Hanoi Opens 3 MIA Search Areas, Releases Letters

"If Dad calls, tell him I got too close to being dead but I'm O.K. I was real lucky. I'll write again soon."

That poignant message never reached the mother of Army Sgt. Steve Flaherty. He was killed in Vietnam in 1969 before he could mail the letters he was carrying, including one he might have been writing when he died. The letters were taken by the Vietnamese after his death, U.S. officials said in releasing excerpts on Monday.

The letters, chronicling the carnage and exhaustion of war, were given to Defense Secretary Leon Panetta in exchange for a Vietnamese soldier's diary that was taken from his body by an American GI. The letters will be returned to Flaherty's family in South Carolina.

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