Just a Letter

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I was not there the day this happened - I had been there on other days - and was again after this. So this is fiction - just a letter such a I might have been writing home on that day. But the facts are real - this is what it was really like.

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5 December, 1965

My Love,

I ache- what can I say? You're 12,000 miles away and I miss you, I miss your thighs and taste of your body. I see in the stars the gleam of your eyes gazing up at me and the satiated smirk- the cat that ate the canary, though 'twas no feather on your lips.

Ooooh!! 10 months yet! You'll be bowlegged for a week--Hell, we'll both be bowlegged for a week. I'm as horny as a four- peckered Billy goat just thinking of you.

I love you- I love you more than I can say. I love your taste and your smell but even more do I love---coffee on a Sunday morning, musing and dreaming together--running in the snow, laughing together. So much, so many things, you are so much more to me than just our passion, you are my strength, the stiffener of my spine. You are my comfort and my refuge. You make a man of me and let me be a boy.

I got your letter of 5 Nov. Do not worry for my safety, regardless of what you hear in the news. I am OK and I will stay that way. You know that I am an electrician - I'm not in the Infantry - I am surrounded by battalions of Infantry whose job it is to keep me safe. So, my love, come September the 24th next I will board that big bird and our life will be again.

And now for the news here:

We continue to build the base camp, we're working on pouring concrete floors for our tents- later we'll put up walls. They are making plans to build a mess hall soon, we'll share it with Headquarters Company (our neighbors), but for the time we're still eating in the open.

The rains have stopped at last, and we'll see little or no more until the end of April or early May. It is getting terribly hot and dry; we're told that the dust will be a real trial before Christmas.

About the war---Here at the Base Camp we get very little of that, in two months we have had only a few mortar attacks and some ambushes on the roads. Really, love, I'll not lie, but the truth is I'm at little risk--not much worse the dealing with drunk drivers and muggers in the park.

Last week a couple of NCOs from my company and the Headquarters Company discovered an orphanage that had been burned out by the VC. Brutal, it's how they control the countryside, terrorism. The NCOs have decided to make a project of helping out, build a new school and whatever else they can. Some of the guys are going out, on their day off, to help. I went the other day, beats just sitting around.

We took a truck down to Sai Gon to liberate a load of cement and concrete blocks from the AID warehouse-the dammed government just steals it and sells it. We were putting to the use intended, had no arguments from the guards, a truck load of GI's with M-14's is answer enough to most any question, I suppose. I've got off tomorrow and I expect I'll go again-beats going in town and getting drunk or whatever.

Well, love, it's getting late and I'll close here. I love you and miss you. I'll write more tomorrow. G'nite, love, and sweet dreams.

6 December

Well, love, 'tis now the morrow, it's noon and we've been busy, digging foundations and building forms. We'll start pouring concrete after lunch. Actually it's not been too hard, there are about a dozen of us, and the kids help as they can--Many hands....

We came out about right after breakfast, there was a bit of a flail at first. The local police are supposed to provide security but today they didn't show up, probably wanting a little "encouragement". We decided we'd cover ourselves and so I've pulled an hour's guard after lunch - it'll make for a long break.

There's been a bunch of kids around most of the day; it's hard to tell which are from the orphanage and which are just from the village, though most of the kids in the orphanage have pats missing. They've all disappeared now, home for lunch I guess. No doubt we'll be overrun with kids again later.

This morning some of the kids took a couple of us on a tour of the local temple. It was pretty neat but I didn't get a lot out of it, would have helped if I could understand them.

Well, love, lunch is over and its time for me to go look as if I'm being useful. I will write more this evening. I love you.

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Dear Mrs. Koch,

You don't know me, I'm just another private soldier like Harry was, but for some reason I feel the need to tell you of what happened. I've waited a bit to do this, I expect that Harry is home with you now and that the Army has done and said whatever it is they say and do in this kind of situation.

I found this letter on the ground after we picked up Harry - held on to it, I don't know why, it makes me cry. Oh Helll! I said I was going to tell you what happened, so here goes.

The police didn't show that day because they appear to have known what was going to happen - and the kids disappeared because they knew there were "bad men" in the bushes. One of the lessons we've learned is to watch the kids, they always know what's going on. Shortly after lunch there were three or four shots from the bush across the road. We all jumped and dropped in the ditch -- then well, nothing. Just Harry lying there in the road.

Well, when we got to him he was gone, There was nothing we could do but to take him back to the base camp.

It's not much of a story I guess, no big battle or anything for the papers. And I still don't know why I'm doing this. But, well, Harry was out there to help a bunch of kids and - well, there are those who would rather make them hurt. I guess that is why I writing this. Harry was there to help protect the kids from the people who hurt them. And so, I guess that makes Harry the hero not the victim. I'm sure you miss him, he was a good man, but please take some comfort in knowing what he was.

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News Item from early Dec. 1965 -

Local casualties in the war this week:

-Harry Koch, assigned to the 1st Infantry Division, was killed in an ambush while working on a Civil Action project.