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letter
Letter to Terrie, c. January 1971 — the Da Nang base, marijuana, and GI life
Charlie's longest and most candid rear-area letter to Terrie, written from Da Nang in roughly mid-January 1971 and reconstructed here from pages that had been catalogued as two separate documents. The surviving pages give a civilian's-eye description of the Da Nang base (cheap untaxed booze, a beach GI section, a GI bar and larger PX, a 500–800-person headquarters on a peninsula between river and ocean, pro-government and mostly Catholic villagers, the marine and air-force bases across the river); an ARVN incident in which one soldier fired a shot in the air after an argument and another answered with a grenade that exploded 70 meters from a tower; the constant ARVN firing into the air and flares lighting the sky as they had at Christmas and New Year's; marijuana use among the troops (a few puffs 'back at Evans'), the kids selling drugs and buying GI cigarettes through the wire, and Charlie's view that marijuana isn't dangerous but that he avoids all smoking and army trouble; affectionate teasing about Terrie's finals and last semester; and intimate married-future planning. Charlie's refrain throughout is that, whatever the culture around him, he is 'still a good boy.' Intimate-register lines are elided per the collection's editorial policy.
What the letter is
Roughly mid-January 1971, from the Da Nang rear. This is the longest and most candid letter Charlie wrote — and for years it sat in the archive as two separate records, because its pages had come down through two different sources. Page 2 survived as a scan (dad151); page 3 survived both as a scan (dad117) and in a family PDF; page 4 turned up later in the dad-numbered scans. Read in order, they are obviously one letter: page 2 ends “Also they shoot off” and page 3 begins “a lot of flares.” What it adds up to is the closest thing in the corpus to an honest sociology of the war as Charlie lived it in the rear — the base, the drugs, the boredom, and his own careful self-positioning just outside all of it.
Transcription
[Page 1 — date and salutation; not yet identified in the surviving scans.]
[Page 2:] … booze rather cheap (no tax at all) and we can drink anywhere we want. I think I’ll go to the beach tomorrow (GI section). A few guys went today and had a good time. There is a GI bar there too with a larger PX. There are about 500–800 people on this base and it is a headquarters base. We are on a peninsula with the river on one side & ocean on the other with a narrow strip of land. There are a lot of Vietnamese around but they are pro-gov’t and mostly Catholic. The main city of Danang is across the river and so are the marine and air force bases. It is a very secure area. (The position I said was fired at wasn’t. A ARVN soldier had an argument with another and one fired a shot in the air and the other tossed a grenade which exploded 70 meters away from the tower. It is crazy and someone could get killed but no one was injured by it. We hear firing across the river in Danang all the time because the ARVN are firing in the air. Also they shoot off
[Page 3:] a lot of flares — It should get pretty noisy around [here] til as it was noisy on Xmas & New Year’s. They lit up the sky with flares.) I have only tried a few puffs of marijuana back at Evans and I was drunk at the time. I really don’t go for it and neither do most around me, but it is wide spread as are other drugs. The kids will try to sell it to us through the fence along with anything else they have to sell. Also they want to buy our cigarettes as it costs us 17¢ [a] pack and theirs around .95. As far as your thinking marijuana is dangerous, I don’t think so at all. I just hate smoking of all kinds and the army is cracking down on it and I don’t want any more trouble besides. If you tell your medic friend I said […]. Most everyone I know (married or not) […]. Well believe it or not I’m still a good boy as far as […] relations are concerned.
[Page 4:] What is all this bull about you loafing your last semester and me paying for it. You are really dreaming now aren’t you. Maybe I should stay over here an extra year to earn enough money to pay for all my expenses that will be waiting for me when I get back. I see you at least agree in writing to no pajamas. […] I’ll see whether you’re over that hangup when I get back or maybe Hawaii. [… a few lines on family planning are kept private at the family’s discretion …] Well I hope you do alright on your finals and finally become a senior. I doubt if you will ever graduate though. Keep plugging — maybe one of these years they might give you a diploma just to get rid of you. At least Lesher & Ferguson started two years before you and they are still in school.
[The letter’s closing page is not present in the surviving scans of this letter.]
What the letter records
The tourist’s eye. The 1970 field letters report operations; this one reports a base — the bar, the beach, the PX, the headcount, the geography — with the cataloguing eye of someone with time on his hands and nothing shooting at him. The contrast is the point: Charlie has been pulled out of the war’s tempo and is describing where he lives the way you’d describe a posting, not a battlefield.
The ARVN grenade. The day’s news, rear-area edition: two ARVN soldiers, an argument, a warning shot, a grenade 70 meters from a tower, nobody hurt. He files it the way he’d once filed contact reports — “it is crazy and someone could get killed but no one was injured by it” — a hazard now observed rather than lived.
Marijuana, and the careful distance. The only place in the corpus where Charlie writes at length about drugs in the ranks. His position is exact and characteristic: he doesn’t think marijuana is dangerous, he just hates smoking and won’t risk Army trouble so close to getting out. He places himself near the culture and consistently outside it — the same move he makes about sex (“I’m still a good boy”) and about the lifers he worked beside.
Editorial note. This letter’s intimate-register lines are elided above with […], consistent with the collection’s policy; the substantive, documentary content is kept intact. The letter was previously catalogued as two separate entries before its pages were recognized as a single physical letter and reconciled here.
Scans
