{"id":529,"date":"2011-09-28T10:00:51","date_gmt":"2011-09-28T10:00:51","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/americainuniform\/?p=529"},"modified":"2011-09-15T13:48:40","modified_gmt":"2011-09-15T13:48:40","slug":"a-letter-to-mom","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/americainuniform\/2011\/09\/a-letter-to-mom.html","title":{"rendered":"A Letter to Mom"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.beliefnet.com\/americainuniform\/files\/2011\/09\/mother2.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignleft size-thumbnail wp-image-648\" src=\"https:\/\/wp-media.beliefnet.com\/sites\/293\/2011\/09\/mother2-150x150.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"150\" height=\"150\" \/><\/a>THE HARD-BITTEN COMMANDER of my infantry company in Vietnam was frustrated in his efforts to make a soldier out of one particular PFC. The young man lagged behind on patrols, feigned illness and managed to spend most of his time at headquarters. One day, though, he changed his ways, and we asked the commander why. &#8220;Threats and punishment didn&#8217;t work,&#8221; he admitted, &#8220;so I had to use the ultimate weapon. I wrote his mother.&#8221;<br \/>\n&#8211;Contributed to &#8220;Humor In Uniform&#8221; by Thomas A. Stave<\/p>\n<hr \/>\n<div>\n<div>Provided Courtesy of <strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rd.com\/\">Reader&#8217;s Digest<\/a><\/strong>. Click here for more &#8220;<strong><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rd.com\/all-jokes.do?cat=1198\">Military Jokes<\/a><a href=\"http:\/\/www.rd.com\/all-jokes.do?cat=1198\">&#8220;.<\/a><\/strong><\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>THE HARD-BITTEN COMMANDER of my infantry company in Vietnam was frustrated in his efforts to make a soldier out of one particular PFC. The young man lagged behind on patrols, feigned illness and managed to spend most of his time at headquarters. One day, though, he changed his ways, and we asked the commander why.&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":442,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-529","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-military-humor"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO plugin v23.9 - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>A Letter to Mom - America in Uniform<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.beliefnet.com\/columnists\/americainuniform\/2011\/09\/a-letter-to-mom.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"A Letter to Mom - America in Uniform\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"THE HARD-BITTEN COMMANDER of my infantry company in Vietnam was frustrated in his efforts to make a soldier out of one particular PFC. 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