souvenirs

SOUVENIRS from VIETNAM
Pictures by Ronnie D. Foster
{click on picture for large view}


'Chu Hoi' Safe conduct passes dropped from planes in enemy controlled areas.		Back side of a Chu Hoi pass.


We weren't allowed to possess real American money in a combat zone. We were issued MPC (Military Pay Currency), all paper, no coins.

The images above are of my Geneva Convention Card. Before deploying to Vietnam, we went through classes on handling prisoners and what to do if captured. Contrary to the beliefs of some people in this country, nowhere in there does it say a prisoner has a right to a lawyer.
The phrase book was issued after a short course in how to speak Vietnamese. We carried it along with the Geneva Convention Card.

The 3 images on the right are of a Christmas card I sent home from Vietnam in 1968.
The images below were sent in by Clyde Lovell, US Navy Vietnam Veteran

This 500-Dong note was given to me Memorial Day 1990, in Houston. Some River Rats had set up a booth with Vietnamese memorabilia. I was there with them and an elderly Vietnamese walked up and talked with us for a while. He found that I had been a "Co Van" an advisor to the Vietnamese Navy. He signed the 500 Dong note and gave it to me.	The other notes I brought back from Viet Nam with me. The difference in appearance of the 100 Dong notes is just a different year of issuance. Another note worth mentioning is the words Dong and Piastre. I understand that in the '50s the Piastre was issued in French Indochina. The Dong wasn't issued in areas controlled by the communists. As a result both were issued and used at the same time. I think that by the late '60s the Dong was still referred to as Piastre. There were coins smaller than a Dong called xu or su. Somewhere, stashed away from my memory, I have a few of the Indochinese coins, issued very late in 1890 something. The reason we weren't supposed to have American currency was the black market. In April 1969 the black market exchange rate was something like 190 to one US dollar.