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19 Oct 67
Mom and Dad,
…Mom, I appreciate your concern that some of the things you write about are trivial but they aren’t trivial to me. You can’t understand the importance these trivial events take on out here. While I read your letters I am a normal person. I’m not killing people or worried about being killed. Instead I am going ice skating with David or walking through a department store to exchange a lampshade. In the Philippines I passed graveyards marked with row after row after row of plain white crosses. They were American graves. I thought about the American graves in Okinawa, Korea, France, England, North Africa – around the world. And I was proud to be an American, proud to be a Marine, proud to be fighting in in Asia. I have a commitment to the men who have gone before me. American men who made the sacrifices that were required to make the world safe for ice skating, department stores, and lampshades. No, Mom, those things aren’t trivial to me, they are vitally important. I hope you will continue to write about those “trivial” things because that is what I enjoy learning about most.
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Capt. Rodney R. Chastant, from Mobile, Alabama, served with Marine Air Group 13, 1st Marine Air Wing, based at Danang. With his 13-month tour due to end in September 1968, he extended for an additional six months, explaining in a letter to his mother, “I am needed here, Mom. Not that I am essential or indispensable. But my degree of proficiency is now undisputed as the best in 1st Marine Division. The young men coming in need the leadership of an older hand. I am that hand.” He was killed on 22 October 1968. He was 25 years old.
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