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Letter to Terrie, 24 January 1971 — sunburn, finals, and planning a March reunion in Hawaii or the U.S.
Charlie's letter to Terrie dated 24 January 1971, three days after the Camp-Evans-Feb-4 letter. Beach life: blistered back from football and tennis on the sand. Asks how Terrie's college finals went and whether she has finally made senior year. The parents — Will and Peggy — keep asking when his R&R will be, and Charlie writes plainly that he still thinks Hawaii is best for a reunion with Terrie, framing the trip as something his parents will find out about sooner or later. Plans for a March 1971 meeting in Hawaii or the United States — the post-tour homecoming, planned in advance — close out the letter.
What the letter is
24 January 1971. Three days after the Camp-Evans-Feb-4 letter and five days after the ETS-extension strategy letter. Still in the rear, still on the beach. Terrie’s college finals at the University of Maryland have just finished. The letter is short, domestic, half-jocular in the way Charlie’s late-tour letters often are.
Transcription
Jan 24
Dear Terrie,
Well by now finals are over and grades whatever you about to be out. How did you do? I thought you were a senior at long last.
We’ve been getting out in the sun lately. My back is blistered and so are parts of my legs. We’ve played football on the beach and today I played tennis half the afternoon.
It is unreal to believe I’m in the army. I still hate it and long to be free. No change in the [?] or [?] looking — into things, if you are still interested. If I go back to the beach I’ll send you a few photos of it. How would March work without you?
If [the] others are no hope it probably would be the best time for me. My parents keep asking me when I’ll be going for R&R as I still think Hawaii is best for you. If we [meet] there they would find out sooner or later, so there is no reason hiding anything.
You having trouble cashing my $260 check, but it should be worked out tomorrow so I’ll probably order me stereos tomorrow. I hope everything goes well for you and hopefully we’ll get together sometime in March either in Hawaii or U.S.
Love, Charles
(Handwriting on several phrases is hard to read clearly; the [?] markers are uncertain readings.)
What the letter records
Terrie’s finals at Maryland. “Well by now finals are over.” Terrie was at the University of Maryland, College Park — the Bachelor’s program she would complete before her later Master’s. The fall 1970 semester finals ran roughly mid-December through mid-January; Charlie’s “by now finals are over” fits a late-January letter exactly. “I thought you were a senior at long last” is his teasing — the half-affectionate suggestion that her college years had been longer than expected.
The March 1971 reunion planning. Charlie’s 19 January ETS-extension letter had calculated 147 days left if he extended his tour by 32–33 days. By that math his ETS — his discharge from the Army — would land in mid-to-late March 1971. The letter’s planning for a March reunion “in Hawaii or U.S.” is therefore a post-tour homecoming meeting, not a wartime R&R — Hawaii would be the stopover on his way home, and the U.S. would be wherever they could meet once he had landed. The two possibilities are kept open here pending whatever the Army’s final discharge paperwork looks like.
The continuing Hawaii-reunion conflict with the parents. “My parents keep asking me when I’ll be going for R&R as I still think Hawaii is best for you. If we [meet] there they would find out sooner or later, so there is no reason hiding anything.” The April 1970 letter that Charlie wrote about the Wildermuth-side objection to Hawaii on propriety grounds — Terrie was unmarried and would be meeting her soldier-boyfriend at a hotel for a week — had its mirror image on the Eesley side, where Will and Peggy were also asking questions about the Hawaii plan. Charlie writes plainly that he is not going to hide the trip from his parents: “there is no reason hiding anything.” Nine months on from the April 1970 letter, his tone on the Hawaii question has shifted from defensive to matter-of-fact.
The $260 check and the stereo. Charlie was sending money home and Terrie was helping him manage it across the Pacific. The “I’ll probably order me stereos tomorrow” line is the smaller register of the late-tour mood — the post-Army life is close enough now that he is shopping for the equipment that will fill the apartment he has not yet rented in the city he has not yet moved to. The stereo is the same one his eulogy from 2015 names as “his only prized possession … his first purchase after getting back from Vietnam.” It was purchased, in the literal sense, from Vietnam.
Sequence with the surrounding letters
| Date | Letter | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| 19 Jan 1971 | ETS-extension strategy | Decision to extend tour by 32–33 days to ETS from Vietnam |
| 21 Jan 1971 | Camp Evans Feb 4 return | Unit reassembly at Camp Evans, 145 days left, Godfather during malaria |
| 24 Jan 1971 | This letter | Sunburn, Terrie’s finals, March 1971 reunion plans |
| 10 Feb 1971 | Charlie writes from Da Nang; Peggy’s congressional letter | The Camp Eagle extension paperwork reaches Congressman Miller |
The three January 1971 letters together are the longest densely-dated stretch in the corpus — a four-day window of beach-base routine in the final weeks of the tour.
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