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Letter to Terrie, 29 May 1971 — 'I'm back from Saigon... 17 days left'
Charlie's letter to Terrie dated 29 May 1971 — written just after a stand-down or in-country trip to Saigon, with seventeen days remaining until the Hawaii R&R rendezvous that the 22 March letter had begun coordinating. He is teasing about her semester-end finals, planning the trip in detail again, and writing about wanting to see her. One of the immediately-pre-R&R letters in the corpus.
What the letter is
29 May 1971. Charlie writes from somewhere in I Corps after a trip back to Saigon — possibly a stand-down or an in-country errand at the rear. He has seventeen days to go until the Hawaii R&R rendezvous he and Terrie spent the 22 March letter coordinating, and the count is the structure of the letter.
He has heard Terrie wasn’t getting his mail — a recurring grievance in the corpus — and reassures her several are on the way. He teases her about not finishing her semester with a 3.0 GPA, “the shock would be too great.” Two months after the orders, the operational details of the trip are still being worked out: a motel room rather than her staying with his parents in Marietta. He signs off “Love Charles.”
Transcription
May 29
Dear Terrie,
I’m back from Saigon and everything is fine. I’m sorry to hear you weren’t getting my mail. You should be getting quite a few. 17 days left and we won’t have any of these problems.
[…] Maybe instead of staying at my parents house you should get a motel room. Just a wild thought. I assume you are going to be there. I will be very angry if you are not there.
I hope the rest of the finals go alright. Don’t get a 3.0, the shock would be too great.
Love Charles
Where this sits in the tour
The 22 March 1970 letter set up the R&R rendezvous; this 29 May letter is the immediately-pre-R&R counter. Seventeen days from 29 May puts the meeting at roughly 15 June 1970 — the week that bridges the 22 June 1970 letter Charlie writes from back in the field a few days after Hawaii ended, where he refers to the trip in the past tense and to her father’s softening attitude.
The Saigon detail is small but telling: a soldier on a 101st Airborne tour in I Corps would have to be at the rear or routed through Tan Son Nhut to be in Saigon — an in-country logistical or stand-down trip, not the field. The brief reference is also the kind of detail that motivates the Saigon place page, where Chuck’s own 2011 visit pairs against his father’s 1969–71 tour.
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