edited by Bernard Edelman for The New York Vietnam Veterans - Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam

An overwhelmingly eloquent book of the purest andmost simple writing on Vietnam.

David Halberstam

Listen to these authentic voices of the Vietnam war.They come to us after the journalists, the generals, and thepoliticians have had their say. No full understanding of the mostdisastrous foreign war in American history can be complete withoutreading these letters from the GIs to their loved ones backhome.

Peter Arnett,

Pulitzer Prize-winning Vietnam correspondent

Not a history book, not a war novel.... Dear Americais a book of truth.

Boston Globe

Dear America is painful, but it must bedifficult to be realistic and entertaining about war.... Readingit, I felt I was listening to the voices of the men and women wholived and fought in Vietnam.

Baltimore Sun

Dear America is more than correspondence fromhomesick GIs. It is a collective letter to the nation and itsgovernment, a plea that asks: Why did you do this to your children?To America? For the sake of our country, dont let this happenagain.

San Francisco Chronicle

What makes this book special is its honesty. Theletters are real; there is no embellishment. You keep turning pagesbecause youre finding outfor the first timewho our Vietnamsoldiers were and are. They are the many voices of America.

Sydney Schanberg, author ofTheDeath and Life of Dith Pran,basis of the award-winning filmThe Killing Fields

In [a] special issue of Newsweek, GloriaEmerson suggested that the politicians who conducted the war bechained to the Vietnam Memorial in Washington and forced to read,slowly, every name on it aloud. They should also be required toread these letters [in Dear America], slowly, one byone.

Philadelphia Inquirer

Here is the sad and beautiful countermelody oftruth, audible at last, now that we have trashed the drums andcymbals of yet another senseless war.

Kurt Vonnegut

Dear America comes closest to achieving whatthe various oral histories have been reaching for: the immediate,poignant, and gloriously heroic voice of the American serviceman inVietnam.

Joe Klein, author ofPaybackandPrimary Colors

Dear America is one of the most moving booksI have read about any war, including Vietnam... a privilege toread... it is truly a magnificent accomplishment.

General Bruce Palmer, Jr., author ofThe 25-Year War

Dear America tells of an ache as ancient astimeadolescents off to war with high expectations, who soon changegreatly. Ambiguities aboundfrom pain, disillusionment and sorrowfor dead comrades to a hard-earned measure of individual strengthand survival.

Washington Post Book World

Bernard Edelman, a Vietnam veteran and member of theNew York Vietnam Veterans Memorial Commission, has exercised tact,restraint, and skill in editing this collection.... Though many ofthese letters evoke tears, Edelman has avoided sentimentality infavor of immediacy, vivid details, and insights.... [DearAmerica] is a work of art.

San Jose Mercury News

Produced by ReAnimus Press

Copyright 2014, 1985 by The New York VietnamVeterans Memorial Commission

Introduction copyright 2002 by John McCain

To Mrs. Gloria D. Marks, December 12, 1965(slightly abridged from pages 183-84), from The Letters of PFCRichard E. Marks, USMC (J. B. Lippincott Company). Copyright 1967 by Gloria D. Kramer, Executrix of the Estate ofRichard E. Marks. Reprinted by permission of Harper & RowPublishers, Inc.

A Relative Thing, copyright 1975 by W. D.Ehrhart. Reprinted from To Those Who Have Gone Home Tired: New& Selected Poems, by W. D. Ehrhart (Thunders Mouth Press)1984 by permission of the author.

Two letters by Lynda Van Devanter reprinted bypermission of Beaufort Books, Inc., from Home Before Morning:The Story of an Army Nurse in Vietnam. Copyright 1983by Lynda Van Devanter.

www.ReAnimus.com/DearAmerica

Cover Art by Clay Hagebusch

Smashwords Edition Licence Notes

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoymentonly. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people.If you would like to share this book with another person, pleasepurchase an additional copy for each person. If you're reading thisbook and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your useonly, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respectingthe hard work of this author.

~~~

To those who served

and those who sacrificed,

To those who wept

and those who waited,

Because of the Vietnam War.

Dear Mom: I am writing this in the event that I amkilled during my remaining tour of duty in Vietnam. First of all, Iwant to say that I am here as a result of my own desire... I dontlike being over here, but I am doing a job that must be done.... Iam fighting to protect and maintain what I believe in and what Iwant to live ina democratic society. If I am killed while carryingout this mission, I want people to hold their heads high and beproud of me for the job I did.... I love you Mom, and Sue, and Nan,and I want you all to carry on and be very happy, and above all beproud

Love & much more love, Rick

PFC Richard E. Marks,

KIA 14 February 1966, age 19

Like many young men through the ages, when I wasyoung I made a concerted effort to squander my youth, as old menlike me jealously accuse young men of doing today. Then somethingchanged. Our nation went to war. In the company of braver men thanme, I learned these abiding truths: that heroism is not thebirthright of great men, or famous men, or men with stars ontheir shoulders, but finds its most noble expression in common menand women, in circumstances less dazzling than any Hollywoodthriller, who give everything of themselves to save a life or servea cause; that principles are worth dying for; and that freedom isworth living for, every day.

Nowhere are these truths more eloquently expressedthan in this collection of letters from Vietnam. In an earliertime, letters and poetry from the Western front told a shockedworld how the Great War stole the soul of a lost generation.Dear America: Letters Home from Vietnam tells another story,at once uplifting and tragic: how young Americans, proud andscared, lived, suffered, and died for their country and theirconvictions in a war as distant from the United States as theWestern front was near the homelands of the Allied troops in itstrenches. The light that shines through the words in this volume,radiating from the fog of war, illuminates the conscience andcharacter of America.

Like the Great War poetry, the Vietnam letters inthis collection quickly dispel the myth that war begets, or isdriven by, blind patriotism. For many, service in war deepens loveof country and commitment to the principles that bind them to it.Yet war does not inspire bluster or bravado. It does not oftenyield to simplistic notions of strength or weakness, bravery orfaint-heartedness, heroism or cowardice. It tests the serviceman,as it tested the author of each letter in this volume, and measureshim against his own highest standards. The portrait that emergesfrom these letters is of man ennobled through sacrifice, not byunthinking patriotism or some mystical warrior ethic but by walkingthrough hell with people who depend on him, and on whom he dependsin return, living for another day when he has to do it again, forsuch are the orders of the country he loves.