Redcatcher MP In Memory Of Mickey M. Bright

 

 

 

My thoughts the last few days have been about my cousin, Mike, AKA Mickey M. Bright. He passed away a year ago without seeing in print the book he worked so hard to write.

 

Redcatcher MP is a well told truthful story of life in the army during the Vietnam War. Mickey was a military policeman in the 199th Light Infantry Brigade for three tours of duty.

 

I can identify with Mickey’s memories of home and family that had to be a solace for him when he was stressed. His sisters, my brother, Mickey and me spent our younger years playing together on my parents farm in the Missouri Ozarks.

 

The following is a letter from Mickey Bright, known as Mike, to his cousin , Fay Risner, and her family was postmarked May 8, 1968 from Vietnam.

 

 

 

Hi Fay, Harold and family,

 

I got your letter today, you sure know who cares about you by the letters you get. I appreciate you and Harold writing. I got a letter from your mom last week. I’m glad you all are getting along okay.

 

Tell ole Harold he better not work too hard or I’ll turn him over my knee. Ha! Ha! Harold, I’m going to come down and go fishing with you when I get back in the states, and that’s a promise.

 

It’s hell over here. You are up from 16 to 18 hours. You see your buddies get shot and you have to kill. I hope I make it back.

 

Your mom probably told you all I am a machine gunner on a M.P. gun jeep.

 

I’ll tell you it’s not too funny to get shot at. I’m located about 20 miles from Saigon. But you know how I am, happy-go-lucky. I never worry about a thing.

 

Well, I have to go. Oh, you ought to see the Vietnamese women over here. They are out of sight. Write as much as you can. You all be good.

 

Love,

Mike

 

 

Forward

 

Young men sent to the Vietnam war didn’t have a clue what they were getting into when they left the safety of home. Mick sat with men his age in the back of a truck, waiting to be delivered to his base. He wrote, “Each man had puffy cheeks. A hint of our still developing maturity.”

For many, the Vietnam War was pure hell! Men thought they were doing their duty as soldiers for their country when they left for war and had no idea (because most had never served in a war) what they were up against. Dense jungles, snakes, spiders, leeches, ticks, malaria carrying mosquitoes, booby traps, heat, humidity, torrents of rain, foot rot, and scabs on theirbody from cuts that got infected from moisture and dirt.

Mick considered writing his story cathartic. Putting on paper what he saw and did in Vietnam was easier than telling the tales. He put his story in four spiral notebooks and gave them to his mother for safe keeping. Until recent years, Mick, an unknown one time author, found it hard to get his story published. Now in the age of Independent authors Mick’s book is published, but sadly Mick passed away before that happened.

When the fond memories of Mick passed between his sisters and me, there came recall of the story he wrote. I asked to see it when it surfaced among his effects. Now I hope our Mick (Mike) is smiling down on his family for making his book possible.

Mike’s story starts with his landing in Vietnam in the middle of the Tet Offensive which began January 31, 1968. Knowing the element of surprise would be on the North Vietnamese side, VC infiltrated South Vietnam, getting in position to conduct a large military operation during the cease fire. The attack took our military by surprise, but after months of battles, the communists were driven back across the border. Finally, our military considered this the beginning of the end of the war for North Vietnam.

This war was the first one to be televised. When news reporter Walter Cronkite traveled to Vietnam to see what was happening, he brought back a report that sealed the fate of South Vietnam. On his newscast, he said, “The only rational way out will be negotiate not as victors, but as honorable people who did the best they could.”

That’s all it took for protests to erupt across the United States, many of them violent, demanding to get our service men out of Vietnam. President Nixon ordered a withdrawal of troops. Over time when South Vietnam’s army was left to defend the country, the North Vietnamese army swarmed back in and took over.

 

 

In Loving Memory About The Author

 

Sp/5 Mickey M. Bright

1/14/1949 – 4/10/2013

 

Mickey Bright put his heart and soul into his book about his three tours in the Vietnam War. He brings to life the men he served with and treasured as friends as well as the Vietnamese people he grew to know and respect. He describes everything he saw and felt about the war in vivid detail. That includes the horrors of war as well as the men’s feverish efforts to block their worries and fears with drugs and booze in their off duty hours. In the Missouri Ozarks, Mickey was a happy go lucky, daring boy who didn’t show fear. He grew into a man in Vietnam that kept his cool under fire. His family and extended family are proud of him for his service to his country and knew the man we called Mike for the soft hearted soul he was. He will be missed.

 

 

If you want to read more from this book it is in paperback at Amazon and Barnes & Noble and ebooks in Kindle, Nook and Smashwords.com