DELMAR — Army First Lieutenant Dean Allen wrote a letter to his young wife, Joyce, describing fears over his Vietnam experience. This was a rare flash of raw emotion from the 27-year-old, 6-foot 1-inch, 200-pound Allen.
“I guess it helps a little though [to write] because you are the only one I would say these things to. Maybe some time I’ll even try to tell you how scared I have been or am now. There is nothing I can do about it but wait for another day to start & finish,” he wrote from Quan Loi.
He was a high school football and swimming star and collegiate diver who also understood he was fortunate in life.
“Sometimes I really wonder how I will make it. My luck is running way too good right now. I just hope it lasts.” he wrote.
1969 was a rocky time, not just for those in the war zone, but also for the country. The United States, as a whole, had formed a general anxiety over fissures in our society over social, economic and political unrest. And the growing divide over the war in Vietnam. Dean was providing a snapshot of that time with his letter and his life before being drafted provided context.
Early life in Bethlehem
Dean Allen grew up on Plymouth Avenue with his parents Florence and Percy Brooks, just off Delaware and graduated from Bethlehem High School in 1959.
Dean had many challenges early on in his life including the loss of his father when he was very young. According to family friend Jean Marie (Oaks) Liberty, it was Dean who, when he was very young, could not wake up his father one morning.
“His mother Florence was one of my Godparents,” Liberty said. “He was an amazing athlete and was such a good son and always took care of his mother.”
Florence was a first-grade teacher at Delmar Elementary School, now Bethlehem Town Hall, and retired in 1978 after 30 years of teaching. Although she never let it slow her down, Florence suffered from the effects of contracting Polio as a child.
“When I think of the boys in my graduating class, he was one of the nicest and we spent a lot of time together talking on my front porch,” Jane (Mack) Marinello said. Marinello grew up on Delaware Avenue near Hudson Avenue and the two had a connection that was special.
“My dad died at home one day and he had lost his dad. We had an understanding of what it was like,” she said. “We spent lots of time on my front porch, watching the cars go by and we talked about homework, school and just about everything.”
One thing that everyone agrees on is that Dean was an outstanding athlete. He was listed as an All-American Diver in high school and played football for Bethlehem. Once he graduated, many of his local friends lost touch with him, but he did teach swimming lessons at Normanside and Shaker Ridge country clubs during college breaks, where many families remembered him.
College and back
After graduation, Dean attended Indiana University from 1959 to 1961 as a member of its swim team and according to Joyce, he was good enough to be considered for Olympic competition in 1960, although he did not appear in the standings at the trials.
In 1961 he married Niegel Henry, a fellow diver in Indiana. She placed 8th at the 1960 Olympic trials in springboard diving, but was not on the US roster in Rome later that year. He did not return to the University’s main campus in the fall, but enrolled at IU’s Indianapolis branch and his son Lance was born in November 1961. They would have a daughter Teresa in 1964 while living in Indianapolis. The couple divorced the next year and Dean returned to Elsmere to work part-time at Verstandig’s Florist.
That summer, he met Joyce Hallenbeck, of Voorheesville, while on a drive-in movie date with one of her best friends. During that date, he asked Joyce out. Six months later they were engaged, and a year later Joyce’s friend was the maid of honor at their wedding.
“We’re still great friends,” she said.
In 1966 Dean took a full-time job with Mike’s Submarines and Neba Roast Beef, helping them open stores across New York. He was opening a Neba shop in Buffalo and Joyce was teaching in Endicott when they got married in Endicott in November 1966. They honeymooned in Buffalo, where “We were sick as dogs from what we later learned was a gas leak. It was a rough start.”
Things got rougher three months later when Uncle Sam came calling and Dean was drafted. It was a rare occurrence for a man, at 25 years old, to be drafted for service, especially for someone with three dependents.
“There were so many odd things that happened in how he actually got to Vietnam,” Joyce said. “He shouldn’t have ended up there, but he did.”
Military
Once he was drafted, he applied and was accepted to Officer’s Candidate School at Fort Benning, Ga. Once he graduated, he was supposed to be commissioned Military Intelligence and ordered to Ft. Holabird, MD, but at the last minute, his commission was changed to Infantry and he was assigned to the Combined Arms School in Vilseck, Germany. He served as an instructor.
“That was the only time in our married life that we actually lived together. It was a great year,” Joyce said.
Many of the other officers there were requesting to go to Vietnam for the combat credit that would further their careers. Instead, Dean, who had not made such a request, was sent.
After jungle training school in Panama and a stop in Hawaii for a last-minute physical. His old Delmar friend Liberty had an opportunity to reconnect with Dean, because she and her family were stationed in Hawaii.
“I had him stay with us at our house off the base,” Liberty said. “We had the opportunity to talk about things. We had really gone our separate ways by the time we went to high school. I am glad we shared that time.”
The next day, he was in Vietnam.
Quan Loi
After reaching Saigon on May 17, 1969, he was stationed with the Army’s 1st Battalion, 8th Cavalry, 1st Cavalry Division and would be a platoon commander in Company C. The unit was stationed at an air base carved out of a former French rubber plantation in the Binh Long Province of South Vietnam named Quan Loi. The landing strip was designed for airplanes but it also housed the most-common mode of transportation for the Air Cavalry, helicopters.
Two days before his arrival in Vietnam, North Vietnamese forces attacked and breached the base’s defenses. He spent two months at the base and wrote letters to Joyce about being in the jungles around the province.
“He wrote about what they were doing, but none that I remember were like the last one.” Joyce said.
Dean started writing it on July 10 and finished it the following day. His platoon was four kilometers north towards the Cambodian border on a mission to find and expel enemy units that were constantly attacking the base.
“There are many times while I am out in the field that I really feel the need to talk to you. Not so much about us but what I have on my mind,” Dean wrote. “Many times like tonight–I am out on ambush with eleven men and a medic–after everything is set up and in position, I have nothing to do but lay there and think–why I am here as well as all the men in my platoon.”
On July 15, the platoon encountered an enemy trap, the second one in as many days.
“An enemy explosive, possibly a booby-trapped grenade, was detonated wounding your husband,” Dean’s commander Captain Thomas Fitzgerald wrote her. “While he was being moved to an area where he could be evacuated by helicopter, a second piece of enemy ordnance was detonated. This device is believed to have been a land mine.”
Two other men, Sgt. Luis Torres-Serrano, 20, of Puerto Rico and Cpl. Teddy Middleton, 19, of Mason, Ohio were killed.
The battalion day log read that the 51 men of the platoon were moving on a trail and Dean spotted a broken tripwire on the ground. Before he could move his men, it went off, injuring four, including him. The junior officer then instructed the men to move the wounded 75 meters to an area where they could be evacuated by helicopter.
As Middleton, the lead man, moved towards the landing area. He hit another tripwire which detonated a larger charge that killed him instantly and wounded seven more men carrying the stretchers. Torres-Serrano died on the way to a field hospital. 11 soldiers in total were injured or killed in the incident including, Pfc James Howard, of Mich., who was wounded from shrapnel in the arms and legs, but survived and later wrote to Joyce.
Dean’s wounds were horrific from the two blasts, but he survived the helicopter flight to Long Binh medical hospital just north of Saigon. Joyce was in Florida, where the couple decided to start their life together once Dean’s tour was done in six more months, when she received a telegram on July 17 that told of his wounds and his dire condition.
The telegram read “He received multiple wounds to the brain, the left eye (and) face, the chest, the abdomen, both arms and legs. He has lost his left eye and is in a deep coma.” Joyce found one sentence a gross understatement; one that only the army could produce: “In the judgment of the attending physician his condition is of such severity that there is a cause for concern,” it stated.
The telegram referred to Dean as Joyce’s son and gave the wrong middle initial, which momentarily gave Joyce hope that the telegram was a mistake. But there was no mistake. She received a second telegram notifying her that at 10:15 on the morning of July 18, Dean died.
“I served in your husband’s platoon and was there when he was hit. This is why I wanted to write,” Howard wrote in his letter. “Your husband was well-liked by the men. We felt he was a great officer to work under. You would have been real proud of him, and he will be missed by many. I thought it would help if you knew that. He was a good leader!”
Dean’s body returned home, but Joyce had a serious problem. Dean’s mother, Florence, was in Europe on vacation and could not be reached.
“Applebee’s Funeral Home kept calling me saying, ‘We have to do something with his body; we can’t keep it indefinitely,’“ she said.
She insisted that she would not bury Dean until his mother returned home and could attend his funeral. The Red Cross finally found her and she was told the news of her son’s death at JFK airport, Joyce said.
After the services, Joyce returned to Florida, then moved to South Carolina where she still lives today. The letter from Dean was the only one she kept out of the three or four he wrote while in Vietnam.
“I am not sure exactly why I saved that letter other than, I guess because it was the last one,” Joyce said. “It was something from him. I also still have a dime and part of a keychain that the Army returned to me.”
Shortly after, she put the letter into a cedar chest with other memories and began to restart her life.
Then something happened that would change everything.
29 years later, syndicated columnist Abigail Van Buren, in her Dear Abby Column, asked family members of veterans in her audience to submit letters received during wartime to a project created by Andrew Carroll. Joyce retrieved the letter and sent a copy to Carroll for inclusion in “The Legacy Project” and eventually it would be one of the 200 letters published in his book “War Letters” in 2001.
“History is usually recorded from the view of the big guys; the generals and leaders; this project was to capture the memories and create a record from the guys on the ground,” Joyce said. “This became their story and it was from a very different perspective.”
Dean’s words told that story.
“Being a good platoon leader is a lonely job. I don’t want to really get to know anybody over here because it would be bad enough to lose a man – I damn sure don’t want to lose a friend,” he wrote in the rain while his platoon stopped for the night in the jungle. “I haven’t even had one of my men wounded yet, let alone killed, but that is too much to even hope for (it) to go like that. But as hard as I try not to get involved with my men I still can’t help liking them and getting close to a few.”
Carroll, in an interview with The State newspaper in 2001, reflected on the letter. “Honest to goodness, once I read that letter I knew that this project was onto something,” he said.
Allen’s letter was featured in a Time Magazine article, multiple PBS documentaries, an NPR broadcast, ABC’s “Nightline,” NBC Nightly News, Stars and Stripes and many other publications and media across the country.
When Carroll first received the letter it was one of thousands and he had to code the letters to keep them organized. He marked Joyce’s with “MY GOD.”
In a letter to Joyce in December 1998 confirming the receipt of the letter, Carroll added a note at the end.
“P.S. Again, I truly cannot emphasize to you how overwhelmed I was by that letter. What an extraordinarily thoughtful and compassionate man. I read the letter late Saturday night, and almost tried to call you Sunday, but didn’t want to disturb you. It is the only letter among the thousands that brought tears to my eyes,” Carroll wrote.
Joyce and Dean had been married for only two years and eight months yet only lived together for 12 months of that time. She said as she looked at the letter, the topics written about were so serious and different from those discussed during the time they spent together.
“He was 27 when he died and I was 25. Before he was drafted and then went to Vietnam, we didn’t pay attention to those things,” Joyce said. “We were always thinking about getting through this stage and how we were going to build our life. Neither one of us would have ever guessed he wouldn’t be coming home.”
Old friend Jean Liberty said she cried when she read his letter to Joyce in Carroll’s book.
“The letter was an amazing example of who he really was even though I knew Dean when he was so young,” Liberty said. “It was him.”
Transcript of Dean’s letter to Joyce on July 10-11, 1969.
(The actual letter is in the photos below.)
10 July 69
Dearest Wife,
There are many times while I am out in the field that I really feel the need to talk to you.
Not so much about us but what I have on my mind. I can tell you that I love you and how much I miss you in a letter. I know you will receive it and know what I mean, because you have the same feelings.
But many times like tonight — I am out on ambush with eleven men; a medic — after everything is set up and in position I have nothing to do but lay there and think — why I am here as well as all the men in my platoon— age makes no difference — there are very few kids over here — a few yes but they grow up fast or get killed. Why I have to watch a man die or get wounded — why I have to be the one to tell someone to do something that may get him blown away — have I done everything I can do to make sure we can’t get hit by surprise — are we really covered from all directions — how many men should I let sleep at a time, 1/4, 50% or what. I know I want at least 50% awake and yet those are the same men who have to hump through the jungle the next day carrying fifty to seventy five pounds on their back and still be alert and quick if they run into Charles the next day. If I have four or five man positions, and only have one man awake per position they like me because they get some sleep. If I have them in two man positions and have one man awake the ‘bitch and moan‘ aren’t worth a damn the next day. If I don’t we may all get our shit blown away — excuse the language but that’s what they call it over here. Babes, I don’t know what the answer is. Being a good platoon leader is a lonely job. I don’t want to really get to know anybody over here because it would be bad enough to lose a man — I damn sure don’t want to lose a friend. I haven’t even had one of my men wounded yet let alone killed but that is too much to even hope for to go like that. But as hard as I try not to get involved with my men I still can’t help liking them and getting close to a few. I get to know their wives name or their girls and kids if they have any. They come up and say “hey 26 (they call me 26 because that is my call sign on the radio) do you want to see picture of my wife/girl” or “look at what my wife or girl wrote.” Like I said, it gets lonely trying to stay separate.
Some letter, huh! I don’t know if I have one sentence in the whole thing. I just started writing.
July 11
It got so dark I had to stop last night. It got too dark and rained for twelve hours straight. Writing like that doesn’t really do that much good because you aren’t here to answer me or discuss something. I guess it helps a little though because you are the only one I would say these things to. Maybe sometime I’ll even try to tell you how scared I have been or am now. There is nothing I can do about it but wait for another day to start + finish.
If I had prayed before or was religious enough to feel like I should — or had the right to pray now I probably would say one every night that I will see the sun again the next morning & will get back home to you. Sometimes I really wonder how I will make it. My luck is running good right now. I just hope it lasts. I have already written things I had never planned to write because I don’t want you to worry about me anyway.
Don’t worry about what I have said; these are just things I think about sometimes. I am so healthy I can’t get a day out of the field and you know I’m too damn mean to die. Now I better close for now & try to catch a few z’s. It will be another long night.
Sorry I haven’t written more but the weather is against me. You can’t write out here when it rains hour after hour. I love you with all my heart. All my love always
Dean
P.S. We were next to a MAVERIC in the Drive-in. I already told you how I feel about a new car a couple of weeks ago in a letter.
Click on an image below to bring up a gallery to view the whole letter
To see the entire Letters exhibit from Chapman University and Andrew Carroll. Click here. We thank him for his help in curating this story.
