Letter from the Front

Belgium, October 1917

My dearest Rose,

I have started this letter three times already and torn each beginning away from itself. Not because I do not know what to say, but because every opening feels like a lie. “I hope you are well” is too small. “I miss you” is too familiar. “I am still alive” feels like tempting fate, and I have learned not to tempt anything out here. Time behaves strangely in this place. It looks orderly from a distance, but up close it carries different weight. Some days collapse under their own meaning. Others survive everything.

It has been nearly six months since I last saw you. I count it that way because it sounds orderly, with time behaving like something that could still be stacked and measured. In truth, I no longer know how long it has been. Days do not pass so much as they accumulate. They press down on one another until you cannot tell which one you are standing on. I wake up already tired of yesterday. I go to sleep bracing for tomorrow. Somewhere in between, I remember you.

I remember you most clearly in moments when I am not thinking of you at all. That may sound wrong, but it is true. When I am busy — cleaning my rifle, sharing a cigarette, tying a bootlace — something of you slips in without warning. The angle of your head when you listen. The way you pause before answering, measuring whether honesty will be allowed. I do not summon these memories. They arrive on their own, and they do not ask whether I am prepared.

I think of the children constantly. Not as they are now — I cannot picture that with any accuracy — but as they were when I last held them. Mary serious and watchful, already more aware than a child should be. John full of questions, most of them unanswerable even then. And Ann, still so small that her presence felt more like a responsibility than a personality, though I know that is unfair. She had a way of gripping my finger as if she were anchoring herself to the world. I wonder who anchors her now.

I hope you will forgive me if this letter wanders. It is difficult to hold a straight line of thought here. Everything pulls sideways. Noise, memory, fatigue. Even the ground seems unwilling to stay still.

Out here, we are all pals. That phrase is used so often it risks sounding cheap, but it is not. It is exact. What one man has, the other has not. What one man lacks, the other supplies. Food, warmth, silence. Fear, too, though we pretend otherwise. We share that most carefully. You would not believe the humanity between men out here. Or perhaps you would. Perhaps you have seen its other face at home, in the way women look after one another when there is no one else to do it, in the way endurance becomes communal when it has no choice.

I have learned that companionship does not require liking. It requires attention. You watch one another closely, not out of affection, but out of necessity. If a man begins to fray, someone notices. If someone does not come back when expected, we do not speak of it immediately. We wait, because waiting has become a form of respect.

I was in hospital for a time, as you know. Nothing to trouble you with now. I am back among the boys. Or perhaps it is more accurate to say I am present again. “Back” suggests a return to something intact. Very little remains intact here. Most of the fellows from the 7th Battalion who came out with me have gone under. That is the phrase we use. Gone under. As if they slipped beneath the surface of something and might rise again if we waited long enough. We wait. They do not.

There is a man I want to tell you about, though you may remember him from an earlier letter. We called him Shorty, though there was nothing short about him except his patience. He used to talk about a girl named Hilda. He spoke of her with such certainty that it felt improper, like a future he assumed was already settled. He planned to marry her. He said that when we all got back to England, he would bring her to meet you. He said you would like her. He said she would like you. He talked as though introductions were guarantees.

Shorty is dead. I am writing that plainly because anything else would be dishonest. He was killed during an advance that did not advance anything at all. As far as I know, he has no grave. He lies somewhere in the open.

When I think of Hilda now, I think not of her grief, but of her future. I think of all the sentences that will begin with “He would have liked this” or “He never got to see that.” I think of how she will carry a man forward who cannot carry her back. It is a strange kind of companionship, loving someone who is no longer available to disappoint you.

I tell you this not to burden you, but because keeping it inside feels wrong. Grief does not improve when stored. It curdles. Out here, we learn quickly what must be shared and what must be endured alone. The line between the two is never where you expect it.

Sometimes I wonder what it is we are meant to take from all this. Not in the grand sense — I have abandoned that — but in the smaller, more dangerous sense. What lesson slips into a man quietly, without ceremony, until one day he realises he has changed and cannot say when it happened. I am less certain than I was. I am also less troubled by that fact. I do not know whether that is wisdom or exhaustion.

The days are full of noise, but the nights are worse. At night, there is room for thought. Memory stretches its legs. I find myself thinking of home in fragments. The table where we ate. The sound of your footsteps moving from one room to another. The way you folded laundry with unnecessary precision, as if order itself were a virtue. I never thanked you for that. For the steadiness of it. For the way you held things together without announcing the effort.

I worry about practicalities, though I try not to. Coal. Food. Money. I imagine you making do, because you always have. I imagine you telling the children that I am busy, that I will write soon, that everything is under control. I know that tone. I have used it myself. It is the voice of reassurance spoken to oneself.

We are expecting to go up again in a few days. I say that as a statement, not as a warning. “Going up” is a phrase that disguises more than it reveals. It suggests movement. Purpose. What it really means is exposure. We prepare because preparation gives the illusion of agency. Boots cleaned, equipment checked, letters written, in the hope that readiness might still matter.

I do not ask you to pray for me in the way I once might have. Prayer, I have learned, is not a transaction. There is no exchange rate that makes sense here. If you pray, let it be for your own steadiness. That may matter more than my safety.

I have thought about what it would mean not to come back. Not in a melodramatic way. Not as a rehearsal for death. More as a matter of accuracy. The possibility exists. It would be dishonest to pretend otherwise. What matters to me is not how it happens, but what remains if it does.

If I do not return, I want you to know that I did not leave things undone on purpose. I did not withhold affection to save it for later. I did not postpone love in anticipation of a better time. What we had, we had fully. That must be enough.

Do not preserve me for the children as a lesson. Let me remain a man who loved them and went away and did not come back soon enough. Do not make my absence into a moral. Absence is already greedy. It does not need encouragement.

I find myself thinking less about heroism and more about endurance. Heroism is loud. Endurance is quiet and continuous. It does not announce itself. It simply persists until it cannot. I have seen very brave men do very small things. Share a cigarette. Hold a hand. Stay awake with someone who cannot sleep. These acts do not look like courage from a distance, but they are.

There is a strange kindness among us here, born of proximity and fear. We know too much about one another. There is no room left for pretence. You cry if you need to. You laugh when something ridiculous occurs, even if it is inappropriate. Especially if it is inappropriate. Laughter, I have learned, is not disrespect. It is survival.

I think of you when I laugh. I imagine your expression — that mixture of amusement and reproach — when I would find humour in something you thought unworthy of it. You were often right. I did not always admit that.

I want to tell you something that may sound cold, but it is not meant that way. Love does not always survive by continuing. Sometimes it survives by stopping cleanly. By refusing to rot. If there comes a time when remembering me interferes with your living, choose living. I would rather be released than preserved incorrectly.

If one day you are happy again, do not apologise to my memory. I will not be listening. Memory does not require loyalty. Only honesty.

The children will grow whether I am there or not. That is both comforting and unbearable. Let them grow past me if they need to. Let them contradict whatever image they form of me. I do not wish to be fixed. I wish them to be free.

I have tried to imagine you reading this letter. Where you might be sitting. What time of day it might arrive. Whether you will read it once straight through or pause halfway, as you sometimes do, to look out of the window. I hope the house is quiet when you do. I hope you are not rushed.

There is so much I have not said. There always would have been. That is not a failure. That is simply how lives fit together — imperfectly, with overlap and omission.

I am tired now. Not only in the body, though that too, but in a deeper place. A place where arguments lose their urgency. Where outcomes feel less personal. I do not know whether this is peace or resignation. Perhaps the difference no longer matters.

If I am given more time, I will write again. If I am not, let this stand. Not as an explanation, but as a record of attention. I was here. I thought of you. I did not look away.

Goodnight, my love.

God bless you and the children.

Whatever happens next, I release it.

Your husband,

Will