... You want to know what I'm doing and all that good stuff? Well. there's really not too
much I can tell you, at least not much you really would want to hear. A lot of it's not too pretty. I
wrote you about some of it a few weeks ago, and it hasn't changed. It's just the same thing day

after day. It's like I wrote, sort of like playing God, with your finger on the trigger deciding
whether to let him go or to finish him off there before he gets a chance to finish you. The hard
part, the really hard part, is trying to decide which ones are the bad guys and which ones are the
good guys.... Usually we always fly two gunships\u2014we call the helicopters gunships here, it's sort
of another one of these Vietnam-created military words. They're gunships, not helicopters.
Anyway, we'll be flying over with two gunships, and flying over a loaded sampan with maybe one
or two men in it and some miscellaneous cargo-looking things. They'll see us coming, and what'll
they do? Hell, they'll jump over the side, or they'll paddle like hell for the bank to get under some
brush. They're obviously trying to avoid being seen. Well, if they'd have just kept paddling along,
we'd have figured they were just farmers or fishermen or some damn thing. But they're not that
way. Every time we see one evade, we know it's Charlie trying to get away from being seen, and
by that time we've already seen him. So, we shoot him up, sink the boat, and try the best of our
ability to annihilate Charlie in the attack. The other day, we were flying some low surveillance
over an area, just looking, not bothering anybody, not\u2014hell, our guns weren't even armed. We
were just flying along, and all of a sudden a guy runs out of one of these shacks\u2014we call them
hootches. This guy ran out of a hootch, running like hell, and starts throwing big branches over a
sampan that he's got pulled up on a shore along the canal. We'd have flown right over him. We
never would have even noticed him. Sure, we'd have seen the sampan, but bags of rice look like
bags of rice whether they've got ammunition inside them or not. So we quick armed weapons and
swung around and destroyed the sampan and got a secondary explosion out of it. Guy must have
had some high explosives or some ammunition or something hidden in the bags of rice. And we
never would have seen it if this guy hadn't run out of the house and started covering it up. So in
the ensuing attack he got killed, and the sampan was destroyed.

Charlie just doesn't seem to have any common sense. He's determined, and he's mean, and
he's got one thing on his side\u2014that's time. He really has time on his side, it goes without a doubt.
He can sit and wait, and wait, and wait, just wait for us to let down our guard then, bang, he's
gonna zap us just when he gets a chance. That's the way this guerrilla warfare is. In their favor is
time. Of course, in our favor is resources and resource management. He has a lot of logistics
problems and supplies and supply routes and methods of supply that we don't have. But having
time in his favor certainly is an asset. Of course he does probably 90 percent of his work at night.

He kills\u2014that's something that's very strange\u2014flying along in the middle of a jungle, there'll be a
rice paddy, neatly tilled rice field. We'll watch it for maybe a week or two weeks. We'll never see
a water buffalo and a farmer out there tilling it. And it's in an area that you know is a Charlie
area\u2014it's a hot area. Never see anybody tilling it. So one night we'll go out there, on a real black
night, no moon. We'll pop a few parachute flares out over the area, and there the silly bastard will
be down there in the middle of the night in the dark with his water buffalo tilling his rice. One
night he tills his rice and the next night he walks around with a rifle sniping at the ships or the
airplanes. So he's got his problems. The nights belong to Charlie. And with the oncoming
monsoon season, it's getting to where parts of the days belong to Charlie too. This weather is
getting real bad for flying, for operating. And every time it's too bad for us to take off, it's that
much more time that Charlie's got on the ground to operate. He's getting pretty bold. He's taken a
few potshots at the LST, the ship that we're on. In fact, a short time ago, he tried to mine this
ship, just before I got aboard. They had some swimmers swim out with some gasoline cans filled
with some type of explosive and tied them to the anchor chain. Luckily, they had some pretty alert

At any rate, what I'm doing isn't real pretty, and I guess it's probably something I'm gonna
want to forget a lot about when I leave here. The flying is exciting. There's no two ways about
that. It's a certain scarf and goggles and leather helmet-type flying. It's a window open and a scarf
blowing in the breeze-type thing. It lends a little hero image-type thing. But it's not all glory, it's
excitement, it's all excitement. And a lot of it is being real, real scared. I guess I've probably been
more scared here already in the last month and a half, six weeks, than I've ever been scared
before. I won't go into it. Someday maybe we'll talk about it. I don't think this is the time or place.
But it's no picnic. It's really not a picnic. I don't want to make it sound all glorious or anything. It
certainly isn't a glorious thing either. It's just a job that has to be done. It's a dirty job, and it's a
job that has to be done. That's about all I can say about it....

what have you, and we can see ourselves hit the target. We can see if we're missing the target. We
can make corrections, we can criticize ourselves, we can criticize each other, as we do. We can
really see an actual physical reaction to our actions. That's kind of confusing sounding, but I think
you know what I mean. We actually can see what we're doing, what we're accomplishing\u2014in any
particular instance. What we're accomplishing overall, I really couldn't say. But we go out and put
in a strike on a target. We can see how well we hit the target or we don't hit the target. That's a
big thing, it's a mark of maybe a little professionalism. You can take a little pride in being able to
hit a target maybe a little better than the next guy. Of course, that's how we all try to look at these
things, as just targets. We try not to think about, try not to really look at what is in the target or
around the target. Of course, we have to make a recon after each attack and get what they call a
body count and structures damaged, this type of thing. After the attack is over and you go back to
take a took at it, it's a lot different than thinking about it while you're actually doing the attack.
I won't say that I regret coming here. It's been an experience, and I guess all our
experiences add up to something good. I think you and I have had enough experiences together
where I guess probably, maybe all of our experiences might add up to something really great. I'd

January, 1965, when the ship on which he served was deployed to the Gulf of Tonkin. Corporal Suminski
returned to Vietnam and served from March to September, 1966, as a machine gun squad leader (E Co.,
2/5th Mar., 1st Mar. Div.) in Chu Lai. Following his discharge in September, 1966, he returned to
Wisconsin and attended the Layton School of Art. He currently resides in New Berlin. In these two letters,
he illustrates that American soldiers knew early on that the war would be long and hard.

We have been training with choppers for about a week. It's pretty dangerous, working
with them in Vietnam. They say the complete chopper must unload within 8 seconds or be
"downed" by fire. The VC will first aim at the door and then the pilot. We lost 15 choppers two

The war will last many years. The communists over the last decade have painted the minds
of Vietnam. "The U.S. wants to get your crops. The Marines are barbarians. The Imperialist U.S.
desires domination." But we are gradually winning friends. Without the support of the Vietnamese
the United States had better give up. A guerrilla could live in those jungles undetected all his
life\u2014if he had support of the people. But the people are catching on. "How can these Marines be
barbarians. Why they fixed my roof. The old woman no longer has sores since their doctor with
his strange medicines took care of her." So it's a slow job. A slow war....

The U.S. knows it cannot win on the scale and type of fighting we are employing. Every inch of ground mustphysically be controlled in order to have hold over the Communists. Since the manpower is not available the U.S. must fight a "negotiable war," in other words hold out until North Vietnam initially requests some form of appeasement. So many times on our patrols, sweeps, ambushes, the VC have returned the next day and set up shop again. We control so very little of Vietnam now and would need millions of men to put a stand against the countless that China could pour in. It is not the fact that Communism is being fought but the lack of interest shown by the Vietnamese that makes this war so difficult for the Americans here to see.

An example: We received sniper fire from a village and returned a heavy volume of fire
killing one civilian and injuring two others. Then 10 minutes later the women were out there
selling us soda just like they always have. It's really funny.

A few days ago a grenade set by VC exploded and killed one of my close friends and the
villagers just kept trying to get 50\u00a2 per Coke from us. It's not only the fact that no interest is
shown on their part, this is understood by the fact that they lived with war for 20 years. But they
seem to lack desire for a democracy which we are trying so hard to win for them....