Staying in Touch with Home in Vietnam

In my “Advisor Series” I use ‘letters’ as a ‘vehicle’ to tell my stories. In some cases, the letters are from home or from Tyler’s girlfriend in Saigon. In the stories these letters allow Tyler and his family as well as his girlfriend to reflect on events that are occurring in their daily lives. In some cases, these ‘stories’ allow the story to relate to the home life of the hero, or his longing for normalcy. He tells his girlfriend some of the non-military aspects of his duties so that she understands his living conditions as well as his relationships with his fellow soldiers and counterparts. He tries not to scare her with the war stories that are important to the books. He tries to persuade her that he’s safe and sound while in reality he faces day-to-day dangers in his job as a military advisor.

When he writes to his parents he tries to reassure them that he is safe and sound. Since his father is active in the intelligence community at the Defense Intelligence Agency in Washington DC, he’s able to keep him informed by directing his attention to cryptic message traffic that might explain what he’s dealing with in Vietnam.

His little sister “Paula”, the only family member that actively seems to correspond with him in Vietnam is told very generic stories in his letters. He doesn’t want to frighten a young girl that is seeing the daily horrors of war each night on television. Tyler talks to her as if the people he’s dealing with are his friends. He selects pretty cards to send her rather than just letters; cards with pictures of panda bears and exotic animals and flowers rather than just written letters.

In reality mail call in Vietnam, as well in all previous military conflicts, was the only way that we could stay in touch with home, family and friends. In the late 1960’s when I was in Vietnam it was the ONLY way to stay in touch for the vast majority of soldiers. It was a slow and cumbersome system, but we eagerly awaited ‘mail call’ with the hope of receiving a letter from home.

I can remember a senior officer telling me one time that when I became a commissioned officer that there were just a few people in the Company that I’d better not piss off!

First was the unit clerk. They processed all of your paperwork. If you wanted to get orders, promotions, or administrivia processed they were the guardian of the Orderly Room!

Second was the Supply Sergeant or the Supply Clerk. They were the people that made sure that you got boots and uniforms that fit and made sure that you received not just the ‘needed’ equipment, but equipment that worked!

Then there was the Mess Steward. At some point you’d end up on KP as an enlisted man and that meant the difference in being the Dining Room Orderly, or the guy cleaning out the grease traps!

Finaly there was the Mail Clerk – the most important person in the unit as far as morale and welfare was concerned. This was the person that made sure that you got your mail in and out in a timely fashion

The Army Postal Office (APO) system was operated in conjunction with the US Postal Service. Letters mailed from home would carry the standard postage stamp and the local post office in a soldier’s hometown would process the letters as routine in-country mail. Packages could be sent from home as well, at the standard rate of mail going to San Francisco or the west coast of the US.

The mailing address would be to the soldier’s unit in the field, their name and rank, and finally the unique APO for that unit. The letters were collected and usually air-freighted to Vietnam where they would be received and sorted by unit.

Once they were sorted usually in Saigon, the packages and letters would be sorted and placed in bright orange mail bags and delivered to the Unit. At this level they would be sorted once again and sent to the soldier’s location and further broken down if needed.

In my case letters from home would be sent to San Francisco, sorted, sent to Vietnam and re-sorted in Saigon and forwarded to the Military Assistance Command APO. From there they were broken down, in my case sent to Cần Thơ and from there to Moc Hoa to Advisory Team 85. Our mail clerk would then break the letters down and send them out to the various district and mobile assistance teams (MATS). Usually once a week we would have a visit from the ‘swing ship’, usually a helicopter, delivering supplies to the team and at that time we eagerly awaited the big orange mailbag. Occasionally, if someone was driving down to our team at Ap Bac they would deliver any mail that was at the headquarters.

One of us would take the bag back to the team house and Captain Weatherell, the District Senior Advisor, would sort the mail and hand out our personal letters and occasionally packages.

Letters that were written home, or to other locations in Vietnam, were sent in the reverse order. The biggest difference was that all we had to do was write FREE where the stamp would have been located. Outgoing packages were always sent through customs where they were inspected and cleared for shipment.

One of the advantages that we had with mailing packages was that you could actually send some packages home for free. By ordering through what was called PACEX (Pacific Exchange System) I could order items, and they would be delivered to the nearest Post (or Base) Exchange stateside and then sent home at a reduced rate. I mailed stereo equipment, dishes, and a host of other items to my then fiancé in St. Paul, MN and I only paid shipping from the small stateside Airforce PX at the St. Paul International Airport.

In the case of sending things home to my parents I would have them sent to the Cameron Station PX in Arlington, Virginia and a military friend of my father at the Pentagon would pick them up for him. I sent my mother a complete 12-piece set of China that I ordered through the PX that way.

The mail process was relatively efficient, but slow. Often it would take a letter from me to my folks 10-14 days to arrive from the time that I sent it out in the mail pouch. If I wrote a return letter the day that I received it the letter could sit in our mail pouch for up to four days before the next ‘swing ship’ came through to pick up the mail. If we were lucky our mail might go directly to Saigon on the ‘swing ship’ and put into the mail system, there and be on a flight home in a day or two.

If not, the mail went to the Province Headquarters at Moc Hoa, from there to Cần Thơ and finally from Cần Thơ to Saigon for processing. If any of us were going to Saigon we could hand carry letters there and drop them off at the mail office at MACV HQ.

One of the issues with such a ponderous system was that often I would get letters from home in a bundle. There might be three letters at a time (a rarity in my case). To make sure that they were read in the proper sequence we encouraged people writing to us to number their letters so that we could open them in the proper order. Often letters were passing across the Pacific Ocean in both directions simultaneously.

Another interesting aspect of mail in Vietnam, as well as in other previous conflicts, were “To Any Soldier” letters. These were letters addressed to any soldier serving in Vietnam. The APO in Saigon would bundle letters, generally from young women, and send them out to units in the field. Most of these letters, or at least the ones that I saw during my time in Vietnam, were from teenagers. Most of them were school or church projects and most just contained a simple note, “hope you are OK” or “thinking of you, stay safe”. Occasionally some of these ‘shots in the dark’ actually resulted in long term affairs and a few actually resulted in guys going home and meeting their correspondents.

At our headquarters in Moc Hoa our Admin NCO would take these letters and put them in a basket on the bar at our Club and guys would take them and read them. Regardless, it was good to hear from anyone at home.

One of my roommates corresponded with a young woman from Boise, Idaho, a young nurse, and when he returned home, he eventually married her.

Of course there were some other issues that developed with these letters. One of my Sergeant became enamored with a young woman. He was in his early twenties and found out that she was a sophomore in high school! He sent her father an interesting letter!

So mail was very important for all of us in Vietnam. We saved our letters and read and re-read them over and over again until we got the next set in the mail. Packages were eagerly shared with fellow soldiers and parts of letters would be shared as well.

Occasionally we were actually able to make a phone call home using the Military Auxiliary Radio System or MARS for short. This system enabled us to ‘indirectly’ call home. MARS is a system of Ham Radio Operators that volunteer their time, equipment and services to allow soldiers to call home from distant locations. A Radio Telephone Operator could contact a ham radio operator and using a telephone transfer system dial a phone number and make a brief, usually five-minute, phone call home. The biggest problem with the system in Vietnam was getting the party that you were calling to end their comment with OVER so that the Ham Radio operator could turn the switch-to-talk so that the person at the other end could speak.

“So, dear how are you and your mom doing? OVER”

“We’re doing fine how are you? Silence-silence Oh yeah, OVER”

It took me forever to get my blurry-eyed fiancé to finally say OVER – it turned out to be a relatively short call LOL! I’d talk, say OVER and she would talk and forget!

Another issue was atmospherics. Occasionally you would get a connection, and it would get dropped if conditions changed. Once the connection was lost it was usually difficult to regain.

Of course, other issues involved being able to make connections and finding a radio telephone capable of making the contacts. I was fortunate on my third tour to be in Saigon, and we were able to make limited calls from our headquarters communications section on occasion.

Today with the internet, satellite phones and a variety of communications capabilities soldiers can communicate directly from the field. My son was injured in Iraq and within a matter of a few minutes we received a phone call from a news reporter who was embedded with our son’s unit. Jon was able to tell us that we’d be receiving a call from the USMC Casualty Branch to tell us that he was injured. When the young Sergeant contacted us I was able to give her more information than she had in her files.

Soldiers overseas or onboard naval vessels can call home routinely and stay in touch with their friends and family. Vietnam was a lot different. We relied on the APO system to send and receive letters and packages from home. That big orange mail sack was our lifeline to home, and we eagerly awaited it’s arrival.

If you’re enjoying these blogs, please drop me a comment or if you have any questions that I might answer again submit a comment on the comment pages. I’m always glad to hear from you.

Again please take a look at all of my books that I have listed. They can be purchased from Amazon.com with the click of a button directly from the website. Until next week, Have a good one.

The Advisor Series:

• “The Advisor, Kien Bing, South Vietnam, 1969-1970. A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B09L4X5NQ3)
• “The Province Senior Intelligence Advisor, Kien Song Province 1970-1971; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0BHL2XCX5)
• “The Hardchargers,” Vietnam 1972-1973; A Novel” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0C7SPR1JY)
• “The Tuscarora Trail” (Available on Amazon ASIN: B0D3QY2GM6)

For more information visit Website: ptaylorvietnamadvisor.com