The first thing you should know about Peter Beaman’s Letters from Duc Phong District is that it consists almost entirely of actual letters and photographs from his stay as an intelligence officer in a hamlet near the Cambodian border during the last year or so of the Vietnam War. That’s it—only his raw, unedited, personal correspondence. (He adds a brief comment at the end.) Apparently, young Pete (25) kept carbons of letters he typed on an old typewriter, put them in a box somewhere, and—fortunately for us—now brings them out of storage. They are not, I must tell you, easy to read—faded, small type, single-spaced. He wrote to his parents, of course, in a surprisingly uninhibited voice, as well as to his Harvard pals, and to a girl back home whom he seems to have been courting. Some of these are marked "unsent." As we would expect, his voice differs in tone and detail according to the recipients.

For anyone interested in those anguishing times of conscience and turmoil, Peter Beaman’s letters are a treasure. Why? Because though he admits to “no big wartime experiences to brag about,” he was in the thick of things. With more complaints than Holden Caulfield, he wrote home of his daily official duties, his supervising officers, wild R&Rs, frequent illnesses and hangovers, interests in audio equipment, cameras, cars, books (Boswell, no less), food, booze, and of course “chicks.” I was shocked at his opinion that Nixon’s invasion of Cambodia—which caused such an uproar at home—was highly effective in reducing NVN’s penetration of the South, a view he often propounds. Pythons, ocelots, scorpions, centipedes abound, not to mention the beloved villagers of mostly Montagnards. He was no fan of VN culture, to put it mildly, but he had several "epiphanies" in Bangkok. The faded letters are difficult to read, no doubt, but the reward is more than worth the effort. Young Beaman’s voice is as if Holden has grown up, gone to Harvard, was drafted, and added his scorn—and l’amour de la vie—to the morass we call Vietnam.

Letters from Duc Phong District by Peter Beaman is an unusual autobiography of an intelligence officer, detailing his experiences in a remote village in Viet Nam. It is composed of the letters written by the author to different people between 1970 and 1971. The reader reads in them a first-hand experience of war; the hopes and fears of a young intelligence officer, his experience and image of the people of a jungle village in Viet Nam, his love for a woman, and his dreams for the future. The letters are unedited and they reflect the state of mind of the author at the time they were written. They are pdfs of carbons of letters arranged chronologically and dealing with a variety of themes — love, war, family, patriotism, friendship, humanity, and personal growth.

Letters from Duc Phong District by Peter Beaman documents the US involvement in Viet Nam, a memoir of war in the form of letters. In each letter, the author shares a piece of his humanity and his soul, each letter unveiling an experience that is both intimate and important to the author. It is not lacking in humor and entertainment, but it is also filled with pathos as the reader follows an experience that involves solitude and hardship. The book also features images that are thought-provoking and that allow the world the author experienced to come alive. Letters from Duc Phong District transports readers to an experience that no one wants to see happen again. While it captures the personal journey of this officer with occasional notes, it is indeed a document that features some interesting details of the Viet Nam era.