An interesting bit of nostalgia from 44 years ago. Thanks to Brian McEnany. Spelling and punctuation left as found.
Flag of the National Front for the Liberation of Southern Vietnam, Flag of South Vietnam 1975-1976 (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
One more Christmas comes to you on the South Vietnam battlefront, while in the other side of Pacific the American people are happily welcoming Christmas and newyear with their own traditions.
Certainly everybody in your families feels unhappy for lacking of your very dear features around the party-table or under the Christmas tree with the bright light of various colores. They love and miss you so very much, they are felling sad and worrying about you because they don’t know whether you will be present on next Christmas or you will never return to your native land.
Hundreds of thousands of American youth will never meet their loveones. Many American mothers and wives are wearing deep mourning for their sons and husbands on this Christmas.
What more unhappy is their deer men are not sacrificing their lives for the interests of the American people. They are forced to carry out the aggressive policy of Johnson Government in Vietnam which against God’s will and American people’s conscience.
Johnson-McNamara and the like are lions which wear the mash of young sheep, they are very cruel not only with the Vietnamese people but also with American people.
To celebrate Christmas:
You do pray God to check the bloody hands of the Johnson clique which stained the blood of the America and Vietnamese peoples.
Resolutely ask to be sent back to you nativeland your lives can’t be changed by dollars and medals.
We wish you a very merry Christmas – a very happy Newyear beside your families in your homeland.
THE SOUTH VIETNAM LIBERATION ARMY”
Picked up in Pleiku City, January 30 1968 – after Tet assault.
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Pretty amazing document after all these years. If particular interest to me as I’ve been doing some research into the Vietnam war in relation to the novel I’ve almost finished. I assume it was a friend of yours who found it. But kind if every to read after so long. Thanks did the post Larry.
Sorry for the typos in above comment. Went back to edit but had hit post!! That should have read ” kind of eerie” – typing on phones not always the best.
Hi AK – It’s amazing how these snippets from the 60’s jump out at me. I was in Plieku when my friend Brian McEnany found this.
The story rings deep in my heart. The People that served were honorable with good intentions, while the Nation’s leaders misled them.
Hi Jeff – Thanks for your comment. The passage of time slips the war into the context of things that have happened since, and as a result it comes out a little skewed for me. When I was there I believed that the people of South Vietnam were victims of a vicious insurgency. In fact, they were. So, my role serving alongside ARVN soldiers felt right. I admired them. When we Americanized the war and it dragged on, it became something else entirely. But the original intent was honorable, I think.