Monday night
9 February 1970

I got mail today and a Navy Times.

I haven’t flown today, yet. However I’m on the hot pad tonight and might get to fly a B-52 escort - I hope so.  I’ve flown 16 missions this month and I want to keep up the pace.

Russ Fyke got back today from his trip to Japan - and as I understand it, they almost didn’t make it!!  They were low on fuel and had no navigational aids working in the plane.  They flew in from the Philippines.

Tet is about over, I guess, and we’ve had no attacks here at Chu Lai.  All in all, everything appears to be fairly quiet.  We’ve had rain all day, so we haven’t flown much today.  I was suppose to fly a CAS mission this morning with O.J., but the weather was to bad.

I read in the Navy Times that the Army is taking over all command in I corps from the Marines!  That, to me, is a very good sign that they must intend to pull out the remainder of the Marine ground forces.  And if they do that, we’ll be pulled out to - I hope.  It sure would be nice if I was in El Toro in June or July.

Tomorrow night I have ground defense duty.  I’ll be the platoon commander for one night, of the Marines who are guarding one sector of the perimeter here.  It’s no big thing, as I understand it.