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1 Feb 68
Dear Doug,
We were all in sad shape. I know that at one point, my feet about to crack open, my stomach knotted by hunger and diarrhea, my back feeling like a mirror made of nerves shattered in a million pieces by my flak jacket, pack, and extra mortars and machinegun ammo, my hands a mass of hamburger from the thorn cuts, and my face a mass of welts from mosquitoes, I desired greatly to throw down everything, slump into the water of the paddy and sob. I remember a captain, an aviator, who, observing a group of grunts toasting the infantry in a bar, said: “You damned infantry think you’re the only people who exist.” You’re damned right we do….
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1Lt. Victor David Westphall III was a platoon leader with Company B, 1st Battalion, 4th Regiment, 3rd Marine Division. He was killed in action on 22 May 1968, seven months after he arrived in country, in an ambush near Con Thien. In his memory, his father built the Vietnam Veterans Peace and Brotherhood Chapel in Eagle Nest, New Mexico, which is now the Disabled American Veterans Memorial.
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