Dear Penelope,
I don’t have much time to write. The Lieutenant gave me some paper and pencil and told me whatever I write will be brought to you. At first I just placed the paper and pencil upon a crate within the bunker and just stared at the wall for a while, thinking of what to tell you.
It’s been three years now since I left home for the war, I remember that day amidst the grasslands south of the prairie, the way you’d looked with the crown of daffodils I’d placed gently on your head. I remember the laughter and the warmth of the sun and your skin. I remember weeping when the sun dipped in the horizon and its brilliant orange gave way to darkness. I knew it’d be a long time before I sat with you once more, I think that might be why I wept.
Or I wept because of fear. War and casualties go hand in hand, just the other day a Corporal from another division got his head blown off while loading a rocket launcher. I remember the look those around him had when the guy went down to his knees, face gone, brain matter all over the floor, bits of bone sticking out of the clothes of those standing closest to him. I remember looking at his blood and wondering whether mine was just as red. The wondering became an obsession to the point where I slit my palm with a pocket knife, I watched it well then drip down to my wrist and for all of me I thought my blood a tad bit too dark.
There are those who can’t sleep here, they wake up screaming and calling for their mothers. It’s a weird thing this, when walking a battlefield with your gun hoisted up in the aftermath of a battle, the injured and dying always call to their mothers. Yet very few letters leave the base to go to mothers, mostly it’s to women we want to build something with.
I don’t know if I’ll make it. I don’t know how to write letters. I’m supposed to be sweet, aren’t I? Talking about the autumn sky and the dry leaves that crunch beneath foot during the march. Or the way the sea is visible if one stood upon a hill and looked due East. You’ll see it then, open water reaching as far as the eye can see. It’s there that the fighting is thickest and it is there where I am to be deployed in a day’s time.
This story originates from Royal Road. Ensure the author gets the support they deserve by reading it there.
I’m not saying my fate is sealed. No, only God determines how long a man lives. Not the man wielding the gun nor the one charging at you with a riffle tip embedded with a knife. No, it’s God. I remember how you enjoyed talking of God, His mysteries and His divine purpose. You prayed for me then, out there in the prairie and when you finished you asked God to bring me back to you.
I want nothing more than to be by your side, but I fear I’ll tremble. War, my sweet Penelope, it does things to a man, you see the enemy everywhere, in the darkest creases of the night, beneath still water and on the coldest peaks. You see enemies and all you feel is fear and horror and a need to find peace.
Peace, out there in the prairie I felt it for a moment, felt it with every tag of your hand against my own. Maybe that’s why I wept? Because I knew it would be a long time before I see you again.
I’m sorry about how sombre this letter is but I was told I didn’t have much time, I will see them again, the enemy with their guns and explosives. I’ll see death, the farmer who picks fruit before its time. And if I I’m plucked from this world before I’ve ripened I wish to let you know that with you, I knew what love was. You enabled me to find out and if I return we shall wed and you will carry child and we shall grace the prairie one more time with our blessing held between us, and I’ll make two crowns of daffodils for the both of you. Shit, here I go weeping again.
Goodbye Penelope, await my letter and if it comes not, visit my grave.
Always Yours,
Sgt E. Griffin.
XXXXXXXXX
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