Letters from Vietnam | Virginia Museum of History & Culture

Service in the Central Highlands and Coastal Region, 1967

John Curtis Rasmussen, Jr. (1943-2009), a Richmond native and graduate of the Virginia Military Institute, was deployed to Vietnam for the calendar year 1967. A pre-med major at VMI, he was trained by the army to serve as a battalion surgeon’s assistant. In that position he commanded a team of medics and managed the medical operations at a succession of forward command posts established in the central highlands and coastal region by the 3rd brigade of the 25th (and later 4th) infantry division, as that brigade searched for the enemy. During that hazardous service, he earned the Combat Medical Badge, for service ”under fire” in a “ground combat” engagement. Many around him did not survive, including one of his medics. Letters that he wrote to his family in Virginia document a year-long journey.

After the war, Rasmussen earned a Ph.D in history and served as an assistant to two U.S. Congressmen and to one senator, and then worked for the International Trade Commission of the Department of Commerce, where he earned the Bronze Medal Award for Superior Federal Service. During those years he rarely spoke to his family about his Vietnam experiences. His story, however, is preserved in 65 letters and 78 Polaroid photographs that he sent home to his worrying mother and grandmother (his father had died), his brother, three aunts, and a few close family friends.

Extracts from the letters home are included here, along with two dozen of the photographs. The interest in history that led Lt. Rasmussen to graduate school in that field accounts for the wealth of historic information that is included in the letters. He saw history happening in Vietnam and he recorded it.

A man in military uniform with a dog outside of a low barracks building

Lt. Rasmussen at the McKeller Dispensary at Pleiku in the central highlands, August 1967, with ‘Keats’, a dog he and his men adopted. (Dennis McKellar [sic] was a medic killed in action a year earlier who was awarded a Silver Star for bravery.) This dispensary was the most substantial building at the base camp of the third brigade, but Rasmussen spent little time there because he was more needed at a succession of advanced command posts that followed the movement of the brigade. He periodically returned to this base camp, as when this picture was taken.

Practical training at Medical Field Service School, Fort Sam Houston, Texas prior to deployment, 27 March 1966:

“The work is becoming more interesting now, as it’s a bit of everything. They say we will be ‘jacks of all trades & masters of none’. There are about 300 of us, including quite a few pharmacists…. The 500 doctors they drafted last month are here now & of course aren’t too military & don’t seem too happy about it…. My friend from VMI who is here now took my course in Sept. & is now taking another course to prepare him for Viet Nam. He’s going in July….”