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letter
Letter to Terrie, 3 February 1971 — 'Staying here in Danang til March 5 and maybe even longer. It is all too good to be true.'
Charlie's short letter to Terrie dated 3 February 1971 — written from Da Nang the day before the [4 February Laos fore-warning letter](/docs/letters/charlie-to-terrie-1971-02-04-laos-fore-warning/). Confirms his stay through March 5 and possibly longer; reports 131 days left in the army (28 of them right there in Da Nang); explains he will use his R&R *after* getting back to the field rather than before, to extend his time out of the field; closes with 'My address is still here at Danang.'
What the letter is
3 February 1971. Charlie writes Terrie a short note from Da Nang — one day before the 4 February Laos fore-warning letter, and within the same Da Nang-rear-area stay that would eventually run all the way through the 1 March Lam Son 719 letter. The letter is brief and almost relieved in its register: Charlie reads his current Da Nang assignment as a real piece of luck.
Transcription
Feb 3
Dear Terrie,
It seems that we will be staying here in Danang til March 5 and maybe even longer. It is all too good to be true. I plan to extend as soon as I can so as of now if all goes well I have 131 days left in the army with 28 of them right here. R&R will be postponed til April probably. I love you but this is too good an opportunity to get out of the field and I’ll use my R&R after I get back to the field so I can keep out of the field some more.
My address is still here at Danang.
Love, Charles
What the letter records
The Da Nang stay through March 5. “Staying here in Danang til March 5 and maybe even longer. It is all too good to be true.” The Da Nang rear-area position — an air-conditioned office, no field rotation, library and PX nearby — was, by January-February 1971, the safest assignment a 101st Airborne soldier with under 200 days left could have hoped for. The line “too good to be true” is the small honest read: Charlie expected the assignment to be revoked at any moment, and was treating each additional day as a quiet windfall.
131 days left, 28 in Da Nang. The countdown thread again: by the 19 January letter he had been counting at the ETS-extension level; by 3 February the 14-June target had stabilized into 131 days left, of which 28 were already banked at Da Nang.
R&R after the field, not before. “This is too good an opportunity to get out of the field and I’ll use my R&R after I get back to the field so I can keep out of the field some more.” The R&R-timing logic is the small strategic note. In the standard Vietnam-tour pattern, R&R was a one-week stand-down used at the soldier’s discretion; Charlie was reading the timing as a tool to extend his rear-area assignment by another week, banking the R&R for a later moment when staying in Da Nang would have stopped being possible. The strategic instinct is consistent with the 19 January 1971 ETS-extension calculus — Charlie was, throughout the spring of 1971, working every piece of the Army’s procedure he could to keep himself off the firebase rotation.
The address is still Danang. The closing line is administrative — a note to Terrie that mail should keep going to the Da Nang address, not be re-routed to a field address — but it is also the practical confirmation of the same stay-of-execution he is reading the rest of the letter through.
Sequence with surrounding letters
| Date | Letter | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| 29 Jan 1971 | (still in batch, not yet ingested) | 136 days left, monsoons still on |
| 30 Jan 1971 | (still in batch, not yet ingested) | Pay-day mix-up, $850 stereo near complete |
| 3 Feb 1971 | This letter | Da Nang through March 5, 131 days left, R&R-after-the-field strategy |
| 4 Feb 1971 | Laos fore-warning | ”Don’t be surprised when you hear about Laos being invaded” |
| 10 Feb 1971 | Da Nang letter; Peggy congressional letter | Camp Eagle extension paperwork |
| 1 Mar 1971 | Lam Son 719 in progress | Operation underway |
The 3 February letter sits one day before the 4 February letter. The Laos fore-warning was already being thought through on 3 February — this letter doesn’t say so, but the next day’s letter would put it in writing. The shape of the Da Nang stay was, by 3 February, fully understood: stay through early March, possibly longer, on the Laos operation timetable.
Source: grandmaE1.pdf page 65 (gitignored locally; transcribed content surfaced here).
Scans
