September 16, 1968.  Fort Bragg, North Carolina.


Dearest Rita,

I’m tired as heck right now but just had to write my love before I turn in.  It may not be too long though.

I got a letter from Brenda, one from the folks and one from you today.  Of course yours was the first and most important one.  I had a nice surprise in the folks’ letter — a $53 check from the college.  Nice!  I’m going to hold it for a while before cashing it, so I don’t blow it all.

Also I may need it to go down to Corpus Christi on.  I talked to a warrant officer today who said he wants to go down, and if he does he’ll request me for his crew chief.  Sure hope I can go, but I’m not counting on it — the company may not let me.  Too many “ifs.”

How do like having Jerry in the family?  I’ll bet that before the year is out you too will be fighting like brother and sister.

You can tell your mom for me that I will pay for any collect calls I make.  She’s lucky — if I took advantage of it and called you collect as much as I’d like to call you, you’d be broke in a month or less.  Did that make sense?  Anyway you know what I mean.

Bob will be leaving for Lejeune a week from tomorrow (Tuesday 24th) but still doesn’t know if he’ll get a leave.  He may get stationed in Kansas City and be able to make weekend dashes home — the lucky dog.  Sure will miss him when he’s gone.

We saw Lee this last weekend.  He has a program on the college radio station and we had a blast when he went on.  Bob and I were in there and he is really funny.  He was half drunk when he went on (so where we) and proceeded to get bombed while he was on, giving away beer and popping tops in the mike.  I about died laughing.

Going to bed now.  I’ll try to do better tomorrow if I get the chance.  Keep yours coming — I’m getting them now (most of them anyway).  I love you Rita.

Always,

Jeff


PS.  I still haven’t got that letter you said you said a lot about Dale in.  Maybe you to best fill me in.


According to mom, Lee is a friend who moved away from Brookings  to Chapel Hill, N.C. during their senior year.  Also, the last letter was August 27th and this one is September 16.  That’s a long time.  I wonder if he had leave or what?  Don’t know what this is about, sorry.

I’m also sorry for the short personal annotations lately.  I’ve been crunched for time and been getting these out at the very last minute (or sometimes not at all).  Next week my wife and son will be on vacation and I’ll be trying to get a few weeks ahead so I can take more time to research each letter and maybe get more information and history.  Which brings us to our next topic…

PICTURES!  I have a ton of them!  My sister sent me a box that had some great shots from dad during his time in Vietnam and I’m super excited for you to see them (though they won’t be posted until he eventually gets there in the course of his letters).  The flipside of this coin is that the box contained mostly negatives.  Mounds of negatives!  Like a butt-load of negatives, which kinda puts me in the same position I was in late last year with the audio tapes.  Seriously, there has to be three hundred undeveloped pictures here.

I’m going to try to find a few photo shops around my area who can identify the different types of film used (there are at least 4 different types) and tell me what it will take to get them developed.  First I have to go though them, label them, and try and find what they’re all of.  Could be a bunch of his Boy Scout photos, I don’t know.  That would be pretty cool, but I don’t know if I’m ready to open up http://www.lettersfromboyscouts.com yet, you know?

So, I’m not opening up for donations right now, and I still have some of what you so generously gave last time, but I wanted to give you all a heads up that you might see that little button in the left column again in the next few weeks depending on what I find out from the experts.

Your ever-faithful servant,

Ethan