The letter from the frontlines could have been written yesterday.
"Thank you for your sweet card. It made my miserable day a much better one but I don't think I will ever forget the bloody fight we are having," reads a handwritten note to Betty from Steve Flaherty of Columbia, S.C. "RPG rockets and machine guns really tore my rucksack."

But this and other newly discovered letters written to "Betty," "Mother" and "Mrs. Wyatt" weren't sent from Afghanistan, or any other place where American servicemen are deployed now. They were penned more than 40 years ago before the author, who was with the 101st Airborne, was killed in the northern section of South Vietnam.

The documents were given to the U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta during a landmark meeting in Vietnam on Monday. Panetta and Vietnam Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh exchanged long-held artifacts collected during the war -- including a small maroon diary belonging to a Vietnamese soldier.


A letter to Flaherty's mother gives an unvarnished version of life on the battlefield.

"Our platoon started off with 35 men but winded up with 19 men when it was over. We lost platoon leader and whole squad.” He added, “The NVA soldiers fought until they died and one even booby trapped himself and when we approached him, he blew himself up and took two of our men with him.”

The obit of Steve Flaherty of Columbia, S.C. published in the State Newspaper on March 30, 1969.

Another letter to his mom reads: "We couldn't retrieve the bodies of our men or ruck sacks and when we brought air strikes, jets dropped napalm and explosives that destroyed everything that was there."

The letter adds: "If Dad calls, tell him I got too close to being dead but I'm O.K. I was real lucky. I'll write again soon."
Slain soldier’s Vietnam letters too later for his parents, but other relatives will cherish

A third letter to Mrs. Wyatt defends the war while spelling out the toll it was taking on the people fighting: "This is a dirty and cruel war but I’m sure people will understand the purpose of this war even though many of us might not agree."

Brendan Haas earned a prize any young kid would appreciate — an all-expenses paid trip to Disney World. Instead of going, though, the Massachusetts boy gave the vacation to the family of a soldier killed in Afghanistan.

Haas earned the trip through a trading contest on Facebook he set up to help out a military family. He got the idea from the story of a man who traded up from a red paper clip to a house.

In February, Brendan and his mother Melissa set up the "Soldier for a Soldier" Facebook page in an attempt to trade up from a toy soldier to a Disney trip.

Through a series of trades on the social network site, he managed to amass Disney gift certificates worth almost $900 as well as airfare and a stay at a Disney resort hotel.

On Memorial Day, the boy pulled the name of 2-year-old Liberty Hope Steele out of a hat. She is the daughter of U.S. Army Lt. Timothy Steele, 25, who was killed last August in Afghanistan.

“I think it would make them a lot happier,” Brendan Haas said.
It turned out that Timothy Steele’s parents live in nearby Duxbury, Mass., so Brendan went over to the family’s home and surprised the soldier’s parents with the news of the trip.

“Tim was pretty special to us,” Jack Steele, Timothy’s father told WDHT-TV. “He knew what he wanted to do at a very young age.”

Cody Cameron, a Marine stationed in Jacksonville, N.C., got burned when he bought a used car. He paid $17,000 last year for a 2004 Nissan 350-Z with 60,000 miles on it. He figured the car would last him a long time. It didn’t.

“I drove the vehicle for about two weeks. And one day all of the wheel studs on the left rear tire just popped off and the tire took off down the road,” he recalls.

He was able to get the dealership to pay for the repairs. But about a week later, the studs broke again. This time they refused to pay.
Cameron couldn’t afford the repair work, so he took the car to another dealer, hoping to get some money for a trade-in. That’s when he discovered his car had been in a wreck. The AutoCheck report showed extensive damage to the left side of the vehicle.

“When I bought it, I specifically asked the salesman – multiple times – if it had been in a wreck,” Cameron tells me. “And he said no. There were no accidents.”

Right now, Cameron’s 350-Z cannot be driven. But he’s still on the hook for the payments. He’s suing the dealer.

It’s unfortunate. Shady car dealers often target military customers. Unethical salespeople see them as easy marks.

Holly Petraeus, director of the Office of Servicemember Affairs at the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, warns military personnel to be on guard when they walk onto a car lot.

“You have these car places that spring up around military installations selling used cars for a very marked-up price and then putting high financing on top of that,” she says.

Military personnel can be especially vulnerable customers. They’re young. This may be their first car purchase. They often have a limited or negative credit history.

Petraeus (whose husband, Gen David Petraeus is CIA Director) tells me everyone in the service is afraid of doing anything that could cost them their security clearance. A bad credit report is the No. 1 reason for having that clearance pulled.

“They’re very conscious of that,” she says. “So somebody can threaten them and say, ‘If you don’t pay up then you’re going to get in trouble,’ which of course, is the last thing they want.”

Holly Petraeus is not the only one sounding the alarm. The auto experts at Edmunds.com advise military customers to watch out for deceptive sales practices.

"Military personnel have a steady income. The government is paying them every single month for their service. Unscrupulous car dealers know that and are really anxious to get into that income stream,” says Edmunds.com’s Carroll Lachnit.

Edmunds.com warns military families to be on the lookout for crafty salespeople who use patriotism as part of their sales pitch.
"We're trying to get them to be aware that appealing to their pride or flattering them may not be sincere appreciation for their military service, but just another way to get their hooks into that paycheck,” Lachnit says.