To Vietnam and Back 1967 - 1968

Dolores Cook Raisch

Description

An intimate look back at one family's experience during the troubled time of 1967 and 1968 in America and Vietnam.
The war in Vietnam was a turbulent time in our nation’s history that stirred strong feelings and deep emotions as America changed in ways that could not have been anticipated or avoided. To Vietnam and Back is an intimate family memoir that, through a lifeline of letters, offers a unique and warmly told story about one soldier’s year in Vietnam and one family anxiously awaiting his return. Readers will take a step back in time to a pivotal period of the Vietnam War, 1967-1968, and glimpse what it was like to not only leave home for the uncertainty of an increasingly controversial conflict, but also to be the parents, siblings and friends left at home to provide support the only way they knew how… through heartfelt words of everyday life. The pages are filled with emotion, humor, family and neighborhood news, while also depicting the uncertainty, fear and division caused by the war in Vietnam. It is a year of back and forth letters that brought encouragement and hope to the writers and recipients of those letters. In essence, To Vietnam and Back is a journey of the written kind that revisits and illustrates the timeless value of family, friends, faith and love.

Sujets

• Historical
• Lettres et linguistique
• Biography
• Vietnam
• Viêt Nam
• Autobiography

Informations

• Publié par: iUniverse
• Date de parution: 03 octobre 2022
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781663241788
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

“Remember keep your chin up, thank God every day… your tour will speed by and we’ll all be together again. What a blow out that wil l be.”
Dad - Letter to Bud - June 21, 1967
“I’ll sure be standing at the door looking for the mailman. Remember how I used to hide from him… Now he’s a very important person in my life.”
Mom - Letter to Bud - September 6, 19 67
“Would you believe I got every letter that was sent to me? I don’t know why I kept them. I’ll need my footlocker to send them all home.”
Bud - Letter Home - May 1, 1968
To Vietnam and Back 1967 - 1968
 
Letters of Family, Friends, Faith and Love
 
 
 
 
Dolores Cook Raisch
 
 

 
TO VIETNAM AND BACK 1967 - 1968
LETTERS OF FAMILY, FRIENDS, FAITH AND LOVE
 
Copyright © 2022 Dolores Cook Raisch.
 
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced by any means, graphic, electronic, or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, taping or by any information storage retrieval system without the written permission of the author except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.
 
 
 
 
iUniverse
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Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them.
 
Any people depicted in stock imagery provided by Getty Images are models, and such images are being used for illustrative purposes only.
Certain stock imagery © Getty Images.
 
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4177-1 (sc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4179-5 (hc)
ISBN: 978-1-6632-4178-8 (e)
 
 
iUniverse rev. date:  09/29/2022
Contents
Foreword by Dolores Cook Raisch - IT’S TIME
In Loving Memory
Dedication
Preface
PART ONE Faith, Family, Freedom
Introduction
Growing Up
“It’s the little things you say and do that make me want to be with you…”
Greetings, You’ve Been Drafted
“To everything, turn turn turn, there is a season, turn turn turn…”
So, Who’s Who? - Cast of Characters
PART TWO The Letters: June 1967 - June 1968
June 1967
“… Soldier Boy … I’ll be true to you …”
July 1967
“…A real live nephew of my Uncle Sam, born on the 4th of July…”
August 1967
“Sometimes I wonder what I’m a gonna do… cause there ain’t no cure for the summertime blues…”
September 1967
“Up in the morning and out to school, the teacher is teaching the Golden Rule…”
October 1967
“… I’m Mr. Lonely, I wish that I could go back home…”
November 1967
“… I say a little prayer for you…”
December 1967
“I’ll Be Home For Christmas… if only in my dreams…”
January 1968
“Oh, you don’t believe we’re on the Eve of Destruction…”
February 1968
“California dreamin’ … on such a winter’s day…”
March 1968
“A time for love, a time for hate… a time for peace, I swear it’s not too late…”
April 1968
“For the times they are a-changin’…”
May 1968
“Bring flow’rs of the rarest, bring flow’rs of the fairest… from garden and woodland and hillside and vale…”
June 1968
“I’m just a soldier, a Coming Home Soldier… I know that I have done my best…”
PART THREE Conclusion: Welcome Home!
Epilogue - Where They Are Now
“… In my life, I’ve loved them all…”
Closing Thoughts…
Foreword
by Dolores Cook Raisch - IT’S TIME
Sometime during the 1980’s… when Vietnam was just a short blip of a subject in some social studies classes… our brother Bud’s daughter, my niece, Colleen, was in high school at the time and learning about the Vietnam War. As part of an assignment, she asked her dad what it was like for him to be in Vietnam, wondering what it was that got him through that year. Bud’s response was to pull out dusty, long-closed-up boxes of letters he had received in 1967-68, that were still sitting inside the bottom of the china closet in the dining room of our childhood home. Bud told Colleen, “If you want to know what it was like for me in Vietnam, read these.” She did, and that was the beginning of a look back into our circle of family and friends during that time. Not long after Colleen read the letters, Bud asked me if I would be willing to put them in some kind of order. I jumped at the chance, sinking deep into the letters of that year, June 1967 - June 1968. I sorted the letters, telling myself I would “do something” with them, write a book maybe, even though I knew I was no writer. Then I realized I didn’t have to be… the letters could speak for themselves… or could they?
In subsequent months and years, the memories I had of that time in our lives kept creeping back.. the innocence and the struggle, but mostly, the love. I didn’t want all of those feelings, the laughter and tears.. the memories.. to get lost in the passage of time. So, almost twenty years ago, with great intentions, I finally sat down to try and come up with some kind of snapshot peek into the year that our brother, Bud, was in Vietnam. With a family now of my own, life was busy for me, of course, but I was determined and motivated to “do something.” I’m disappointed and sad to say, I started but never finished.. or maybe, as I have now come to believe, it just wasn’t the right time.
My retirement in June 2019, I believed, would finally allow me the time and undivided attention I felt I needed to get back to this important family project. It wasn’t until the winter of 2020 - after some rude awakenings - that I knew all of my excuses would no longer justify the long delay in getting started.
Originally, I thought the letters would be sufficient to tell the story of that year of our lives, but Bud convinced me it would be a good idea to add my occasional insight and thoughts as I remembered them to be as a thirteen-year-old girl. Channeling that young ‘new-teenager’ self, and writing as I would have at that age, was a challenge. It was also a joy… to peel off the layers of years and re-discover the girl who loved her family more than anything else, and still does.
So, all I can say is thank you, Colleen, for asking your Dad the question; and thank you, Bud, for trusting me, then and now, to tell the story.
March 2020
In Loving Memory
This project of love is in honor of Mom and Dad, whose example throughout their lives and ours, is the very definition of love.
Dedication
This “Cook Book” is dedicated with love to every member of the Cook Family,
past, present,
and especially to the next generations..
Grandchildren, grandnieces and grandnephews..
who never got to know and love our family quite the way we did.
The light of love lives on in all of you… keep shining!
And to all of those who never made it home from Vietnam…
You will never be forgotten.
Preface
No one in our family was surprised that Mom saved each and every letter that was written by my brother Bud while he was in Vietnam. I can still see her peering out the front door, looking for the mailman, then reading and re-reading Bud’s letters… savoring each and every word he wrote. What did surprise us was that Bud had also saved each and every letter that he received while he was in Vietnam… letters from family, from friends, from neighbors, even from my 8th grade classmates. How lucky we are to have this uniquely personal and intimate window to the past. Through this window, we relive that year that was a time like no other for our family, before or since.
The letters are presented in chronological order, and with rare exception, appear in their entirety with little or no editing. So, that said…
… Let me start by saying that the words contained in this family memoir do not pretend to be anything other than what they are, and I guess it makes sense to say first of all what they are not. They are not inspired examples of creative writing. They are not the product of college educated individuals proudly displaying their command of the English language complete with proper grammar usage. They are not intended to hurt or embarrass anyone, living or dead; although, truth be told they may do just that. They are certainly not insightful anecdotes that hint at the meaning and redemption of the country’s psyche at the mid-point of the 20th century. What these words and letters are, though, are quite simply a story of ordinary, unconditional love… love of family, love of God and country, love of friends… at a time in our nation’s history that was far from ordinary. That year - June 1967 to June 1968 - was a turning point in all our lives… and, at the time, we didn’t even know it.
Part One Faith, Family, Freedom
Introduction
To really understand the impact of the war in Vietnam is like trying to understand the unexplainable. We know it happened; we know it divided our country like no other time since the Civil War; we know it still, to this day, evokes emotion among those who were both frightened and brave during that troubling time; we know it was the beginning of the end of our innocence, as individuals and as a society. But still we struggle after all these years to really understand the lasting impact of a conflict that took place in a country far from home and that reached across land and sea to threaten our complacent sense of safety and security. And it was much more than the war that was testing us all. The test was just beginning, and would include countless lessons to which not everyone paid attention.
I recall one day in particular, in 1973, while working at