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letter
Letter to Terrie, 14 January 1971 — 1:45 a.m., rumors and a puzzling tape
Charlie's letter to Terrie dated 14 January 1971, written at 1:45 in the morning when he can't sleep though he isn't on guard. The rumor update: no set 10-month tour, but big early-out drops 'which are just as good if the rumors pan out.' Family and domestic notes — Margaret's 2.1 first-semester GPA, a question about Terrie's grades, and his still-unplayed reel of tape from her (the recording speed has him puzzled; he'll try another machine). Talk of a possible Tet flare-up he doubts will amount to much. A flat statement of homesickness — 'God how I hate it over here. The army just isn't my bag' — and a closing question about whether the silverware has arrived yet.
What the letter is
14 January 1971, 1:45 a.m. Charlie isn’t on guard this time — he just can’t sleep, and writing is what he does with the sleeplessness. The news is one more turn of the drawdown rumor mill: no set 10-month tour after all, but big drops which are just as good. Around that, the small domestic furniture of the correspondence — grades, a reel of tape he can’t get to play, the silverware on its way home — and, dropped in plainly between them, the line that needs no decoration: God how I hate it over here.
Transcription
Jan 14
Dear Terrie,
Well here it is 1:45 in the morning. I’m not on guard but I might as well be since I can’t really sleep. There are still a lot of rumors going around but nothing definite except there is no set 10 month tour, just big drops which are just as good if the rumors pan out.
Well Margaret got a 2.1 for her first semester. I had fun in school but that is all that counts. How are you doing for grades?
Everyone is talking about [Tet] again this year. It may be true but I don’t think too much will happen. God how I hate it over here. The army just isn’t my bag.
I still haven’t heard all of your tape because the speed you used really has me puzzled. When it was [recorded at] two speeds — I’ll try it again on another machine.
Have you got the silverware yet? I guess I’ll close —
Love Charles
What the letter records
“God how I hate it over here. The army just isn’t my bag.” The plainest homesickness in the corpus, set down without drama between a note about grades and a note about a tape. It is 1:45 in the morning and he can’t sleep; the sentence has the unguarded flatness of the hour.
The silverware. One more piece of the married-life inventory Charlie was assembling by mail — the PACEX flatware that recurs across the winter letters, here just a question of whether it has reached home yet.
“Big drops which are just as good.” His read on the tour-length debate: he doesn’t care whether the Army cuts the official tour or simply keeps shortening his by fiat, so long as the number keeps falling.
Scans
