Dear Folks, I guess I'm still going back over my civilian memories of the Vietnam war when I wrote the following this evening. These are memories that I still can't shake. vee Another Vietnam/Coca-Cola Memory May 4, 2005 Another memory that was brought to my mind this evening was a number of letters that had crossed my desk that I had to figure out how to handle. They were letters sent from soldiers in Vietnam who were complaining bitterly that when they popped open a can of Coca-Cola, it was completely empty. Even upon inspection of the cardboard case of Coke, there were no watermarks that would indicate leakage. Therefore on several occasions the soldiers accused the company of being on the side of the Communists and trying to sabotage the morale of the troops by shipping empty cans of Coca-Cola. I was clueless how that could ever happen and I showed the letters to the canning plant manager. He didn't have a clue about it either and after a conference or two with the Atlanta office, it was decided that on occasion the seams on the aluminum cans hadn't been properly welded shut. Therefore there was a tiny invisible pinhole in them and when the cans were shipped overseas and exposed to the high heat generated in the large containers they were being shipped in, the carbonation of the Coke expanded and the Coke seeped out the minuscule hole and when it hit the hot air it immediately evaporated. As a result, the cans were empty when the troops received them. It was up to me to compose a letter of explanation to each and every letter we had received. Trust me, it took every bit of diplomacy I had in me to try to make up for the anger I read in their letters. But what galled me the most is when I had to tell them that The Coca-Cola Company was shipping a complimentary gift of one six pack of canned Coca-Cola to each of them. ONE six-pack?? How could that ever appease them? I swear that the home office of Coca-Cola in Atlanta barely had a clue what was happening in Vietnam regarding shipments of Coca-Cola there. I also believe they didn't have a clue about how the lumpers (those who loaded up the containers with pallets of Coke) felt whenever any of them had to walk into the containers that had just returned back from Vietnam. By that time the public was aware that displaced Vietnamese civilians were using the empty containers and making them their homes. However, the North Vietnamese solders were suspicious of every empty container that they came upon and riddled them with bullets. As a result it seems that on several occasions the containers were shipped back to the United States and when the lumpers walked in to load up the container again, they were confronted with decaying bodies. I hope you realize that I'm not trying to tell you horror stories about the Vietnam War. It's only from my personal point of view as a civilian secretary who was swept up in a lot of it behind my desk.