Letter to Dorothy Hauser, 26 June 1970 — 'keep working for peace,' the mountains, and a company hit hard

What the letter is

The earliest surviving letter from Charlie to Dorothy Hauser — Peggy McMaster Eesley’s friend in the Marietta Mothers for Peace circle — and one of the rawest letters in the whole corpus. Written only weeks into the tour, before the guardedness of the later field letters set in, it says to Dorothy what Charlie mostly kept out of his letters to Terrie: that the war was “stupid and wrong,” that men near him were dying in numbers, and that he was simply hoping to survive the year. The “keep working for peace” and the “Peace, Charles” sign-off place it squarely inside the anti-war correspondence he carried on with Dorothy across the tour.

Transcription

26 June 70

Dear Dorothy,

Thanks for the Kool-aid and keep working for peace. You can’t believe how stupid and wrong this place is. I’m situated in the mountains where there is just us and the NVA. I guess we are trying to stop them from coming down to the lowlands. It is beautiful country but worthless. I guess the year over here wouldn’t be as bad if I were in the rear somewhere. I really hate it plus the fact people are getting killed. C company, near us, has been hit hard this last week; 12 dead and 27 wounded. I’m bound to run into action sooner or later. We are supposed to be the best company in the battalion but that is a small consolation out here. I just hope the year goes fast.

Too bad about your stock market venture. I guess everyone loses there. I’ll write more when I’m in a better mood.

Peace, Charles

What the letter records

The war, said plainly. “You can’t believe how stupid and wrong this place is.” To Dorothy, the Mothers-for-Peace friend, Charlie writes the anti-war judgment directly, in a way the letters to Terrie almost never do. The audience-targeting is the same as in the 1 January 1971 letter to Dorothy with its “Tricky Dick” line: Dorothy was the reader Charlie could say this to, and did.

“12 dead and 27 wounded.” The bare casualty count, set down without cushioning. A company near his own had been “hit hard this last week,” and Charlie’s own reading of his odds is unsentimental: “I’m bound to run into action sooner or later.” It is the war at its most immediate, weeks into a year he could only hope would “go fast.”

“Beautiful country but worthless.” The soldier’s-eye verdict on the I Corps highlands, gorgeous terrain that meant nothing except as ground to hold or deny. The same landscape the late-1970 field letters describe as mountains, monsoon, and misery.

The Kool-aid and the stock market. The small human texture of a real correspondence, Dorothy’s care-package Kool-aid, her losing stock-market venture, Charlie’s promise to “write more when I’m in a better mood.” By June 1970 he and Dorothy already had the running, personal exchange that the January 1971 letter confirms, an anti-war soldier and his mother’s anti-war friend, writing across the war.