Hi Barb,

It was a very pleasant surprise for me to get your card and letter. Thank you very much, I really appreciate it. I really liked your letter, it was very sweet of you. I’m 20 years old. I lived in Chicago for 19 years, then a few days before I got drafted into the Army, my parents decided to move. I don’t know anyone in Berwyn at all. Being 18 you must be a senior in school right? I would really like for you to write me, from your letter you sound like a very nice girl, and I bet you have a real good personality.

I enclosed a picture of myself, it was all I had at the moment, I do hope you send me a picture of yourself, OK? Don’t forget!! I suppose you would like to know a little about Viet Nam. Well I’m at Pleiku, its about 250 miles North of Saigon. I’m a truckdriver for an infantry outfit. I like to drive, but these roads are something else. I came into the army in August 66, and got to Viet Nam December 30, 66. I got home in December 67. I would like to know some about you. What school you go to? What you look like? Oh yeah, I have brown hair, brown eyes, 5’10½”, and weigh 155 pounds. And what you like to do?

I really have to go now, thank you again for being so nice, and write soon,

Mike

Hi Barbara,

How are you? I’m awfully glad you wrote me. I hope you send your picture soon, I would really like to see what you look like. Maybe I know you, since you lived in Chicago too. I lived around Madison and Cicero, and usually I hung around there too.

From your description you sound really nice. And I was always crazy about blonds, and I still am. I guess I’m average too. Do you like to drink? What do you think of drive-ins? I have some pictures that you might be able to use in your scrap book, but if you don’t think you need them, I won’t send them. You see they are not great pictures, just ordinary. So let me know OK? I think it’s really nice, sending a little girl to school in Formosa.

Now do you go about it. I heard of this sort of thing before, but I never knew how you go about it. Could you tell me how you do it? I heard of Immaculate High School. I don’t know exactly where it is, probably on the North East side of Chicago, right? How do you like college? I was going to go to college, Wright Jr. College, but I changed my mind, boy do I regret it now. How do you like Cicero, Ill? If you ask me, I’ll take Chicago over Berwyn anytime. How about you? What type of pictures do you paint? I mean like of people or scenery.

Don’t think I’m nosey Barbara, I just don’t really know what to say, so I ask questions, OK? I don’t like Viet Nam. The weather is fairly nice, if you like heat. But its dirty here. Most of the time the wind is blowing dust all over, and boy I’m all the time dirty. And I usually like to stay half way clean at least. Pretty soon the rainy season comes. I don’t look forward to that at all. It lasts about 5 months, and I hear its really bad then.

Well I’ll save some things to tell you so I can write you another letter, so long for now, and you take care too, a friend,

Mike

Hello Barbara, How are you?

I want to explain why I hadn’t wrote in a long time. I have been very busy lately. First I moved from Pleiku where I was at before, I’m now at Duc Pho, a new base camp of the 25th Inf. Div. Not all of my company is up here yet, and I don’t have all of my stuff yet. I’ve been on the road every day for the last month. Believe me, I hardly even wrote home. But now work is slowed down a bit, and I get a chance to catch up on my writing. I didn’t forget you, I just couldn’t get time. Forgive me? So whats new? How’s everything? (I really don’t know what to say, so bear with me.) How’s the weather back there?

Are you still going to send me a picture of yourself? Since we really don’t live too far away, we could probably see each other sometime, OK? Do you have a boyfriend now? If you do, then I’ll understand. Well I had better stop now, I wanted to get a letter to you to let you know why I haven’t written lately. I will write again soon, and I hope to get a letter from you soon too.

So for now, so long,

Yours, Mike