R.B. DOWNEY, THEN 1ST LIEUTENANT

“VIETNAM WAS NOT CLEAR-CUT. I worked both in the bush and in the rear traveling over “I Corps” running communications. The Vietnamese served us in the rear, cleaning latrines or washing clothes. We laughed at their sampan hats, black split-skirts, and rotten beetle-nut teeth. THEY WERE BACKWARD, tribal, prejudiced, and urinated publicly whenever the mood caught them. They thought we smelled funny and bickered with us better than we negotiated with them.

I came in from the bush tired and beat. My driver dropped me at a local Vietnamese barber. YOU COULD NEVER FEEL CLEAN IN VIETNAM but you could get a haircut and a straight blade shave. Next day my driver requested my presence south of Marble Mountain. SOMETHING OF INTEREST. I arrived and noticed my dead barber in the wire. Just another demoralizing, diabolic day in country. 

This broadside featuring the words of Vietnam War veteran Dominic R. Sondy was printed for the Pritzker Military Museum & Library's 2016 exhibit Hunting Charlie: Finding the Enemy in the Vietnam War. Set in Arial and designed by Kenneth Clarke and Kat Latham.