← Part of Letters from Vietnam
letter
Letter to Terrie, 12 April 1970 — 'This may be your last letter from here'
Charlie's two-page letter to Terrie dated 12 April 1970, written stateside in his last week of Army training before orders. A field exercise ('our boy scout venture') is over; the final week is classes and turning in gear, with five days and a wake-up to Friday. His Eastern Airlines reservation home was cancelled and the flight is now full, so he'll try to get home as fast as he can. Orders come Tuesday and he can hardly wait but is deeply uneasy — 'this may be your last letter from here.' He's heard from his friend Abbott: 28 of 33 in Abbott's unit are going to Vietnam and Abbott assumes he's one. Tension at the post is high, with fights breaking out and even a sergeant nearly in one. He notes he's now spent 20 weeks in the Army ('the longest I've held a full-time job'), passes along news of his friend Fisher, encloses something from his mother, and hopes for no in-law trouble when he visits after 17 April. He ends, ominously, 'Don't write any more after this.'
What the letter is
12 April 1970 — and this is, chronologically, where the whole correspondence really begins: a stateside training post, the last week before orders, with everyone knowing the orders mean Vietnam. The field exercise is over, the gear is going back, and there are “5 days and a wake-up” to Friday. Underneath the logistics of a cancelled flight home runs the real subject: “We get our orders Tuesday… This may be your last letter from here… I’m really worried. I just don’t know.” His friend Abbott’s unit is already going (28 of 33). The post is taut with it — “tension is really running high. Quite a few fights.” Two months later Charlie would be writing from the field in Vietnam.
Transcription
12 April 70
Dear Terrie,
Our boy scout venture is over. We were blessed with no rain and warm weather. This is our last week; 5 days and a wake-up Friday morning. We have a few classes and turn in our gear all week. I had plane reservations with Eastern which would put me at National Airport 8:30 Friday night but the airlines cancelled the reservations and the plane is now full. Little things are really getting to me. Now I guess I will try to get home as fast as I can Friday, if by anything.
We get our orders Tuesday and I can hardly wait. I’m really worried. I just don’t know. This may be your last letter from here. I’ll probably have called by the time you receive this letter. The phone will probably be crowded so I don’t know if I’ll get through, but I’ll try.
I heard from Abbott. 28 of 33 in his unit are going to Vietnam and he assumes he is one of them. I know he is bitter too. I hate this place with a passion. Tension is really running high. Quite a few fights. One sergeant almost got in a fight too. It will probably get worse before the week is over.
I shouldn’t write such depressing stuff. I have now spent 20 weeks in the army which is the longest I’ve held a full time job.
I got a letter from Fisher. He still hates Ferguson and is on the verge of breaking up with his girl. He is doing better in school though.
I really can’t think of anything to say except that orders are on my mind. Enclosed is something from my mom.
I hope I don’t have any in-law trouble when I get there sometime after 17 April.
Love Charles
Don’t write any more after this.
What the letter records
The beginning, in hindsight. Everything the later letters live through — the field, the firebases, the malaria, the countdown, Hawaii, the wedding — is still ahead of the young man writing this. What he knows on 12 April 1970 is only that orders come Tuesday and that they probably mean Vietnam. The dread is unshaped because the thing dreaded hasn’t happened yet.
“I hate this place with a passion.” The contempt for Army life that runs through the whole corpus is already fully formed in training. The war hadn’t taught it to him; the institution had.
Abbott, at the start. The same friend who turns up “2 clicks from Camp Evans” in the January 1971 letters appears here at the very beginning, getting his Vietnam orders alongside Charlie — one of the through-lines that ties the training letters to the field letters to the rear-area letters.
“20 weeks… the longest I’ve held a full time job.” A flash of the twenty-two-year-old’s humor about himself, and a small datum that anchors his induction to late 1969.
Scans
