43 Years Later, A Young Soldier’s Letters Arrive Home from Vietnam
By Tory Starr ⋅ July 16, 2012
By Tory Starr ⋅ July 16, 2012
Forty-three years ago, US Army Sergeant Steve Flaherty
wrote a letter home to his mother from the jungles of Vietnam. On Saturday, his letters returned to the United States. Sergeant Flaherty was born in Oiso, Japan, to an American father and Japanes other. Ronald Flaherty, stationed in Japan with the US Army in the early 1950s, convinced his parents to adopt Steve after meeting him in a local orphanage. Steve came to the United States at the age of 9. He was raised in Columbia, South Carolina, and won acclaim at Dentsville High on his baseball skills. In 1966 he attended Bryan College in Tennessee on a baseball scholarship. His uncle, Kenneth Cannon, said that Major League Baseball scouts had contacted him, but he chose instead to enlist in the Army in October 1967. Flaherty joined the 101st Airborne Division and was sent to Vietnam in 1968. Flaherty was killed in the A Shau Valley on March 25, 1969 at the age of 22. Before Flaherty was declared dead by US officials, Vietnamese soldiers took the letters from his body. To the right is a copy of Sgt. Steve Flaherty's obituary. http://www.theworld.org/2012/07/vietnam-letters/#letters |
Four unsent letters were confiscated from Flaherty’s body and sent to Vietnamese Col. Nguyen Phu Dat, who was responsible for directing propaganda messages for Radio Hanoi. Dat would have lifted passages out of Flaherty’s letters and read them on air in order to persuade American soldiers to refuse to go into battle.
The letters were delivered to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during his visit with Vietnamese Defense Minister Phuong Quang Thanh in Hanoi on June 4. It was the first official exchange of war artifacts between the two countries. |
Letter to Mother: “If Dad calls, tell him I got too close to being dead but I’m okay I was real lucky. I’ll write again soon… Our platoon started off with 35 men but winded up with 19 men when it was over. We lost platoon leader and whole squad… The NVA soldiers fought until they died and one even booby trapped himself and when we approached him, he blew himself up and took two of our men with him.”
Letter to Betty: “We have been in a fierce fight with NVA. We took in lots of casualties and death. It has been trying days for me and my men. We dragged more bodies of dead and wounded than I can ever want to forget… Thank you for your sweet card. It made my miserable day a much better one but I don’t think I will ever forget the bloody fight we are having… I felt bullets going past me. I have never been so scared in my life. Well I better close for now before we go in again to take that hill.”
Letter to Mrs. Wyatt: “This is a dirty and cruel war but I’m sure people will understand the purpose of this war even though many of us might not agree.”
Letter to Betty: “We have been in a fierce fight with NVA. We took in lots of casualties and death. It has been trying days for me and my men. We dragged more bodies of dead and wounded than I can ever want to forget… Thank you for your sweet card. It made my miserable day a much better one but I don’t think I will ever forget the bloody fight we are having… I felt bullets going past me. I have never been so scared in my life. Well I better close for now before we go in again to take that hill.”
Letter to Mrs. Wyatt: “This is a dirty and cruel war but I’m sure people will understand the purpose of this war even though many of us might not agree.”
Goo to link http://soundcloud.com/theworld/43-years-later-a-young to hear more about the unfolding of the story.