January 25, 1967

Dear Lorraine,

Hi! Honey I hope you are doing well. Things are going well here I’m staying busy with all the flights and follow up maintenance. We have been putting in a lot of time in the air. I really don’t have much to talk about so I thought I would tell you about some excitement we had back on the 20th.

We were on a Hot Meal run out to a patrol in the Mountains just west of here and the LZ was very small with one way in and the same way out. There was only one place to land and if you missed it you were going into trees on the side of the mountain. Mr. Dobbs is a really good pilot but for some reason he was coming in way to fast, so to slow down he flared the nose of the ship up to slow down which puts the tail of the ship down. When he did this we were already to close to the ground. We call it burying the stinger (I won’t bother to explain). The Tail Rotor made impact with ground and a small tree stump. The result was a hard landing and a very bent Tail Rotor. This left us stranded with an aircraft that was not safe to fly so I had Mr. Dobbs radio our base to see if they could bring another Tail Rotor out. I had enough tools with me to replace it. While I was standing up on the Stinger removing the old one the grunts on the ground started shooting. A helicopter on the ground is not a safe place to be when you’re being shot at since it’s probably the target. Fortunately one of our Gun ships showed up and there was no more shooting after that. I finished changing the Tail Rotor and we got the Hell out of there. When we got back to base I grounded the ship so I could check the rest of the drive system for the Tail Rotor.

Other than that things have been uneventful. We should be finished here by the end of the month and then get back to Holloway. Now to get on to a better subject, I got nine letters and one card from you today. What a lift for my moral. I’m glad to hear that you did so well your first semester at school. Keep it up. In one of your letters you said that words are all we have for now but that’s not true, we also have dreams. My dreams are of the good times we’ve had and the future we will have when this is over. As long as I have that I know I’m gonna make it, nothing can hurt me.

I’m going to stop while my spirits are still up. I’ll try to write again soon.

I Love You
Tom
S.W.A.K.

Tom GAtor 851.