of the deck is pretty big place.”

“I told you it’s about just about two times as big as our camp at Cam We uh really don’t know when we’re going to go down south. It’ll be before the first of the year, I know. It’s around the 28th or 29th. And uh they said we are to the Delta. And all that. This is just what they said so far. I don’t know what it’s going to be.”

“They said we’ll be the only American troops in there, just one battalion. They say there are 22 Viet Cong battalions in the Delta right now. And uh it’s all swampy, so we’ll probably be in water up to our waist just uh all the time. They plan on us being down there anywhere from uh 15 to 30 days, and then we go back to Okinawa. We drop the third wave in March, draft.”

“Other boys are going home to Trevor March, pick up new replacements. We’ll be in Okinawa for about two, maybe 3 weeks, then we head back to Vietnam, and we don’t know where we’re going then. They say the DMZ that we don’t know for sure. You know, one of the letters I got from Stella today, she sent the newspaper clippings that John Kimble had written about the Vietnam people in Captum.”

“He had written them and sent them back home, and then they put them in the Gazette City paper. I’m uh planning to write John a letter tomorrow. If I get a chance, I will even write one, but last time he wrote, he hadn’t had an answer yet. I don’t think I even know. Oh, yes, uh you don’t need to send me any more envelopes.”

“I got plenty of envelopes now. I just bought a box of them before I went on the ship. I’m pretty well fixed for stamps now, I believe, for a while. You said on the tape that I just uh got that most of the boys from the States will be coming home for Christmas. I’m sure glad to hear that. Uh I want you to tell Nick hello for me when he gets home.”

“Uh he’ll probably be in the city, Allen David. And then I want you to tell the rest of his family hello, too, his mother and his two sisters, Mike. I hope they’re all right. Uh David and Donna, they should be there, I know, if I’m recording this. I hope they got there all right. And uh I hope they see some snow, too, so uh Shane and Donna can really give David a good going over like he used to get me all the time.”

“I think it might be the other way around though. I got to back it up. Show me a few tricks. I like to see this tape get back there in time for them to hear it. But I don’t think it will. I think this is the 23rd, yeah. I don’t think it’ll get back there in time. So, if it doesn’t then why don’t you just send this tape on the van so they can hear it? And then if I get a chance I’ll tape record them another tape and send it to them later on.”

“By the way, like I said, no one will miss this picture. I don’t think I’ll be able to use this tape recorder very much when I’m down south. Cuz I won’t be able to take it with me and I won’t have access to my C bag room I don’t believe. There are two other fellows here in number two that got tapes in the mail today and they don’t have tape recorders so I’m going to let them use my tape recorder to listen to them on.”

“And then also if they want to record a tape and then send it back home I’ll let them have to use it too. We got a new boy in our squad just while I was over in Okinawa. He’s real He’s five foot two small for his battalion. He’s from Virginia. If you talk about a seven man squad he’s got one. And uh we just rag him all the time.”

“He’s He’s crazy. Not really, he’s just funny. He’s The things he says he doesn’t mean for them to be funny but they just come out funny. He always has us laughing all the time. And they they just call him every nickname in the book. I have two sergeants and he is ragging all the time. Not really ragging that’s just kind of funny.”

“I know I’m jumping around here on different subjects. I’m just talking with what’s coming to my mind. Uh I don’t know what he thought about this tape that you sent to me. I don’t know what you thought about it back then after I recorded it. That music that was on it it didn’t come out too good. And couple tunes I couldn’t recognize except that was Mr. Cathedral.”

“I could recognize that cuz when I was in Okinawa they played that all the time when they were stationed there. It was popular in Okinawa too at the time. Oh yeah, send that when we on ship driving driving in a car down off the continent they piped music in there. here all the time. One day they played some Christmas carols too, which I thought was very nice.”

“And then they played a lot of rock and roll music and once while they’re doing something. Well, yes, I just remembered that I got the card from Dick’s family, too. Uh Dick’s mother said that the Red Dog Saloon and Marine is closed down. I just uh Since that’s closed down, one of our favorite places to go was the snack bar.”

“Spent quite a bit of time up there when we were home on leave. I hoped maybe he could take David down up to that uh hot spot, Marine Red Dog Saloon, but since it’s not open now, I don’t know what they’ll do for entertainment around there. Guess they’ll just have to go to Ram’s. I’m glad to hear that man.”

“I heard about the basketball team. He said I hope they go places. It sure sounds like they got a winner. As for old chill, I don’t know. It sounds like he’s kind of hurt. And then uh eighth grade team, they sound pretty promising, too. I hope they go places. Most I said most of the guys in Arizona live in that corner of the town.”

“I’m not too crazy about that time of Saturday night. Dirty and filthy. I think I just might get cleaned up, take one of these nice cold showers and get out of here. And then head off to the club tonight, suck up a few suds and listen to the band. I guess just messing around and going over here to the club and everything down in town is like two for two.”

“Promotions come up the first of January and I’m looking forward to making Lance Corporal. Corporal, I hope I didn’t screw it up quite a lot. Yeah, I’ve been in any trouble. So, I hope maybe I’ll make Lance Corporal. It’s only two months in grade. You’re supposed to have four months in grade. I think I might make it, too.”

“I sure hope I do. Corporal, it means what is it they call it? $4 pay raise, I think it is. Well, that’s a big deal. But it just means you’re all the more closer to making Corporal and plus you get off you get out of a lot of working parties, too. The more rank you get. I’m glad to hear that Cadet Troop is doing so well down there without you.”

“I hope he keeps up the good work and all those places. Sounds like he’s getting up there pretty high in the ranks. Max will probably be home on the vacation so I want you to tell him hello for me. Tell him to take care and stay out of trouble if you can. That’s all I have to say right now. I think I’ll sign off.”

“I just want you to take care of yourselves and I wish you all just a Merry Christmas and let’s get through all right. I’ll see you now. Bye. One other thing, I wonder if this tape plays right on your recorder or on my recorder today. Now I’m kind of fluctuating back and forth with a high and low tone.”

“I wonder if it does the same on your tape recorder.”