He lay back, unable to move, and passed out.
* * *
“Bonjour, Capitane. Comment vous sentez-vous aujourd’hui?”
The French nurse who had attended him since he was first brought in gave him her usual greeting. She called everyone “Captain”; there was no time to learn names. Soldiers either recovered enough to return to battle or were sent home.
Or they died.
Only a handful had been there as long as Tom had.
“Bon,” he answered to the question she asked every morning: “How are you doing today?”
It was not the only French he’d learned. He could say balle for bullet, douleur for pain, and triste for sad.
These were words he longed to share with Margaret, even if they were acquired by listening to the badly wounded French soldiers around him. Maybe she would enjoy learning some French words along with the fancy English ones she collected. He’d have to find some with happier translations.
Flowers. Chocolate. Love.
And he might get his chance. William’s actions and those of all the men on that battlefield in Normandy had significantly propelled the Allied cause. He’d heard that they were going to make a push into Paris soon. If they succeeded, the Allies will have won back France.
Hank. Dr. Weinstein. The McClintocks. William.
Margaret.
It was worth it.
But that was an easy thing to think, knowing that despite his injuries, he was expected to live. Would John and William have said it was worth it?
The thought of them brought tears to Tom’s eyes, and he didn’t even try to wipe them away. All the men here cried. There was no shame in it.
He imagined what it would have been like if they’d all made it. John would have been a wonderful father. William would have taught philosophy or psychology or some other heady subject at a university. Ten years down the road when this nightmare was over, they might have remained friends in the civilian world. Met up for holidays. Watched their children play together. And reminisced about Mrs. Brown’s Yorkshire pudding.
The war had taken their lives. And it had rewritten the future that they might have enjoyed together.
His only consolation was reading and rereading the letters Margaret had written to William all these past months, which he’d taken possession of at William’s insistence before they left Chilton Foliat.
What kind of prescience did William possess that he could have known what this would mean to Tom?
Because the letters bolstered him more than anything could have.
Tom pulled her latest one out from under his pillow, which he kept next to the picture of her that was quickly wrinkling with time. A white line ran through the middle where he’d folded it into his pocket as they headed toward that helicopter.
But even with its damage, she remained perfect to him.
There was only one problem. She’d written the letters to William.
She had no way of knowing that it was Tom’s handwriting that graced the letters. That Tom’s words had fashioned the last few.
Because William had wanted it that way.
William had received one from her on one of their last days in Chilton Foliat, which he read and then handed to Tom as he always did.
“You know,” he’d said, “this girl’s perfect for you. If I were a different man…”
“When you get out of the army, maybe you need to take up matchmaking. Because you’re relentless, William.”
It wasn’t until after the jump, after the battle, after Tom had awoken from the morphine haze that he’d actually read her letter.
She talked about the baby.
She talked about the upcoming wedding of Dottie and George.
She sounded the happiest she’d been since losing her brother.
She’d signed it Love, Margaret.
Love, Margaret. Tom’s eyes rested on those precious words and his heart beat fast as if they had been intended for him.
He lingered over it, hoping that it might mean more than a casual footer. But he shook off the notion, supposing that it was merely the shift from pen pal to that of good friend.
He did, however, allow himself to make the observation that the word had been written after a couple of the letters had been penned by him alone.
Margaret sounded full of the kind of optimism that believes in a bright future.
How could he dash that?
Tom asked the nurse for some paper and a pen. “Papier et stylo, Capitane,” she said as she handed them to him.
Dear Margaret, he began.
He wiped some sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.
This was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined.
I regret to inform you that William
He scratched the words out.
That’s as far as he got. For two days. Two long days in which he wrestled with words in his mind, turning them over in every combination that attempted to break the news softly. But it was an impossible task.
Seeing it in ink made it all too real, as if he were watching William fall on that battlefield all over again. If it caused him this kind of anguish, how could he inflict that on Margaret? Just when she was rediscovering joy?
Dear Margaret, he tried again.
William was a good friend to both of us.
No. That wasn’t much better.
Two more days went by. Tom thought about it, starting and stopping more letters than he could count, keeping them in his head so as to not waste his supply of papier et stylo.
Thinking about William brought back memories that he wasn’t ready to relive.
Tom shook as he took a pen in his right hand, grateful that it hadn’t been the one to sustain damage. If he’d had to write with his left, the chicken-scratch look of it would have pulled him out of the world he was absorbed into when he wrote to her.
Dearest Margaret, he started, a sense of peace descending on him. The first he’d felt in a long time.
Returning to her felt like a puzzle piece nestled with its exact match.
By the time this letter arrives, you will have heard all about Normandy. It was as bad as the reports likely stated. And even worse. Good men were lost and I saw things that will be impossible to forget. I won’t belabor it because you know all that you need to know, and I don’t want to fill your head with those horrors by reliving them for you.
So enough of that.
As I write, I am looking out on the English Channel. In the distance is the Fort de I’île Pelée. I believe I am using all of the correct markings—I asked my nurse for help—but I am certain that I could not duplicate its pronunciation. It reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of that island prison in San Francisco—Alcatraz. Beyond it—and beyond my view—there are other fortifications of the last century—Forts de Chavagnac, de l’Ouest, Central, and de l’Est.
This simple town of Cherbourg is quite well guarded. And yet, things they couldn’t have imagined back when they were built—airplanes, bombs, and the like—managed to all but destroy it until we came to liberate its rubble.
I see people venture out every day, still untrusting that the enemy has moved out for good. But they slip out of their homes and catch fish and sunshine and rebuild brick by brick.
It’s an admirable thing.
I understand this town and its people, even from this little room. I have always been protected by the expectations of my parents—a life laid out and one that I have dutifully embraced. But the war has similarly dismantled that security and I find myself wanting to…create a new edifice on an old foundation.