← Part of Letters from Vietnam
letter
Letter to Terrie, 29 March 1971 — 'Please get your ticket under (Mrs. Eesley) to save money'
Charlie's short letter to Terrie dated 29 March 1971 — confirms the Hawaii R&R is on, four days after Operation Lam Son 719 closed (25 March 1971). The R&R window is set: arrival 12 April, departure 19 April. Charlie tells Terrie to book her ticket under 'Mrs. Eesley' for the military-spouse fare reduction — the same convention they had been planning around since the [22 March R&R orders letter](/docs/letters/charlie-to-terrie-1971-03-22/) a week earlier. $100 has been sent with a money-order receipt enclosed. 77 days left in the army puts the ETS at 14 June 1971, holding the [4 February target](/docs/letters/charlie-to-terrie-1971-02-04-laos-fore-warning/) exactly. Closes 'Everything is fine here with 77 days left.'
What the letter is
29 March 1971. Four days after Operation Lam Son 719 closed (25 March 1971), Charlie writes a brief practical letter telling Terrie the Hawaii R&R window is locked in: arrival 12 April, departure 19 April. The 1 March letter had been doubting whether the R&R would happen at all. The 4 February letter had projected an April-or-so window. By 29 March, with Lam Son 719 over and the I Corps operational tempo dropping back, the trip could be booked.
Per Chuck (June 2026), this is the one Hawaii meet-up of the whole tour. Charlie may have had a solo 1970 R&R somewhere (Bangkok, Sydney, Tokyo, or in-country) but the one extended time with Terrie was this April 1971 trip. The spring “1970” Hawaii letters — the March 15 catch-up letters, the 22 March R&R orders, the 31 March R&R planning, the April 2-3 parental conflict, April 5 Peggy-suggested marriage, and 29 May 17-days-left — are all part of the long spring-1971 lead-up to and aftermath of this trip, not a separate 1970 plan as the archive had previously framed them.
Transcription
March 29
Dear Terrie,
Please get your ticket under (Mrs. Eesley) to save money. Get it for your arrival to be on the 12th of April and leave on the 19th. Late in the day. I guess that would be best.
I got paid today and have sent you $100 as I said I would. Enclosed is my receipt for you to keep until you get the money.
Everything is fine here with 77 days left.
Love, Charles
What the letter records
The Mrs. Eesley fare convention. “Please get your ticket under (Mrs. Eesley) to save money.” The same paperwork convention from the 22 March R&R orders letter and the 31 March R&R planning letter — Terrie travels under “Mrs. Eesley” to access the reduced military-spouse airfare, even though they were not yet married. Peggy had presumably worked out the trick from her own military-spouse experience and passed it on. Charlie’s parenthetical “(Mrs. Eesley)” in his own handwriting is the small piece of administrative shorthand he was passing forward to Terrie verbatim.
The April 12-19 window. The R&R was now formally booked into a one-week window starting Monday 12 April 1971 and closing Monday 19 April 1971. “Late in the day. I guess that would be best.” Charlie’s preference for a late-day arrival was the practical one — soldiers on R&R coordinated their leave with the receiving partner’s travel, and a late-day arrival gave Terrie the daytime hours to land and check into the hotel before he arrived. The destination is Hawaii, the standard 101st Airborne R&R venue throughout the war and the place the parental-conflict letters had been arguing about for weeks.
$100 sent, receipt enclosed. “I got paid today and have sent you $100 as I said I would. Enclosed is my receipt for you to keep until you get the money.” The standard pattern of soldier money orders home runs through the corpus — from the 15 March financial-accounting letter (“$100 Mar 1 or so”) to the 29 May 17-days-left letter ($260 check Terrie had trouble cashing) to here. The Vietnam tour was, among other things, an extended exercise in accumulating savings that would let them start their post-tour life with capital in hand.
77 days left. “Everything is fine here with 77 days left.” 77 days from 29 March 1971 puts the ETS at Tuesday 14 June 1971 — exactly the 4 February 1971 target that he had refined from the 19 January ETS-extension strategy. The 14 June ETS held all the way through.
Sequence with surrounding letters
| Date | Letter | What it records |
|---|---|---|
| 15 Mar 1971 | Six catch-up letters | Mail backlog catching up at Da Nang |
| 22 Mar 1971 | R&R orders | The orders are in |
| 26 Mar 1971 | Dorothy ‘utterly sick’ | Wildermuth-side propriety objection lands |
| 29 Mar 1971 | This letter | R&R confirmed, 12-19 April window booked, $100 sent |
| 2-3 Apr 1971 | Hawaii-propriety letter | Charlie reacts to Dorothy’s objection |
| 5 Apr 1971 | Mom suggested Hawaii marriage | Peggy’s marriage-in-Hawaii bypass |
| 12-19 Apr 1971 | (R&R week itself, no letters in the archive) | The Hawaii meet-up |
| 29 May 1971 | 17 days left | 17 days to ETS |
| 14 Jun 1971 | (ETS, end of army) | Charlie home |
The 29 March letter is the resolution of the Lam Son 719 R&R uncertainty thread. The Laos invasion had not, in the end, cancelled the trip. The 14 June ETS was holding. The army’s calendar and the family’s calendar were back in sync for the last time.
Source: grandmaE1.pdf page 90 (gitignored locally; transcribed content surfaced here).
Scans
