Letter to Terrie, 21 November 1970 — 'I love you but would prefer to send you $1000'

What the letter is

21 November 1970. Charlie has been pulled out of Cam Ranh Bay after his September malaria recovery and is back forward in I Corps, on a firebase in the lowlands. The rain has lifted for two days; the clouds are still in. He will go back to the field in two days. Back in Marietta, his family and Terrie are talking about whether he might come home for a two-week Christmas leave.

Transcription

Nov 21

Dear Terrie,

Well here I am sitting on a firebase. The rain has lifted these last 2 days but the clouds are still there. I’m fine and everything is okay now. We will be in the lowlands at least until the 19th of Dec. Well it is raining again but at least I’m dry for now. We leave and go to the field in 2 days.

Well it seems you are up in the air about Christmas already. I hope you can make it to Marietta. Heavens I can’t believe it is November already. I wish it were later than that. I really haven’t heard any details about the 2 week leave but from what I’ve heard already it will cost nearly $1000 just for transportation alone. I really doubt if I come home for it. I love you but would prefer to send you $1000. God only knows I’m…

What the letter records

The firebase posting. “Well here I am sitting on a firebase.” By November 1970 Charlie had cycled through Camp Evans, the September malaria episode at Cam Ranh Bay, and was back forward with the 101st Airborne. The “lowlands until December 19” framing places him in the coastal-plain operations area of I Corps, north of Da Nang — the same operational region that runs through the malaria letters and the Da Nang letters on either side of this one in the tour.

The $1000 leave math. The Army offered a two-week mid-tour leave to soldiers in their second six months in country, in addition to the standard R&R. Charlie’s economics-major framing — “it will cost nearly $1000 just for transportation alone. I really doubt if I come home for it. I love you but would prefer to send you $1000” — is the cleanest single-line example of the cost-benefit calculus that runs through every leave-and-R&R decision he records in the corpus. The June 1970 Hawaii R&R had cleared the threshold; the November 1970 Christmas leave does not. He would rather send her the money and see her in March (his projected ETS month at this point, before the January 1971 extension calculation).

The “I wish it were later than that.” The most condensed expression in the corpus of the late-tour countdown sensation — Charlie at the firebase looking at November and wanting to skip to the part where he is going home. The whole tour-end accountancy that runs through the 19 January 1971 ETS-extension letter, the 21 January 1971 “145 days at the most” line, and the 24 January 1971 March-reunion-planning letter is implicit here, two months earlier. He doesn’t yet know he will extend; he is just wishing the calendar forward.

Sequence with surrounding letters

The Christmas leave he did not take is the gap between this letter and Charlie’s actual homecoming, which would come in late March 1971 — the extra five months on the other side of the $1000 math.