4 March 1970

Wednesday Morning
4 March 1970

I went to Da Nang yesterday afternoon and got back after 10 last night.  I had 2 letters waiting for me.

I found out that I’ll be with 1/7 as FAC.  In grunt talk, 1/7 is First Battalion, Seventh Marine Regiment, First Marine Division.  I’ll be assigned to the Battalion as either a FAC or ALO (Air Liaison Officer).  ALOs don’t go out with the company like the FACs do, unless the Battalion is short of FACs.  1/7 is located about 15 miles south of Da Nang.  My address will be

Name, serial number
H&S Co. Air Officer
1st Battalion, 7th Marines
1st MARDIV
FPO, San Fran. 96602

I still haven’t had a chance to get to the post office to get a money order.  But I will at first opportunity.

I will take as little stuff as possible with me when I go FAC.  The rest of my stuff will be stored with the squadron here.  I’ll just be taking the bare necessities with me.  I’m not even going to take my cassette recorder.  If I’d known I was going FAC I wouldn’t have bought it.  But, you never know what to expect next in this war.

So far no one has been rotated to Japan at the end of six months like we thought they were going to start doing.  Looks like the only way I’ll get to Japan is for the squadron to pull out and go up there.  However, I would much rather go to El Toro!

Major Gibson is the Chu Lai Air Base Operations Officer now and only flies rarely.

Kurt is married to a former airline stewardess and is from St. Paul, Minn.  As his name implies, he is German and is quite a character.  He has only about one year of college.  He enlisted in the Marine Corps and applied for OCS after boot camp.

I was supposed to fly this morning, but the mission was canceled because of bad weather.

The first planes that flew out of here this morning, had to divert to Ubon.  Sure wish I would have been on that flight!

There will be things I’ll need while I’m FAC - such as laundry soap, flashlight batteries, etc.

We have a pilot named Doug Burpee who just came back from FAC.  He was with the same unit that Bill Overcast, the corpsman, is with.  He said he knows Bill real well and, in fact, was along on that operation when that picture was taken.  Small world.

Nearly noon, and I didn’t eat breakfast - I’ll go eat and mail this letter.