July 29th, 1967

Riots in Detroit. Helicopters, tanks. 200 square blocks out of control. 36 dead.

Riots in Rochester, East Harlem, Tucson, South Bend, Grand Rapids, Birmingham.

Waiting for riots in the Fillmore. Several people shot so far.

Riding to Rachel's, the trolley stops at Fillmore & McAllister Streets. 25 cops milling with clubs, riot guns. Clusters of blacks milling around. Kids throwing Molotov Cocktails. Gunshot down the street. Everybody runs. Trolley takes off.

July 29th, 1967

July 21, 1967

Dear Cuz,

Thanks for the letter. I don't know anyone else who could quite understand what it's like to be this scared. I've hid it so well from everyone else in the family.

I'm sitting in a truck riding through the jungle. It's the first time in a week I can sit back and think.

I was pulled off the laundry platoon so I could help out with the grave registration of 150 French-fried human beings. That's right. There was an explosion on a ship off the coast. All these guys got stuck in the hull in four feet of boiling oil. They never even saw combat.

When you get right down to it there's not much difference between fried beef and fried human. It looks about the same.

I had to put the bodies in body bags. It's not hard to read dog tags, but dental charts are something else.

Did I tell you a foot fell out of one of the body bags? We never found out who it belonged to.

Hey, guess how you identify the fingerprints on a guy who's been dead in the swamp for two months? You take a scalpel and cut the skin around the wrist and slip the skin off his hand. Then you slip it over your own hand and the fingerprints show up!

Now we're headed up to Dakto to deliver artillery shells. Tanks escorting us, because the roads are mined. More jungle.

The other day we drove into a little dirt airstrip that was surrounded by mountains. They said there were VC in the mountains. We needed protection.

The planes came over and dropped napalm on the mountains. The napalm went over the mountains like a huge wave of flame. It was so hot it dried up all the oxygen on the airstrip. If there were any VC in the mountains, I'm sure they looked just like our boys in the hull of the ship. Fried.

Pray for my wedding, Cuz. Janie’s decided we’ll have three kids.

Love & Peace,

Feeney

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