{"id":119640,"date":"2021-11-16T07:00:47","date_gmt":"2021-11-16T12:00:47","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=119640"},"modified":"2021-11-15T22:16:48","modified_gmt":"2021-11-16T03:16:48","slug":"vietnam-vet-reflects-on-his-time-there-through-letters-home","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=119640","title":{"rendered":"Vietnam vet reflects on his time there through letters home"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Every couple years I dig out the letters I sent home. I have yet to read them. I’ll probably explore them with my children when they’re old enough to understand. It’s an important part of military service though. As an amateur military historian, I’ve read lots of letters from the front. They really provide a lot of perspective on what life in the military at that moment in time and place was really like.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years ago, Dave Olsen was a young Army GI, serving in Vietnam. He sent letters home to his mom. She kept them. When she passed, he found them. He too had a hard time opening them, but he’s doing it now.<\/p>\n

Jeff LPH 3 sends in this Military Times article<\/a>;<\/p>\n

Army veteran Dave Olsen found them 26 years ago.<\/p>\n

He recognized them immediately while going through his mother\u2019s belongings after she died. That was in 1995.<\/p>\n

The sight alone took him 25 years into the past. Back to 1969. He never knew, or even suspected, that she had kept them.<\/p>\n

But there they were.<\/p>\n

The faded white envelopes with \u201cfree\u201d written in lieu of a stamp were unmistakable. Almost a dozen letters a 24-year-old version of himself mailed across the world from war-torn Vietnam to small town South Dakota stood preserved, legible as the day he first wrote them.<\/p>\n

He just never opened them all.<\/p>\n

Until last week.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew what they were,\u201d said Olsen, 76, with the letters laid in front of him in his Gillette home on Friday.<\/p>\n

\u201cI read a couple of them and I … I just couldn\u2019t get into it,\u201d he said, trailing off.<\/p>\n

Many men lucky enough to return from Vietnam carried the hard times of one of the United States\u2019 most controversial wars home with them. But that wasn\u2019t exactly the issue with Olsen. It wasn\u2019t the memories of the heat, or the monsoons, or the fear, or the unforgettable smell that made it hard to read line by line through the thoughts of his younger self, the Gillette News Record reports.<\/p>\n

It was the thought of who had read them before him. Who they were addressed to. The same loved one who held onto them for 25 years.<\/p>\n

\u201cAs I read the letters, I would think of her,\u201d Olsen said of his late mother.<\/p>\n

More than 50 years removed from his time in Vietnam and 25 years since he last saw his mother, he finally took the time to open each envelope, unfurl each folded parcel and remember the time when his life was on hold.<\/p>\n

The letters tell a story that may be familiar to veterans of all wars and the loved ones they wrote home to. There were good times and bad. Words that spoke of boredom and others that spoke of fear. Hopes of returning stateside and frustration at the uncertainties of deployment.<\/p>\n

Thoughts and feelings from 50 years ago can easily be warped by memory. His letters may not tell the full story of his time in Vietnam, but they open windows into a pivotal moment for a generation of Americans.<\/p>\n

\u201cDear family, I have been very irresponsible lately and Denny and I have spent the last few evenings good-timing so I\u2019ll get this written on my lunch break. Life has been pretty quiet since Ho\u2019s birthday.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u2014 An excerpt from a letter Olsen wrote, dated May 31, 1969.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

There is lots, lots more at the source.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Every couple years I dig out the letters I sent home. I have yet to read … Vietnam vet reflects on his time there through letters home<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":664,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[10,446,217],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-119640","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-historical","category-vietnam","category-we-remember"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119640","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/664"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=119640"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119640\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":119642,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/119640\/revisions\/119642"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=119640"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=119640"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=119640"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}