Saddest time for me in Vietnam

squatting dog

squatting dog

Remember when... thirty seemed so old.
Location
Arkansas, and also Florida
Not the death that surrounded us, or the constant fear.... No... it was... Mail call.
With the exception of the one picture of purple flowers I asked my mom for, I never once in my 2 tours received any letters from home. I always dreaded mail call because I was usually the only one without that comforting letter that told you someone cared about you.
Still have that picture.

flower.jpg
 
Sorry guys. If I had had your addresses, I would have sent letters. I have always liked writing and before the internet, I wrote a lot of letters. I was isolated out in the country and really looked forward to getting mail.

I love the internet because it makes connecting so much easier.
 
Sort of on the same subject.

I wasn't making an effort to not write home from VN but I hadn't in a few months and one day my platoon sgt. walked up and handed me pencil, paper and envelope and said, " write your mother and give me the letter".......apparently my mother had got a hold of the Red Cross back home wanting to know if they could find out if I was alive because it had been a few months since she heard from me and the RC got a hold of the Army and had me tracked down.

Can't recall what I wrote but I remember it wasn't more than a short paragraph.
 
Today's service personnel, with a variety of options for nearly instant communication, will never know the sweet agony that was mail call for those of us of an earlier generation. In my many cruises overseas, I made only one telephone call home and that was from Taiwan.

Those days in port when I received letters were bliss. Days in port and weeks at sea with no mail, were simply endured.
 
squatting dog said:
Not the death that surrounded us, or the constant fear.... No... it was... Mail call.
With the exception of the one picture of purple flowers I asked my mom for, I never once in my 2 tours received any letters from home. I always dreaded mail call because I was usually the only one without that comforting letter that told you someone cared about you.
Still have that picture.

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Oh noooo.. that's heartbreaking... why..?.. do you know why ?
 
IKE said:
Sort of on the same subject.

I wasn't making an effort to not write home from VN but I hadn't in a few months and one day my platoon sgt. walked up and handed me pencil, paper and envelope and said, " write your mother and give me the letter".......apparently my mother had got a hold of the Red Cross back home wanting to know if they could find out if I was alive because it had been a few months since she heard from me and the RC got a hold of the Army and had me tracked down.

Can't recall what I wrote but I remember it wasn't more than a short paragraph.
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now thinking back.. how do you think you would feel if your child had gone to fight , and didn't contact you for months ?
 
squatting dog said:
Not the death that surrounded us, or the constant fear.... No... it was... Mail call.
With the exception of the one picture of purple flowers I asked my mom for, I never once in my 2 tours received any letters from home. I always dreaded mail call because I was usually the only one without that comforting letter that told you someone cared about you.
Still have that picture.

View attachment 230850
Click to expand...
That totally sucks. If I'd known there were Soldiers, Marines, etc., who weren't receiving any mail, I would've been writing tons of letters. :(
 
I worked with a guy whose father happened to be Barry Goldwater's dentist. The dentist jokingly asked Goldwater if he could pull some strings to inspire his son to write home more often. My buddy was called in to the Bn. Commander's office and instructed that he WOULD write home on a weekly basis.
And, on an even lighter note:
 
(((squatting dog)))
Did you ever discuss with your mother why she didn't write? Before my mother died I was blessed. We discussed everything that I felt wounded by because of her. She sincerely apologized. Since her death was an accident, neither of us knew that visit by her would be our last. I'm so glad I was able to tell her and hear her replies.
 
IKE said:
one day my platoon sgt. walked up and handed me pencil, paper and envelope and said, " write your mother and give me the letter".......apparently my mother had got a hold of the Red Cross back home
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The same thing happened to me also so I sent a letter home. I felt the letter was a lie about the good things that happened and not about all the bad things that happened. It was just to reasure the family back home and I know some people did not buy it.
 
hollydolly said:
now thinking back.. how do you think you would feel if your child had gone to fight , and didn't contact you for months ?
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When my brother stopped writing from Vietnam, he explained later - he was mentally devastated, he was paranoid his letters would be read by his commander, he couldn't write "I'm fine" and he couldn't write that he wasn't, and he couldn't bring himself to write stuff like "Get me out of here!/Write your congressman/ Write the president" and "I feel dead already" because he didn't want to worry our parents, and he didn't trust the politicians at the time. So he pretty much lost the motivation to write for an extended period of time.
 
Murrmurr said:
When my brother stopped writing from Vietnam, he explained later - he was mentally devastated, he was paranoid his letters would be read by his commander, he couldn't write "I'm fine" and he couldn't write that he wasn't, and he couldn't bring himself to write stuff like "Get me out of here!/Write your congressman/ Write the president" and "I feel dead already" because he didn't want to worry our parents, and he didn't trust the politicians at the time. So he pretty much lost the motivation to write for an extended period of time.
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I understand that.. but to write.. ''I'm Alive, don't worry''.. would surely have meant so much to your parents..
 
Lawrence said:
The same thing happened to me also so I sent a letter home. I felt the letter was a lie about the good things that happened and not about all the bad things that happened. It was just to reasure the family back home and I know some people did not buy it.
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Agree.

I volunteered for the Army and also volunteered to go to VN while I was stationed in Panama and I have no regrets about either decision......I'm not complaining or looking for a shoulder to cry on about my time in VN but like Lawrence said above it's hard to be upbeat and cheerful in a letter back home with everything that was going on around us.

Found out years later that my dad very rarely wrote home while in WWII and that, if you had access to one, the Red Cross actually had a fill in the blanks form letter available for GI's to fill out and mail to the folks back home.
 
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hollydolly said:
I understand that.. but to write.. ''I'm Alive, don't worry''.. would surely have meant so much to your parents..
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I don't know if this was true for all battalions/regimens, but Grant's CO insisted that letters to home be at least 1 paragraph long. It was believed that one or two sentences from a soldier who saw combat was just as alarming as no word at all.

It's different now. Not only are military personnel allowed to use social media (with a few restrictions), but today's military acknowledges the mental and emotional effects of combat on soldiers as well as their families back home.

Back when my brother, Grant, served in VN, my parents knew they would be contacted asap if he were killed or MIA. That helped them worry less...."If something happened to him, they would tell us." Kind of like "No news is good news"
 
I’m not bragging, but I missed Vietnam. I have been reading your posts and read that your mother died and now this post that you never received mail while in Vietnam. I’m sorry your mother passed away. I will have to face that situation soon enough. As for not getting mail, I would imagine that being in war and not getting any support from home can make being there even more miserable.
 
Writing letters home and receiving mail was an important part of most of the guys lives when I was in the military. There were a few of the troops who didn't ever seem to get any mail, and that seemed to affect their moods, etc.

Years ago, when my parents passed away, my Sister went through their belongings and found a big sack of letters I had written them during my years in Europe and Thailand....they kept them all. I now have that sack in the basement, and I sometimes read one of those old letters....quite a "time capsule".
 
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