In this episode, Popi writes after a long day chasing Viet Cong forces through the heat. His tone is dry, understated, tired. He asks about the boys, about birthday parties and photographs, about sizes and gifts and letters never received. In his own words, the work is “not boring, really, but not something that you can write home about.” And yet — there’s so much to say.

This episode steps outside the frame of the letter to explore what President Eisenhower once called the military-industrial complex — a system in which war becomes not just a national effort, but a business. In the years between Eisenhower’s warning and Popi’s deployment, the United States began to lean heavily on private industry to maintain its war footing. Helicopter manufacturers like Bell, chemical producers like Dow and Monsanto, and aerospace giants like Lockheed and McDonnell Douglas turned Vietnam into a proving ground — and a payday.

Popi never names those companies. He doesn’t have to. He lived the consequences. He flew the equipment. He sweated in the flak jackets. He launched the rockets and burned the fuel. Every piece of his daily life was connected to a profit margin somewhere — to a factory, a contract, a congressional vote. And in his silence, in his frustration, we hear the other side of that machine. Not the boardrooms. The mud. The boredom. The waiting.

What’s Covered:

• Popi’s letter from April 26, 1965
• The structure and legacy of the U.S. military-industrial complex
• Bell Helicopter and the economics behind the Huey
• The disconnect between policy, profit, and lived experience
• How quiet missions reflect the weight of a forever war

📷 Featured Photo: Rows and rows of Hueys stretching into the distance, with one circling overhead — a powerful reminder of how large the machine truly was, and how small each man inside it could feel.

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