Army Sgt. Steve Flaherty's letters home from Vietnam finally going to family

Servicemember's letters from Vietnam to be returned to families
By JENNIFER HLAD
Stars and Stripes
Published: June 4, 2012

HANOI, Vietnam — On the day that he died more than 40 years ago, Army Sgt. Steve Flaherty carried with him a stack of letters he’d written but not yet sent to loved ones back home.

In one, addressed to “Betty,” he thanked her for the “sweet card” she’d sent.

“It made my miserable day a much better one but I don’t think I will ever forget the bloody fight we are having,” he wrote.

After he was killed on March 25, 1969, the letters were taken from him and used as propaganda by Vietnamese forces during the war. Now, Flaherty’s family will finally receive his last written words.

Vietnamese Minister of National Defense Gen. Phung Quang Thanh gave the letters — along with two other sets of letters that may have belonged to other American servicemembers — to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta on Monday. In return, Panetta presented the diary of a Vietnamese soldier, which had been taken after a firefight in March 1966 by an American Marine.
read more here UPDATE from CNN

June 4th, 2012

Decades after war, US and Vietnam swap slain troops' papers By the CNN Wire Staff

Nearly four decades after the end of the Vietnam War, the United States and Vietnam exchanged personal papers taken from the dead bodies of each others' troops for the first time, the Pentagon announced Monday.

On a historic visit to Hanoi, U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta handed over a diary taken by a U.S. Marine from the body of Vietnamese soldier Vu Dinh Doan in 1966.

In exchange, Vietnamese Defense Minister Phuong Quang Thanh gave Panetta letters taken from the body of U.S. Army Sgt. Steve Flaherty in 1969 and later used in Vietnamese propaganda broadcasts.
read more here

UPDATE

Vietnam soldier's letters make it home
Jun. 4, 2012 - Four decades ago, a U.S. soldier wrote home, telling of the horrors he saw in Vietnam. He was killed before he could mail the letters that were later stolen by the North Vietnamese. The letters were finally released by the Vietnamese military as part of a symbolic exchange with Defense Secretary Leon Panetta. (CBS News)