A Letter From Vietnam     Excerpt taken from A Family Tree, Taking Root, a novel by Doc Robertson   Copyright 2000 by David P. Robertson  All Rights Reserved
		Roman would describe these details vividly in his letters to Virginia and Gloria.  The environment brought out his hidden talent as a writer, and he used his skills well. "My clothes stick to me from morning to dusk," Virginia read aloud her brother's letters on the Bruin Walk podium at UCLA.  There was a huge anti-war movement on the campus.  Virginia got the idea about reading her brother's letters from her Uncle Roe who knew she had to be part of something meaningful.  If not the Black Student Association, then the movement to end the war should be innocent enough, as long as she stayed away from radicals. "The weather here is so different from at home," she read on a warm day in June of 69' as students ended another year of hard, rewarding work.  Because it was the last big gathering of the school year at the podium, several groups and individuals waited their turn to speak.  Virginia spoke at one o'clock, which was the time she had been using for four weeks.  "I can grow just about anything I want here.  They served collared greens the other night, and I retrieved some of the stalks from the kitchen.  I put them in the ground and they began to prosper.  It seems as though the plants are the only ones who realize what they have in this fertile land.  Without man this would surely be a paradise, for the growth is abundant. "Fear is also constant here.  I pray a lot, with the rosary I have, that I will be able to come home to my sons and my wife and you.  There hasn't been a night, Virginia, in which there hasn't been bombs exploding in the distance.  Sometimes it's difficult to sleep, lying there alone and wondering if the next shell is going to hit us.  The closest one yet was only fifty yards from the barracks.  Snipers use long-range scopes to take shots at us, and two men have been killed since we arrived. "The part that stays on my mind, however, is knowing that there are children in the jungles who are just as much, if not more, a part of this war as I am.  I could not imagine going through the misery these children do.  Bullets fly through their thatch hunts at any time of the day.  Children have been shot while eating a meal, bathing or asleep in their beds.  Some have been burned out of their homes more than once.  In one of my constant prayers, I ask God not to let my children ever experience such a life."
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