← Part of Letters from Vietnam
letter
Letter to Terrie, 8 October 1970 — 'I leave for the damn field today'
Charlie's short two-page letter to Terrie dated 8 October 1970, reassembled from its scans (dad273 page 1, dad274 page 2), written just before he leaves for the field. It isn't raining now and he feels all right. He still can't believe they will keep him in the mountains during the monsoons because of resupply and support problems; he guesses they'll just have to suffer a little. He hates it — they haven't even given him time to get his finances straightened out, and he'll have to wire someone higher up to get it dealt with. He hopes everything is all right with her and that school isn't getting her down. By the time she gets the letter he'll have five months over with, with three left if he gets out of the army in June, which seems an awfully long time. Then he has to pack up and be ready to go, so he ends the letter. Signed 'Love, Charles.'
What the letter is
8 October 1970, a short letter written in the last minutes before he leaves for the field — the departure the 6 October letter had warned was coming. Two days of dread compressed into a page: disbelief that they’d keep him in the mountains through the monsoon, a small bureaucratic grievance (no time even to fix his pay), and the long horizon of an out date — “5 months over with, with 3 left if I get out of the army in June” — that “seems like an awfully long time.” Then he has to pack, and the letter simply stops.
Transcription
Oct 8
Dear Terrie,
I leave for the damn field today. It isn’t raining now and I feel all right. I still can’t believe they will keep me in the mountains during the monsoons because of resupply and support problems. I guess we will just have to suffer a little.
How I hate it. They haven’t even given me time to get my finances straightened out. Oh well — time is one more [thing], I guess. I’ll have to wire someone higher up in order to get them off their ass.
I hope everything is all right with you and school isn’t getting you down. By the time you get this letter I’ll have 5 months over with, with 3 left if I get out of the army in June. That seems like an awfully long
[page 2:] time.
Well I have to pack up and be ready to go, so I’ll end this letter now.
Love Charles
What the letter records
“I leave for the damn field today.” The whole letter is the pause before going out — written, as so many are, against a deadline (“I have to pack up and be ready to go”). It is the shortest, plainest form of the tour’s basic motion: rear to field, comfort to hardship, dry to wet.
Five over, three left. “5 months over with, with 3 left if I get out of the army in June.” The out-date math that fills the fall and winter letters — a June discharge under an early drop, three months of field time still between him and it. The same countdown that the 3 October letter’s “252 days left” and the December letters’ drop rumors keep re-totaling.
The finances. “They haven’t even given me time to get my finances straightened out.” A small, human grievance — the money he keeps sending Terrie, the pay problems he keeps having to “wire someone higher up” to fix — the domestic administration of a life run by mail from a war zone.
Scans
