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

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Long Thanh North
September 7, 1971
Tuesday
8:30 am

Dear Folks,

Didn't write a letter for the 6th. Got stuck on guard duty last night when somebody got sick. Lucked out though. I had Bunker 45 which is in the tower out near the gate. Tower guard isn't so bad. Not so many rats and bugs and you can see a lot better. The guy I had guard with was a permanent guard. He has been pulling guard for about 6 months straight. He said if I stayed till the chow truck came by at 12, then he would stay up the rest of the morning. So that's what I did. I'm not even a little tired now. Slept from 1 am to 6 am.

I went to Long Binh yesterday and picked up my TDY pay. Got $26 for Nha Trang and$37 for Vung Tau. They wouldn't pay us for Da Nang because the orders we had were only for that first practice mission. We can collect for that day and half on those orders, but we need some different orders for that long stay. It's just a matter of getting some typed up with different dates on them. But that could take forever.

I was going to get paid for August but the line was ten miles long and it was already 3 pm. Since I didn't have a definite ride back to Long Thanh and I had to hitch hike I figured I'd better get on the road early. That $60  I collected will keep me for a month. I think I'll just wait and hope they pay me for both months at the end of this month. If not then I guess I'll have to go wait in line. Got 4 letters and a 30 minute tape yesterday.

Rick

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