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letter
Letter to Terrie, undated — the first day of basic training, KP from 3:30 AM
Charlie's letter to Terrie from the first day of Army basic training (undated on the page). His turn on KP has already come up on day one — from 3:30 AM when they wake the trainees to 7:00 PM when they're let go — but tomorrow will be regular basic and he won't be back on KP for five weeks. The physical part isn't so hard, he says; it's the fact that everyone has to do everything together. Passing news: the last he heard, Terry Morris was alright; he wrote her another letter Friday but left his return address off, and the Army won't send a letter out without it. He lives in a barracks — not so bad, though there are much better places. If she sees Jay Schiavo, he doesn't have Jay's new address but will write him in New Jersey. He thanks her for the stamps and will write later. Opens 'Dear Terry' (spelled without the -ie). Signed 'Love, Charles.'
What the letter is
The first day of basic training, and one of the earliest letters in the whole correspondence: Charlie has been in the Army for a matter of hours and his turn on KP has already landed. It is the beginning of the road that ends in Vietnam, written before any of it, the young man from Marietta finding out what the Army is going to be, one 3:30 AM wake-up at a time. The tone is even and dry, the same voice the war letters carry, applied here to the first indignity of Army life.
Transcription
Dear Terry,
First day of basic and I find it is my turn on K.P. from 3:30 AM when they wake you up till 7:00 PM when they let us go. Tomorrow will be regular basic and I won’t have to be back in K.P. for 5 weeks. The physical part isn’t so hard. It is the fact that everyone has to do it together.
The last I heard Terry Morris was alright. I have another letter written to you Friday without my return address on it and it seems they won’t send it out without it on the letter.
Yes I live in a barracks and although it isn’t so bad there are much much better places.
If you see Jay Schiavo tell him I don’t have his new address but will send him a letter in N.J.
Thanks for the stamps and I’ll write later.
Love Charles
What the letter records
KP on day one. “First day of basic and I find it is my turn on K.P. from 3:30 AM… till 7:00 PM.” Kitchen Police — the all-day mess-hall labor detail — landing on the literal first day is the Army’s opening lesson, and Charlie reports it flatly. The small consolation he finds (“I won’t have to be back in K.P. for 5 weeks”) is the short-timer’s arithmetic already starting, on day one of a two-year road.
“Everyone has to do it together.” “The physical part isn’t so hard. It is the fact that everyone has to do it together.” The first note of the theme that runs through every training and war letter to come: not the physical demand but the total loss of individual control, the Army’s remaking of a person into part of a unit. It’s the same complaint, in embryo, as the “it is all so petty” and “I’m really beginning to hate the army” of the later training letters.
The people back home. Terry Morris, Jay Schiavo (moving to New Jersey), the stamps Terrie sent, the return-address rule that grounded a letter — the small network of home the mail carried, still close on the first day. The correspondence with Terrie that would survive the whole tour is here at its very start, “Thanks for the stamps and I’ll write later.”
“Dear Terry.” The opening spells her name Terry rather than the Terrie of the later letters — an early-days spelling before the form settled, small evidence of how new the writing-to-each-other still was.
Scans
