From The Editor: "The Situation Seems So Crazy That I Want To Get To The Bottom Of It"

On 22 August, Clark wrote:  "Major Dughi may be getting himself in some deep trouble over here.  He appears to have gotten quite indiscreet in his relationship with his “friend.”  He is being seen much too frequently at the BOQ mess halls, on the streets, and she calls him too much at the office. Think Colonel Plate is getting irritated about it.  He [Dughi] also seems to spend a lot of time away from work and on the weekends, Colonel Plate can’t seem to find him when something important comes up.

"I sure don't understand the situation.  He writes to and receives mail from his family nearly every day, so I reckon he and Mrs. Dughi are still married.  He also has lots of pictures of their house and his family on his desk so he must think something of them.  And he has pictures of his children in his wallet as he has shown them to me.  However, he really chases after this Vietnamese girl quite openly.  So I don't know what the story is.  One of these days I am going to sit down with him eyeball to eyeball and ask him point blank what the story is.  While it is none of my business, the situation seems so crazy that I want to get to the bottom of it."


Major Charles Horatio Dughi, U.S. Army Transportation Corps, was born in Tampa, Florida in January 1929.  He attended Spring Hill College in Mobile, Alabama before he became an Army officer.  In 1965, Dughi was 36 years old, married, and had an eleven-year old daughter and nine-year old son.  The Vietnamese woman was twenty-one years old.   Dughi divorced his wife, married the Vietnamese woman, and returned with her to the United States.  Dughi and his second wife had a son in 1967.  Dughi retired from the Army as a lieutenant colonel and lived in Redington Shores, Florida until he died on 8 November 2002. 

Sometimes, people on the home front were the ones wounded in action during the Vietnam War.