April 27, 1967

Dear Lorraine,

Hi! Honey, I hope you are doing OK. Things are getting a little crazy here at Dak To. We have been very busy putting in several RECON patrols and then going back in to pick them up when they make contact. We screwed up a set of Main Rotor Blades the other day when we hit a tree stump trying to get a team out. We were hovering over the LZ trying to get in position to get low enough to the ground. I remember telling Mr. Dobbs we had to move to the right before we could descend and for some reason the ship went down a few feet any way. That’s all it took and we trimmed about 12 inches off a good size tree stump. The ship started to vibrate pretty bad so we pulled out and had to let the back up ship make the pickup. The flight back to Dak To was rough. I requested that a new set of blades be flown up from Holloway along with a few tools I needed and a Tech Inspector to check the work then we flew back to Pleiku to get the rest to the ship checked for any other damage or cracks to the Rotor system. Other than that I’m doing OK.

I bet you can’t wait for summer to get here. You will be hanging out at the pool, water skiing, and just having a good time while I sun myself in Southeast Asia. Actually we are getting close to the Monsoon season in the Central Highlands so we won’t have that much sun. I’m not sure what it will be like but some of the guys say it’s a mess. You usually get a lot of rain every day and it gets real muddy. I’m sure it will affect the amount of flying we can do.

Not much else going on here, I did get a few letters from you yesterday and enjoyed them very much. I’ll write again soon.

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

Tom Gator 851.