Dear Family,
I'll drop you a little note this afternoon so you will know I'm still here. I missed mail call this morning as I was at TSN. I am clearing up affairs for an instructor that broke his leg on a motorcycle and was sent to Maxwell about a month ago. Today I shipped all his personal belongings to him. I am working? all day today so that I can be off tomorrow for conference.
We had a heavy rain last night just at dark, lots of wind and thunder and lightning.
The dishwashing machine has been broke for 2 days at the chow hall so we have had to use paper plates & cups. Speaking of eating, today we were out at TSN at lunch time so decided to try this Mexican food joint. They sure make good tacos. I may try some more tomorrow as conference is at the chapel across the street from this place. I was thinking of you guys all the time I was eating. I said "if Hazel knew about this place, she would come all the way over for some of their food".
Well, I just checked the afternoon mail and got your letter saying that your check had come, so I am much relieved. I know money will be tight, especially with the bills behind and extra costs this month, but it should be some better. Don't wait to the last minute to borrow what you need. I'll close for now & get this in the mail.
Love, Daddy
P.S. I may not get to mail a letter tomorrow with conference so don't be looking too hard for one.
Saturday 8 August
Hi all you Happy People
Now that I have returned from Conference, got some supper and had a shower, I can sit down and write some. I won't have a chance to mail this until Monday, probably so I'll put down what comes to mind now.
The conference was real great. There were nearly 300 guys there from 22 groups. For the morning session, there were only 2 females present, an Army nurse captain and one of our girls from Saigon who works at TSN. Her name is Sophie, or that's the best you can make of it in English. When she saw all those guys, I think she was scared to death. Then she spotted another guy that she recognized and came running to sit near us. Don't worry, she is ugly as homemade sin as they say. But she has a great personality, the kind of personality you can't help to like. That's the way with all the girls in our branch. And I do mean girls, they remind me so much of Susan with their sometimes boisterous play and fooling around. For the afternoon session, we had 9 girls there and I sang in the branch choir. President Anderson wanted everybody in the branch to sing. We sang "I Am A Child Of God" and "I Am A Mormon Boy". President Smith, the mission president said that our Primary teachers would have been proud of us. It was kind of fun, especially with the girls singing the last song.
Bro. Norris was called as 2nd Counselor in the District Presidency. our mission president G. Carlos Smith was General Supt. of YMMIA before coming out here.
Do you recall the Fages at Eglin? They were the couple with 4 boys that stayed with us one night. He volunteered to come over here as a gunner and everybody tried to talk him out of it. He was killed in April when his plane crashed. The church people said they never heard from him. You may remember he wasn't very active there in Ft. Walton Branch.
The only Vietnamese Elder spoke today. He is going to the "Y" and also got his temple recommend today. I doubt there was a dry eye in the lot when he finished. Some of the guys rode 100 miles in a big G.I. truck to get there. Others came by helicopter. I know some of them must have been in the woods and swamps for 3 months. We had the Sacrament as part of the session.
At our conference in October, Bruce R. McConkie will be here.
Well, I'll close for now and finish tomorrow.
Sunday afternoon
Well, the Vietnamese part of the conference was really great. The VN Elder Nguyen Cao Minh spoke for about 30 minutes, about 20 min. in Vietnamese. The Vietnamese sister Truong Ha Xu (Sophie) also spoke. A Brother Harding from the Church Building Committee has been in the area for several days looking at property, etc. I guess they are ready to go on building A mission home in Bangkok, Thailand. They want to buy property here but can't find the right place yet. He says the Church owns about 25 buildings in the Far East now including Japan.
Before the meeting this morning, I spent 2 hours with the B.P. going over the membership roster. Of 100 names in the book, 65 are VN. We don't have a lot of G.I.'s listed. Many of the VN we can't identify. The first name you write down is their last name, but the clerks in the mission home have changed them around and here a name may be first, last or middle so it is a terrible mess so I have the task of straightening things up.
I may have told you that the Branch meets in the home of one of the members. Well I found out today that this man's family went back to Utah about 3 months ago, that he is batching it there in the house and the church now pays part of the rent. I got a key to the place today and will probably spend considerable time there until I get things better organized. At least this chore should keep me out of the bars and pool room.
There is a real sense of urgency of the need to build up the VN people and get the branch here in Saigon on a solid footing before most of the G.I.'s leave. The military membership of the branch is only about half of what it was 6 months ago and as the withdrawal continues more and more of our men will be living on base instead of hotels in town so, within a year all the Americans could be gone. This would be a disaster as things are now. I would hope it won't be long before missionaries are sent in here, but right now I doubt if the Church would feel safe about it.
Darling, you asked about our milk and ice cream. It is reconstituted, like in Japan. We have ice cream 2 meals every day.
It hardly seems like time for school to start, almost. But then, times seems to fly for me here. (It could go lots faster too). Tuesday will be a whole month since I left you all. If the next 11 will go as fast, it won't be unbearably long.
Well, I hope this little card cheers you up some. A gift will have to wait for later, I'm afraid. Wish I could be there to give you a gift, in person, even a candy coated M&M but can't right now. Hope I have 2 or 3 letters from you tomorrow.
All of you stay sweet and good. I love you all and miss you much.
Bye for now, Love Daddy
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Notes:
The fall of Saigon did eventually come some 4 1/2 year later after Dad had left. He was always concerned and wondered what ever happened to those VN members.
The Fall of Saigon was the capture of Saigon the capital of South Vietnam by the Viet Cong on April 30, 1975. The event marked the end of the Vietnam War. North Vietnamese forces began their final attack on Saigon on April 29. This bombardment at the TSN airport killed the last two American servicemen to die in Vietnam. By the afternoon of the next day, North Vietnamese troops had occupied the important points of the city and raised their flag over the South Vietnamese presidential palace. The city was renamed Hồ Chí Minh City.
The fall of the city was preceded by the evacuation of almost all the American civilian and military personnel in Saigon, along with tens of thousands of South Vietnamese civilians associated with the southern regime. The evacuation culminated in Operation Frequent Wind, the largest helicopter evacuation in history.
Order was slowly restored, although the by-then-deserted U.S. embassy was looted, along with many other businesses. Communications between the outside world and Saigon were cut.
One objective of the communist government was to reduce the population of Saigon, which had become swollen with an influx of people during the war and was now overcrowded with high unemployment. "Re-education classes" for former soldiers in the South Vietnamese armed forces indicated that in order to regain full standing in society they would need to move from the city and take up farming. Handouts of rice to the poor, while forthcoming, were tied to pledges to leave Saigon for the countryside. According to the Vietnamese government, within two years of the capture of the city one million people had left Saigon, and the state had a target of 500,000 further departures.
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