Letter to Terrie, 1 March 1971 — 'A lot of guys are going to get killed. I'm really glad that I'm out of the field.'

What the letter is

1 March 1971. Three weeks into Operation Lam Son 719, the U.S.-supported ARVN incursion into Laos that Charlie had warned Terrie was coming in his 4 February 1971 letter. The campaign was, by 1 March, already in the deteriorating phase that would close it on 25 March with substantial ARVN casualties and a withdrawal that the public reading framed as a setback for Vietnamization.

Charlie was in Da Nang, in an air-conditioned office, with most of his unit moved up to Quang Tri. He had been left behind to pull CQ (Charge of Quarters) — an administrative night-watch duty — while the campaign ran its course up north. The slack day let him sit down at a typewriter. The result is the longest typed letter in the corpus and the most sustained piece of Vietnam-war-commentary in Charlie’s own voice.

Transcription

1 March 1971

Dear Terrie,

Most everyone here is or has moved up to Quang Tri and things are very quiet around here. If everyone goes it seems that I will be left behind to pull CQ here in this office. I wouldn’t be working very hard but I would have to be here. If the mission up north takes as long as it seems it might to be, I may not be able to make it to Hawaii. It seems that the damn army is going for broke on this campaign that is now in progress. A lot of guys are going to get killed. I’m really glad that I’m out of the field. I plan to sign up for R&R for Hawaii anyway on the dates you want but right now the chances don’t seem too good. I doubt if I will get a chance to go on R&R at all. I know I could insist but that really wouldn’t be right. If Hawaii doesn’t work out maybe when I get back we could just go some place for a week or so. I kind of like the idea of going to Cape Hatteras (sp) North Carolina. I should be able to afford that very easily if I can’t go on R&R.

What is new? Did you ever get your grade changed in your Shakespere course? It is really starting to get hot again over here. The rain has stopped. I guess the guys down in Da Nang should be coming back up to their companies pretty soon. I really feel sorry for the guys going back out to the field. This office is airconditioned so actually I don’t have it bad at all. Today has been a very slack day which is why I can type this letter. They have a library here too which isn’t too bad and I can get all the magazines I want. It takes quite a while for letters to reach here but I guess I will survive. There is nothing I need now except letters so save your money. I am bored but I will be able to survive with just 105 more days to go. It has been a long year. I still have a fairly long way to go but at least the end is in sight. Well I can’t think of anything else to say now so I guess I’ll close.

Love, Charles

What the letter records

The Lam Son 719 commentary. “It seems that the damn army is going for broke on this campaign that is now in progress. A lot of guys are going to get killed. I’m really glad that I’m out of the field.” The 4 February letter had warned the operation was coming. This letter, three weeks in, reports the operation’s character: going for broke, with high casualties on the ARVN side that Charlie could see being reflected in U.S. air-support requests, ammunition deliveries, and medevac routings through Da Nang. The line “I’m really glad that I’m out of the field” is the small honest piece of self-knowledge Charlie consistently writes; he was a draftee who had not gone to war voluntarily, and he was relieved to be in a rear office rather than at the spear-tip of a campaign that was going poorly.

The campaign would close on 25 March 1971 with substantial ARVN losses (the public-record range is roughly 1,500–7,500 ARVN dead) and a U.S.-public reading that the incursion had failed to meet its operational objectives. Charlie’s 1 March reading — that the army was going for broke and that a lot of guys would die — was accurate.

The R&R question, now nearly closed. “I plan to sign up for R&R for Hawaii anyway on the dates you want but right now the chances don’t seem too good. I doubt if I will get a chance to go on R&R at all.” The R&R that had been the family-and-propriety crisis of March-April 1971, and that had eventually happened in mid-June 1970, was being planned because of his ETS extension. By 1 March 1971, with the Laos campaign drawing resources, the chances of the R&R clearing the army’s leave system were dropping. Charlie’s “I know I could insist but that really wouldn’t be right” — the moral note from a soldier who could have pulled the rank-and-procedure strings to push his leave through but chose not to while his unit was running an operation — is one of the small ethical moments of the corpus.

Cape Hatteras, North Carolina. “If Hawaii doesn’t work out maybe when I get back we could just go some place for a week or so. I kind of like the idea of going to Cape Hatteras (sp) North Carolina.” The proposed civilian post-tour Cape-Hatteras week is the lowest-stakes destination in the entire R&R correspondence — a state-park-and-beach drive of about ten hours from Maryland, no military paperwork required, no parental-propriety problem because by then they would either be married or about to be. The “(sp)” parenthetical — Charlie checking his own spelling of Hatteras in the middle of typing a serious letter — is one of the small careful notes that runs through his voice across the corpus.

Terrie’s Shakespeare course. “Did you ever get your grade changed in your Shakespere course?” The reference is to Terrie’s University of Maryland Shakespeare course of the previous semester — presumably the same incomplete he had asked her about in the 15 March 1971 letter. Whether she ever finished the Shakespeare course’s missing work, and whether the incomplete became a real letter grade, is an open question in this archive.

The air-conditioned office. The small register the letter sits in — the typed font, the multiple paragraphs, the longer-and-more-thought-out sentences than the handwritten letters — is the register of someone with time on his hands, a typewriter, and a library down the hall. “This office is airconditioned so actually I don’t have it bad at all. Today has been a very slack day which is why I can type this letter.” The contrast with the field is explicit. The remove from the field is what the letter is finally about.

105 more days to go. The countdown thread continues. By his 4 February calculation he had 150 days; on 1 March he reports 105. The 14 June ETS target holds.

Sequence with surrounding letters

The Laos thread — from the 4 February fore-warning through the 1 March commentary — is the most sustained piece of war-commentary in Charlie’s own voice that the corpus contains.

Source: grandmaE1.pdf page 28 (gitignored locally; transcribed content surfaced here). Operation Lam Son 719 was launched 8 February 1971 and closed 25 March 1971, four days after this letter.