Rick Holt's Adventures in Vietnam
Letters Home from Vietnam, 1971

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Long Thanh North
November 29, 1971
Monday
8 am

Dear Folks,

I got the letter yesterday that say you got the good news. By now you have a copy of my orders that I sent.

I didn't write yesterday because I flew all day. I got up at 6:30 am and went to flight operations. I found that Capt. Carlson and Capt. McCullum had room on their airplane. So I went out and asked them if I could ride along. Long Thanh was the only place I went yesterday that was dry. Every place else was socked in with rain and clouds. We took off at 7:30 am and stopped at Cam Ran Bay. We had 6 passengers with us and about 600 pounds of baggage. It a wonder the plane could even get off the ground. At Cam Ran we were supposed to drop off some mail but there wasn't anybody to pick it up. Because of the weather we had to file an IFR (Instrument Flight Recommended) flight plan with Saigon Central. Then we had to wait for the clearance to come back. And then we had to wait for a radar release and then we had to wait in line to take off. What would have been 5 minutes turned out to be 2 hours.

After Cam Ran Bay we stopped at Nha Trang. Then Quin Nhon. Both of them were mail stops. But we were held up so long by the weather that who ever was supposed to pick it up was gone already. After Quin Nhon we went to Marble Mountain in Da Nang and dropped off some passengers. From there we went to Hue/Phu Bai and dropped off the baggage the we had. Then we went to Marble Mountain and picked up some more passengers and baggage and headed back home.

We were supposed to be done by 4 pm but we didn't get back till 8 pm. The weather held us up a total of 4 hours. I logged 7 missions and 7 hours and 45 minutes flight time. So I don't have to worry about getting flight pay for November.

Guess that's it for now. 25 days and a wake-up.

Rick

(read the next letter home)