Between the Letters

Separated by war and thousands of miles, a young navy ensign and his nurse fiancée share their everyday experiences from Vietnam and from back home through hundreds of letters, keeping alive their love, hopes and dreams. Between these letters, the fledgling officer-in-charge of a U.S. Navy Swift Boat shares his first-person stories of life and death in a combat zone.

"I miss you." "Why haven't you written." "Thank God, you're safe." These are the beginning lines of some of the hundreds of letters between a freshly-commissioned U.S. Navy ensign and his fiancée, a new nurse graduate, from the start of their relationship until eighteen months later when he returns from Vietnam. Between these letters are first person accounts of the fledgling naval officer's life in charge of a five-man crew aboard a fifty-foot Swift Boat, patrolling the coastal waters and rivers in "I Corps," the northernmost military operational area of South Vietnam. The letters and stories show the challenges of life—and death—in a combat zone and provide a glimpse into the stress-filled lives of these two young people, separated by the war and thousands of miles across an ocean and a continent.

Soon after graduating college, Rufus R. "Sonny" Barber, Jr. joined the U.S. Navy and volunteered for duty in Vietnam as an officer-in-charge of a "Swift Boat," a fifty-foot navy patrol craft. After his four years of active military service, he worked in public relations and corporate communications, concurrently serving as a public affairs officer in military reserve components and retiring as a captain from the U.S. Navy Reserve. In his second career as an author, he's also written several fiction books for preteens and up, which use events in early American history as the basis for modern-day mysteries. Sonny and his wife, Barbara, residents of Boca Raton, Florida, have two wonderful daughters, devoted sons-in-law, and four inspiring and amazing grandchildren.