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letter
Letter to Terrie, 8 February 1971 — 'I finally got a clerk job'
Charlie's letter to Terrie dated 8 February 1971 — the day his tour materially changed. He has 'finally got a clerk job' at Camp Eagle, the 101st Airborne Division headquarters about three miles from Phu Bai, and calls it 'a relatively safe place.' He confirms he is definitely extending to get out of the army on 14 June, says it is probably one of the harder clerk jobs but he doesn't care, and is glad to be indoors out of miserable weather. There is no fixed date yet for his R&R, so he asks Terrie to name times that would suit her. He closes with his new division-HQ mailing address (HHC, 101st Abn Div, Office Chief of Staff, APO SF 96383) and a promise to write again once he is settled.
What the letter is
8 February 1971. This is the hinge of Charlie’s tour. After months of angling for it — the extension math of the 19 January letter, the warning that Laos was coming in the 4 February letter — he has finally got a clerk job, and at Camp Eagle, the headquarters of the entire 101st Airborne Division. He calls it a relatively safe place and a harder clerk job, and he doesn’t care which: indoors, out of the field, out of the weather. The plan is now locked: extend the tour so he can discharge straight from Vietnam on 14 June. He sends his new HQ address and asks Terrie, once more, to pick R&R dates that work for her.
Transcription
Feb 8
Dear Terrie,
I finally got a clerk job and I’m definitely going to extend to get out of the army Jun 14. I’ll be at Camp Eagle about 3 miles from Phu Bai and in a relatively safe place. It is probably one of the harder clerk jobs but I don’t care.
The weather is miserable so I’m glad I’ll be indoors.
There is no rush or even definite time set for me to go on R&R so name some appropriate times you may want.
I’ll write again as soon as I get situated.
My address: [service number withheld] / HHC, 101st Abn Div / Office Chief of Staff / APO SF 96383
Love Charles
What the letter records
“I finally got a clerk job.” The single most consequential sentence of the winter letters. Everything in the surrounding correspondence — the extension to a 14 June ETS, the move to Da Nang, the “brass and lifers” he typed about a month later — flows from this posting. From here to the end of the tour Charlie is a rear-area clerk at division headquarters, not a rifleman, and the change is audible in the letters that follow: the war becomes something he reads about on a map rather than something he is standing in.
“It is probably one of the harder clerk jobs but I don’t care.” The trade he is happy to make: more demanding desk work in exchange for being out of the field. Difficulty was never the thing he was trying to escape; danger was.
“Name some appropriate times you may want.” Even on the day he secures the safe job, the R&R-with-Terrie planning continues — the thread that would run all the way to the June rendezvous in Hawaii. With no fixed date imposed on him yet, he hands the scheduling to her.
The address. His return address places him squarely at division HQ — HHC, 101st Abn Div, Office Chief of Staff, APO SF 96383. His individual service number, which appeared at the top of the address block, is withheld here in keeping with the archive’s privacy policy; the unit and APO are preserved as historical record.
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