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  Letters From a Marine in Vietnam 1967
August 6, 2012
 

This started out as a way to share the chronicle of a year in the life of my younger brother, Martin Andrew Butt, a 20-year old Marine in Vietnam as described in letters to a friend in 1967. I picked up the letters in a recent trip to Fayetteville (See Hillbilly Vacation, July 19, 2012), after finding out about them in a Facebook message from the recipient.
I first read his letters and then scanned them. Like I said, it was like opening a 43-year old time capsule. I want to share them and to provide some context. Click here to access the lettersFor the rest of the story context, click here. The letters, totaling 45 pages, span about nine months, from February 24 to December 13, 1967, when he was stationed at Da Nang airfield. Da Nang had the nickname “Rocket City” because it received so much enemy fire.
Most of the content is just chatty, involving daily humdrum, friends and acquaintances from back home and philosophizing after too many beers. The letters paint a picture of a 20-year old Marine mostly bored, horny and ready to go home from the time he arrived. Days of tedium were periodically relieved by life-threatening attacks and the excitement of firefights defending the perimeter.

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Martin was awarded a Purple Heart but otherwise came home in one piece and resumed his life as a college student but a year and a half later in 1969 died in an automobile accident when he was 22 years old.

 

 

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