I hope you’ll continue sending them.
I know John has written to you all about me and our buddy Tom. So I won’t bore you with the kinds of trivialities that read like a resume. Tom said that girls like to hear about what we’re feeling and there’s plenty of that to share.
So here you go. A slice from the life of a soldier far from his own shores.
Have you ever given thought to what lies outside of that which you were born into? I’m from Arlington, you’re from Brooklyn, so we’re both children of the cities. And I never believed I’d be anything else. In other areas of my life, I’ve had to give great consideration as to where I fit in. But not in regard to geography.
Until now. Last night, we woke up to a clatter behind the house. A fox had broken through the fence and was preying on the chickens in the coop. I had no idea what to do, so I opened the window and started yelling. Which did absolutely nothing to deter it.
Then, a rooster flew out of the coop. It is not made for significant flight, but he managed to elevate himself above the fox’s head and spread his wings and scare it away. It’s a sight that I’d never imagined, let alone expected to see, but it is just one of the many things that are enlightening to me about country life.
Chilton Foliat is about as far from a big city that one can imagine. Teasel flowers instead of traffic. Crickets instead of car horns. I can feel the charm of the village casting its spell on me.
John encourages both of us to stop and quite literally smell the flowers. I think Tom picked up the habit right away. I am a late bloomer to the notion, if you’ll excuse the pun.
John and Tom. I’ve always had my family. But now I have friends. Brothers. I don’t know what I’d do without them.
Training takes up nearly all our waking hours, and we come back to the Browns’ house in the evening, where Mrs. Brown has dinner and a pudding ready for us. (Did you know that the British call just about anything sweet a ‘pudding’? Hers is more like flaky bread.) John and Tom are as exhausted as I am, and we have some cigarettes and whiskey and go to bed to do it all over again.
We’ve been plucked from all that is familiar and placed in this foreign land where certain horrors lie in wait in the months ahead. I try not to think about it, though it’s what we train for every day. But we’re doing it together. My words for that feeling are inadequate, but it is something akin to “whole.”
Likewise, the packages that you and your friends send are more welcome than you know. It may seem like a trifling thing—knitting socks for soldiers you’ve never met. But, speaking for myself, it means everything. I’m glad you told me that the red border you put in yours comes from your grandmother’s sweater. And the stories you shared about what she means to you. It’s something to anticipate. Something that makes me feel like I matter to somebody.
Tell your friend Dorothy that John is doing well. He keeps her picture pinned to his pillow, which has merited endless razzing from myself and Tom. Some of the soldiers are like cats on the prowl and some of the English girls are all too willing to make their acquaintance. But John is as loyal a fiancé as Dorothy could hope to have. Tom is a country boy who must have had too many fairy tales read to him as a child, because he says he’s holding out for true love. And me—well, I’d rather spend a free evening with those two knuckleheads than in a pub chasing skirts.
Thanksgiving is upon us. Which of course, they don’t celebrate here. But I can imagine that my mother is already selecting the perfect cranberries for her sauce. I hope that yours is a good one and that you have many things to be grateful for. As for me, I’m grateful for you.
All the best,
William
P.S. Tom just protested that he never said the words “true love” and that I made that up to make him sound like a juvenile. Full confession—I did. But it’s still my observation of him. Tom’s going to find himself a nice girl someday and she can be relieved to know that she’s getting one of the good ones.
P.P.S. Congratulations on the Yankees win! Four to one. Pretty impressive. Nice of Joltin’ Joe DiMaggio to enlist, but I hear they’re keeping him stateside. Couldn’t have a star baseball player getting a scratch on him, right?
At the bottom of the page lay a sketch of a purple flower that looked like a thistle. A teasel flower, it said next to it. In case you didn’t know what it looks like.
“My, my, my,” Gladys pronounced as she set the letter down. “Aren’t you the little vixen, Margaret Beck? You and your soldier boy sound like you’re getting pretty cozy with each other.”
Dottie rolled her eyes and tossed a pillow at Gladys. “There is not one word in there that suggests that Margaret and William are anything more than friends.”
Gladys held the letter close to her face and reread one line with dramatic inflection. “I feel like I matter to somebody.”
“I found that rather sweet,” Dottie responded. “But nothing more than that. I know Margaret. We’ll realize that the right man has come her way when she gets a particular kind of smile on her face.”
Margaret turned her head toward Dottie. “What do you mean?”
Dottie set down the sock she’d been knitting and looked up in the air before deciding what to say. “I’ve only seen it a few times, but when you really like something, you get a crooked smile. The right side of your mouth stretches all the way to your cheekbone. And the left side is almost its mirror—but you hold just a bit of it back. As if whatever it is might be too good to be true.”
Margaret wrinkled her eyebrows and couldn’t imagine what Dottie was describing. Wasn’t a smile just a smile?
“Oh yes! I know what you’re talking about,” said Gladys as she clapped her hands. “I’ve seen it maybe three times. Once when there was a spectacular sunset a few years back after that storm that took out some houses in Long Island. When you tasted cotton candy for the first time at Coney Island. And whenever Cary Grant came on the screen in Penny Serenade. Or any other movie that he’s in.”
It surprised Margaret that they knew her so well. Better than she knew herself. “That’s silly,” she protested, though. “Anyone would smile over those things.”
“Cary Grant is no thing, doll. He’s a tall, dark, and handsome drink of water.”
“But he’s not real. I mean, to people like us. And a sunset or cotton candy. They’re as ordinary as they come.”
“That’s your charm, though, Margaret,” added Dottie. “You’re not moved by the extraordinary. It’s the everyday things that put that particular smile on your face.”
“Did it happen when I read William’s letter?” Margaret didn’t feel like his words evoked anything more than the warmth of camaraderie, but it was also difficult to judge oneself with accuracy.
“No,” Gladys conceded. “You did smile. But it’s not your special one.”
Dottie returned to her original conversation. “And there you have it, Gladys. Just because your head is in the clouds over Oliver doesn’t mean that every friendship between a man and a woman has to be anything more than that.”
“My head is not in the clouds over Oliver, no matter what you two girls have been dreaming up. I’m just saying that this boy clearly, let’s say, holds Margaret in high regard.”