Love and Other Battles by Tess Woods

Author:Tess Woods
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: HarperCollins
Published: 2019-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

5 SEPTEMBER 1969

Miss Jessica James

The Alfred Nurses’ Quarters

110B Commercial Road

Melbourne 3004

Flower Child,

Well, I made it and I’ve got lots to tell you.

The flight was long but they fed us and gave us beers so it wasn’t too bad. We had an hour in Singapore to walk around but they made us change into our civvies for that. Then it was another two-hour leg before we landed in Saigon.

Jess, the humidity! Far out, it felt like a wet slap in the face as soon as I got off the plane and I haven’t stopped sweating since. Without a word of a lie, it feels like I’m sweating from my eyeballs. Nobody wears pyjamas to bed here — too hot.

And it stinks. It stinks like nothing I’ve ever known. It’s like old damp socks but worse, much worse. They say you get used to it.

I’m at the base in Nui Dat now and I’ve got my rifle. Have to have it on me all the time, even if I go to the dunny. It feels real now.

I’m writing to you from my bunk inside a mosquito net — I’ve got nine thousand mozzie bites on me already. Apparently you get used to that too.

We get eggs, bacon, toast, mushrooms and beans for breakfast. So far no complaints about the food. There’s a boozer too. Beers are only fifteen cents! There’s a piss-up later to welcome those of us who just turned up. Well, that’s what they’re saying it’s for, but I reckon any excuse.

Unless they need to replace a medic in the field, I’ll mostly be staying inside the wire here on hospital duties. I thought you’d be pleased to hear that. It’s only a twelve-bed hospital so there isn’t much to do for thirty medics. They haven’t even used the operating theatre for a year. The CO said they’ll use me around base doing whatever other jobs need doing.

I hope I make some mates here. There’s a young lad, Mick, who came in on the same flight and is in my bunk room. But he’s only eighteen, and regular army not a nasho. So we haven’t really got anything in common. This posting is all his dreams come true.

A couple of guys had a laugh when I said I had a girlfriend. They reckon a lot of women get sick of waiting for their fellas to come home and take off with someone else. There’s a big corkboard along a wall in the mess with Dear John letters pinned to it and they’re stacked three or four deep.

Everyone counts the days they have left. Eleven months, twenty-nine days and a wakey — that means I wake up here on the last day but sleep back home in Melbourne that night. We can count down together. I’ll try and write to you every week, like you wanted. It’s not like there’s much else to do around here!

Love,

Frank

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