Heavy Pack, Rough Terrain: Letters Home from Vietnam

A collection of letters from an American soldier in Vietnam to his parents that charts his challenges and growing Christian faith.

In 1970, Houston landed in Vietnam as an Army infantryman and did his best to adjust to a new life, however temporary, that seemed unimaginably different from his previous life in New York. He was stationed in Soung Be, near the Cambodian border, and despite the considerable danger he faced, he was moved to great sympathy for the plight of the Vietnamese. Eventually, the experience inspired a recommitment to his Christian faith, and he began reading the New Testament from a pocket-sized Bible. His interest inspired his wife, Sylvia, to follow suit. The letters are a remarkable combination of candor and relentless positivity. Houston insisted on interpreting his service in Vietnam as a spiritual boon; he wrote to his parents, “You know, Mother and Dad, I think this experience in Vietnam is doing me good. It is hard to explain until someone has gone through it. It has brought me closer to people and things and made me appreciate them more. I have been closer to God since I got out in the bush.” While the author’s letters aren’t literarily stylistic or philosophically original, they do offer an atypical alternative to more lugubrious accounts of the war. Finally, the author was reassigned from fieldwork to a job writing sympathy letters to fallen soldiers’ loved ones, but he missed his work outdoors despite the attendant dangers. Also, the letters are devoted to his mother and father, whom he sweetly considers “ideal parents,” each missive a loving homage. The author’s daughter, Lynn, writes an equally tender introduction and afterword, which allows the reader to see beyond the time frame of the letters into the author’s life following the war that “cast a long shadow over [her] childhood.” Of course, there are so many collections of correspondence written during the Vietnam War that have made their way to publication, but this one is distinguished by its wholesome cheerfulness that somehow still resignedly accepts the harsh realities of war.

A fresh, personal perspective on the Vietnam War.