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letter
Letter to Terrie, late 1969 — Christmas leave plans, '711 days left'
Charlie's letter to Terrie from late 1969 — almost certainly November or early December of that year — planning his Christmas leave from stateside training. He plans to take his full Army leave allotment, 18 December 1969 through 6 January 1970. Asks Terrie to be specific about her holiday plans so they can coordinate, notes that all the airline planes are filled unless the Army charters something, suggests he'll buy her a round-trip ticket. Reassures her that she can stay with him and his family if her sister Angela can't put her up. Closes with the bookkeeping line that runs through every Vietnam-era Charlie-to-Terrie letter: '711 days left.' His earliest documented countdown — 711 days at the end of 1969 mapping to a late-1971 ETS, before the actual March 1971 ETS extension that would close the army term roughly nine months early.
What the letter is
A page from late 1969 — Charlie writing from a stateside Army post (presumably training, before deployment) about Christmas leave logistics. The date isn’t preserved on the surviving page; the “18 DEC to 6 JAN” leave window, “711 days left” countdown, and Christmas planning together place it in November or early December 1969. By the same time the following year he is on a firebase in I Corps wishing the calendar forward.
Transcription
[date not preserved — late 1969]
[page begins mid-letter]
…I’ve received only one.
I don’t know how I’m going home yet. You will have to be more specific about what your holiday plans are so we can get together. All planes are filled unless the army charters some planes. Then I will probably have to buy a round trip ticket. Be specific in your next letter.
I’m quite certain you can stay with us if Angel can’t put up with you. I will probably take my full leave time, 18 DEC to 6 JAN.
I’m sorry to hear you’re hurry. I trust you’re not taking any drastic measures while I’m away.
Be good and write.
Love, Charles
711 days left.
What the letter records
The Christmas-leave bookkeeping. The Army granted soldiers ~30 days of annual leave; Charlie is planning to spend almost all of his current allocation across the 1969 Christmas-and-New-Year window — 18 December through 6 January. The bureaucratic note that all flights are full unless the Army charters its own is the operational texture of the late-1960s mass-movement-of-soldiers period: with hundreds of thousands of soldiers home for Christmas, commercial-aviation capacity simply wasn’t there.
The “711 days left.” Charlie’s countdown lines run through the entire corpus — “145 days at the most” in the 21 January 1971 letter, “17 days left” in the 29 May 1971 letter, and so on. The 711 here is his earliest countdown in the archive: 711 days from late November or early December 1969 maps to a late-1971 ETS — consistent with a three-year Army term starting in November or December 1968. He would in fact ETS earlier than that, in late March 1971 with his 32-day Vietnam tour-extension, by virtue of the 19 January 1971 strategy decision. At the moment of this letter, that decision is still over a year in the future. He is just counting from where he is.
Angel — meaning Faye Angel. “I’m quite certain you can stay with us if Angel can’t put up with you.” The “Angel” here is Faye Angel — Chuck’s godmother and the family friend whose picture-framing business Charlie’s parents partnered with for decades. The Angels were close enough to be a default lodging option for Terrie during a Christmas Charlie was coming home; Charlie’s offer that Terrie can instead stay with the Eesleys if that doesn’t work out is the same early Eesley-side hospitality that will run through the rest of his tour and that his mother Peggy later mobilizes for Terrie’s tuition and his own correspondence with Congressman Miller.
“I’m sorry to hear you’re hurry. I trust you’re not taking any drastic measures while I’m away.” The closing line — light, faux-anxious, mock-courtroom — is an early instance of the dry, half-teasing register Charlie’s eulogy names as his transmitted family inheritance. The same voice that will write “that’s why I had to become a professor where the bar for being funny is sufficiently low” in Chuck’s later eulogy for him is already on the page in late 1969.
Sequence with surrounding letters
| Date | Letter | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| 13 Dec 1968 | Pre-induction letter | A year before this letter |
| 1969 | NCO school | Earlier training |
| late 1969 | This letter | Christmas leave, “711 days left” |
| 18 Feb 1970 | Stateside NCO training | Nine weeks in, Vietnam rumors |
| 22 Jun 1970 | Ripcord first-action letter | In country; first action on Firebase Ripcord |
The Christmas leave he was planning here would be the last one he spent in the United States during his Army term. The next Christmas, 1970, he would be on a firebase wishing the calendar forward and choosing to send Terrie the $1000 round-trip plane ticket money rather than fly home.
Scans
