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letter
Letter to Terrie, 2 May 1971 — '43 days left, or 33 working days'
Charlie's letter to Terrie dated 2 May 1971. Rain all day; he worked the night before, got the day off, and slept it away — which, he notes, makes the time go faster. The count is down to 43 days left, or 33 working days. His letter to Sears should have arrived by now, and if that arrangement works out they won't need her parents or his. News from home: his parents finally got their loan paid off, the last he'd heard they still owed $12,000, and he figures they are relieved. He tells Terrie to keep studying and wishes he were back in school instead of in Vietnam.
What the letter is
2 May 1971. The Lam Son crisis is well behind him now; this is the small domestic weather of a tour running out. It rained all day. He worked the night before, took the day off, and slept it away — it makes time go faster that way. The count has tightened into the grammar every short-timer eventually adopts: not 43 days but 33 working days. The forward-looking business of the letter is the Sears letter, an arrangement that, if it comes through, would mean the couple won’t need to lean on either set of parents. And there is a flash of his parents’ life in Marietta: they finally paid off a loan that had stood at $12,000, and he imagines their relief.
Transcription
May 2
Dear Terrie,
It has been raining all day. I had to work last night so I got today off and just slept. It makes time go faster that way. 43 days left or 33 working days. My letter should be at Sears by now. If that works out we won’t need your parents or mine. My parents wrote and it seems they finally got the loan paid off. The last I heard they still owed 12,000. I guess they are relieved. Keep studying. I wish I was back in school and not here. Not much else to say.
Love Charles
What the letter records
The Sears letter. One of the practical threads of the late letters: an arrangement — most likely a credit or charge account — that Charlie is setting up so that he and Terrie can furnish a married life on their own terms, without needing your parents or mine. Financial independence from both families was clearly part of how he imagined starting out, and it runs alongside the PACEX purchases he discusses a week later.
“I wish I was back in school and not here.” Charlie’s eye is already past the Army. The wish to be a student again rather than a soldier is the forward edge of the life he is counting down toward — he would, in time, build a career far from the war that produced these letters.
His parents’ $12,000 loan. A rare window onto Will and Peggy Eesley’s household economy in Marietta during these years — a substantial debt finally cleared, and Charlie reading their relief from the other side of the world.
Scans
