How Rereading His Letters from Vietnam Helped a Veteran Find Peace

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My name is Jim Markson and I’m a Vietnam veteran. I grew up in the Sheepshead Bay Area of Brooklyn, and I joined the United States Air Force in May of 1966. 

I’m writing letters home to my parents, and I’m 19, 20, turned 20 years old when I’m over there. That eventually led to a book that me and my former, or my spouse wrote. 

When Jim sent me the letters that his mother had saved from Vietnam, naturally, I had to type them into a manuscript. So I was reading every single letter, every single word. 

And an interesting thing developed because Jim, as a result, began to read his letters that he wrote home for the first time in over 40 years. And he began calling me, telling me that he was remembering things that he could never write about because he didn’t want to worry his parents. 

So I asked him to begin emailing me the memories that were coming back to him. So I decided to add those reflections of today at the end of all of his letters written well over 40 plus years ago. And that’s why we call the book “Vietnam and Beyond– Veteran Reflections.” 

I’m going to read a letter that was written after the Tet Offensive, and I changed my whole experience with war. And it’s my last letter that I wrote home. 

Hi. Well, this will most likely be the last letter that I write to you from the good old republic. Old Faithful Charlie has been throwing his rockets in here almost every day. It gets on your nerves to say the least. That’s all for now. I’d better see you soon. Jimmy. 

I sign off there I’d better see you soon because I’m really getting scared that I’m not going to make it out of there. Guys are getting wounded and burned and killed. I had 14 days left and I’m scared. 

This is my reflection that I’m I’m writing about the Tet Offensive. To put you in the right frame of mind as to the magnitude and the rapidity of events that occurred on the morning of January 31, 1968, I will provide some statistics. 

Between 3:20 AM in the morning and 1:00 PM that afternoon, 23 Americans and 32 South Vietnamese lost their lives defending Tan Son Nhut airport, and another 86 Americans and 67 South Vietnamese were wounded. The total enemy body count– and the counting action was terminated due to more pressing operational requirements– was more than 962. 

To say I experienced a dramatic change in my perception of life in a war zone is a severe understatement. I made no more wisecracks about war is hell. I enjoyed no more days off. Sleep was hard to come by. 

I think I could sum it up by reading another part of my book that’s in the epilogue. It sums up how I feel right now. 

The writing of this book has been an opportunity that has had an emotional sort of cathartic effect on this author. I hope that other veterans and their families will feel the same after reading this book. It made me feel all the events, people, places, and pets, good, bad, or indifferent, that touched me throughout my life in one way or another. Many times I was brought to tears. At other times, filled with regret and grief. But overall, a feeling of well-being and inner peace. I can never thank all of you enough, the living and the dead, for all that you have given me. 

The letters has so much history and love, the more we can welcome them and embrace them and help them on their journey to reintegrating back into society. 

One of the continual things that I hear from veterans is that stigma of we don’t talk about it. Real men don’t talk about it. Well, that’s what I would like people to get out of my book. It needs to be talked about.