Letter to Terrie, 8 July 1970 — 'I'll give one of them my sob story and see if I can't sway public opinion'

What the letter is

A multi-day letter running roughly 8-12 July 1970 — Charlie at the two-month mark in country, in a field rotation he is growing to hate, with three substantive pieces of content that the rest of the corpus does not carry.

What was happening in the Ripcord AO on 8–12 July 1970

A clarification: Charlie’s battalion (1-506, LTC Roberts) operated in adjacent terrain east and south of Firebase Ripcord. The firebase itself was garrisoned by 2-506 (LTC Andre Lucas). Most of the celebrated Ripcord events — Hill 902, Hill 1000, the firebase defense — are 2-506 events. Charlie was in the area during the siege; he was almost certainly not on the firebase on these dates.

Phase context: escalation/peak week. The first week (1–7 July) had absorbed two major contacts: the 2 July Hill 902 sapper attack (C/2-506 lost 8 KIA including CPT Hewitt the company commander) and 6–7 July Hill 1000 (D/2-506 lost 3 KIA + 13 WIA). Then 8–12 July opens the most intensive American offensive action of the entire siege.

8 July — the Hill 1000 attack (Charlie/2-506, not 1-506). This is the often-told Charlie Company action that is not Charlie 1-506. At dawn, C/2-506 (~30 men under CPT Jeff Wilcox) and D/2-506 (~70 men under CPT Rembert Rollison) air-assaulted to an LZ between Ripcord and Hill 1000. C/2-506 took the western knoll; Delta never came out of the tree line. LTC Lucas ordered C/2-506 across the open saddle into machinegun fire. The company pulled back under smoke with 2 KIA (Hupp and the new medic Scott) and 3 WIA. On Ripcord itself the firebase took 9 mortar rounds, 3 75mm recoilless rounds, and 2 RPGs without casualties.

10 July. At 11:25, B/2-506 on the firebase took “a 38-round mixed 60 and 82 mm mortar barrage, killing two soldiers” (MACV Command History). A/2-506 combat-assaulted from Firebase O’Reilly and moved on Hill 805 to the southeast.

11–12 July. Continued daily mortar, recoilless rifle, RPG, and small-arms fire against the firebase. On 12 July A/2-506 secured Hill 805 — the same hill Charlie’s letter would have visible context to — and that night D/2-501 (attached to 2-506) was attacked on the hilltop.

The press blackout. Charlie’s “4 newsmen out here for 2 days soon” sits inside a real and documented military press blackout. The Ripcord Association states it openly: “The Military discouraged the Media from covering the Battle (because they did not want another Hamburger Hill controversy).” Until 1985 the battle was essentially absent from American public memory. A widely-repeated story holds that “a helicopter full of reporters came into land, and as it approached, the pilot turned away. Over the radio, he was told he would be fired on.” Charlie’s specific 4-newsman visit doesn’t appear in Nolan or the unit histories, which is consistent with the blackout being effective rather than total. The censorship discovery he names in the same letter is the same system from the other side.

For Charlie 1-506. 1-506 companies appear in the chronologies in this window mostly at the edge of the AO. D/1-506 (CPT Donald Workman) was the most active 1-506 element — he had been detached to 2-506 OPCON because he was “the most experienced company commander in the battalion.” Specific positioning of C/1-506 for days 8–12 is not in the public record. The “field rotation he is growing to hate” almost certainly meant patrolling east or south of the firebase during the days when the men he could see from his patrol line — the C/2-506 and B/2-506 companies — were taking the brunt of the fight.

Sources: After-Action Report (AVDG-CS 23 Jul 1970, Wikisource); MACV Command History 1970 Vol. III; Keith W. Nolan, Ripcord: Screaming Eagles Under Siege, Vietnam 1970 (Presidio, 2000); Ripcord Association day-by-day July 1-8 (1LT Lee Widjeskog); 1LT James H. Campbell, “The July 8 1970 Attack of Hill 1,000”; Wikipedia: Battle of Fire Support Base Ripcord.

Transcription (extracted from the surviving sheets)

… for several months so don’t stay up waiting.

It seems that I will be spending most of my time in the field (which I’m growing to hate) so if you send anything keep it small. Also just send Kool-Aid in your letters or something. It doesn’t have to be much. Just keep writing letters — I got 5 last time. I don’t really need anything. They do provide the basics here.

None of my letters or your letters are censored so you can say anything you want. By the time you get this letter I’ll have 2 months done over here. 12 July. It seems short and it seems like a lifetime. I do hope you can graduate next spring. I know I won’t be able to settle down and work after I get back. I just want to travel and bum around.

I can’t think of much to say and I’ll finish this letter latter.

8 July 70. Another day passes. I’m glad to hear … [continuation through a page not yet sampled in this archive] …

… you are leaving here, going to the beach etc.

We are going to get 4 newsmen out here for 2 days soon. I’ll give one of them my sob story and see if I can’t sway public opinion.

I have very little time now and will try to write more next time.

Love, Charles

What the letter records

The censorship discovery. “None of my letters or your letters are censored so you can say anything you want.” This is the small administrative detail that shapes the rest of the corpus’s tone, in retrospect. Soldiers had reasonably expected outgoing mail to be censored, as had been the practice in earlier wars; Vietnam-tour outgoing mail was largely not, as Charlie discovers in July 1970. After this letter, he writes more candidly — the marijuana-and-Donut-Dollies letter, the 4 February 1971 Laos fore-warning, the 1 March 1971 Lam Son 719 commentary all sit on the other side of this discovery. He knew the army wasn’t reading his mail.

The post-tour premonition. “I know I won’t be able to settle down and work after I get back. I just want to travel and bum around.” The earliest version, by date, of the post-Vietnam-Charlie that Chuck would later eulogize. Charlie was twenty-three, two months into his tour, projecting forward to a self that would come back unable to slide into the standard Marietta-college-grad professional track. “Travel and bum around” was the form the projection took in his own voice. Whether the projection held when the June 14 1971 ETS actually arrived — the marriage to Terrie in August 1971, the move into Marietta-based stockbroker work — is the rest of the story. But in July 1970 he was already telling Terrie what he thought the tour was doing to him.

The newsmen letter — “sway public opinion.” “We are going to get 4 newsmen out here for 2 days soon. I’ll give one of them my sob story and see if I can’t sway public opinion.” This is the only letter in the corpus where Charlie writes about deliberately working the press. Late-1970 was the peak of correspondent saturation in I Corps — American newspapers and television networks had reporters embedded with units across the area, looking for soldier-voice stories that fit the war’s late-Vietnamization-era public reading. Charlie was reading that situation accurately and planning his own insertion into it: one of the four visiting newsmen would get his individual “sob story” — whichever Charlie thought would land — and the line of public-opinion influence would run from his field-grade life back through the press to American living rooms.

Whether any actual story made it into print is unrecorded in the corpus. What is recorded is the strategic instinct: a 23-year-old draftee in his second month of a Vietnam tour, conscious enough of the press cycle to plan a story-placement at the individual-soldier level. The line sits at the same register as the populist ‘screw the gov’t’ postage line of the 18 July 1970 letter ten days later — both moments of Charlie reading the broader system of the war and looking for the small piece of it he could push back at.

The Kool-Aid request. “Just send Kool-Aid in your letters or something. It doesn’t have to be much.” The small practical-care request that runs through the corpus; the Kool-Aid mix-in-water packets were a way to make the tepid jungle water at field bases tolerable. The packages backlog that the 18 July letter would name a week and a half later was already accumulating by July 8.

Sequence with surrounding letters

Date	Letter	What it records
22 Jun 1970	22 June letter	”Your father’s attitude is better”
8 Jul 1970	This letter	Censorship discovered; bum-around plan; the newsmen-press-strategy line
18 Jul 1970	No-mail / ‘screw the gov’t’ letter	Gung-ho captain, no mail from Terrie, populist postage line
21 Sep 1970	Malaria hospitalization	Hospitalized at the 6th Convalescent Center

Source: grandmaE1.pdf pages 319-320 (gitignored locally; transcribed content surfaced here). The multi-day shape of the letter means continuation pages may surface more text once mined more thoroughly.

What the letter is

Transcription (extracted from the surviving sheets)

What the letter records

Sequence with surrounding letters

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