April 5, 1970

Dear Mom,

This has been a rather strange week. I think I have aged a couple of years in the last 5 days.

In the last letter I sent you I said we had a sapper attack. The next night the same thing happened and we were out guarding the company area when about two in the morning the VC walked morters across the the company area. They came pairs about one second apart and ten seconds between pairs they walked then from the front of the company to the rear. The first two rounds caught six people in the open. Five got hurt bad, 4 are going back to the U.S. I was out in the open and hit it behind a wall of sand bags surrounding a houch. The next pair hit on the other side of the houch and the shrapnel came tearing through the houch. The third set hit in the motor pool damaging a dump truck, two tractors & trailers, and a dozer. I have never been so scared in my life. There is nothing you can do but get down and hope.

Anyway two days later a man in the company ran over a Vietnamese with a dump truck. So I go out to the sight and here the man is lying in the middle of the road with his head crushed (the front wheel of the dump truck ran over his head). I am trying to get an ambulance out there and all the Vietnamese are gathering. So what happens but the old man that got killed son comes along and sees his father lying dead in the street , to top it off he speaks English. He comes up to me demanding to see the driver that killed his father. That was a real scene. That body laid out there for two hours before I could get an ambulance there.

So today I am sweeping the road for A-Co 4/23 south along the mountain and we get close to the mountain. Anyway a Vietnamese boy that was in front of us hit a booby trap and blew off his foot. The foot was hanging on by a piece of skin and his leg was a stump. I'll tell you I have seen everything. I cut off his pants with my bayonet and we took gauze and wrapped the foot to his leg. We finally got to the spot where the infantry was going to recon. The A-Co C.O. gave me a track to go back on because I had other things to do. A half hour after I left they got hit, they had 2 men killed and 6 wounded. That's two close calls in one week.

Later,

John

P.S. Save these letters when I am out of this I would like to read them.