There were some things he would never tell her. He would never reveal that sometimes he thought it would be better to die like William and John than to continue on Hell’s Highway, as this offense was being called. He did not want her to know that cold feet and wet boots made him question everything he’d believed about himself and his future in the military. That it was not due to the discomfort of them—or of the many hardships they’d endured—but in the realization that as an officer someday, he would lose men—good men—to these evils and these elements. And the thought of it tortured him.
If despair was the language of the devil’s land, he’d become fluent.
Margaret, on the other hand, was his reason for hope in the darkness. His lifeline to believe that there were better days ahead. Because when he wrote of them, it made them real.
He held the flashlight higher until its beam shone just over the page.
Dearest Margaret, he’d begun.
It felt so good after so long to see those words come to life beyond the many letters he’d started in his mind.
I have been remiss in writing and I cannot adequately express my apologies for that. We have been on the move for weeks. Exhausted by never-ending battles. Though I shared with you some details about Normandy in the past, I’ve determined that there are some horrors that are just too terrible to retell—or to relive. So please forgive the dual droughts of correspondence and of details.
Writing to you is a reprieve. I have spent countless bedraggled hours imagining the things I will share with you. But now that I am graced once again with paper and pen, I find that it is not the large events that I want to describe but the tiny ones. An odd thing, maybe, but those intimacies are really the things that glue life together, aren’t they?
For example. Having so little elevates the importance of everything one does have. I found a paper clip the other day. A paper clip! It was submerged in the mud and only the tiniest sliver of it was poking out. If the sun had not hit the ground in precisely the right way at precisely the right moment, I would have missed it altogether.
I dug it out like it was buried treasure and stuck it in my pocket. I’ve learned—we all have—that such a find should not be treated as trivial. And it proved to be true. Since that time, the paper clip has helped me scrape dirt from my fingernails, get to hard-to-reach places as I clean my rifle, scratch a game of tic-tac-toe onto a fallen tree trunk, and stir a scant pack of sugar into my canteen as a treat.
It reminds me of a time when I was a teenager and the country was hit hard by economic woes. I observed that transient men near our home would save and use anything they could find. A lost hair ribbon became a tourniquet when a man cut his arm on a branch. A collection of bottle tops found along the way could be wrapped up in a cheesecloth and rattle to scare off animals when the men slept outside at night. A discarded Band-Aid could be wadded up to fill a hole in a shoe.
So it is here. We have been reduced to scavengers at times. Forced to innovate from nothing. It is bleak. I’ll not sugarcoat that.
I want to believe, Margaret, that we will make it out of this. That no matter where I am after the war, I will never again take anything for granted. Not my life. Not a paper clip.
War changes a man, they say. And it is true. But it is not all bad.
On a lighter note, I must tell you that Holland has the most beautiful flowers. Tulips as far as the eye can see. One would scarcely believe that the front lies just miles away. As the weather turns, the edges of their delicate petals brown and wilt. Much like the soldiers observing them. But they have reminded us that beauty exists even among ugliness. And that there is reason to hope.
He signed the letter Love, William.
As he looked it over, the pretense continued to wear thin and he found that what had once been liberating now felt like a prison. He longed to confess to the charade and to write unfettered. As Tom. No secrets between them.
It had been easy enough after William’s death to convince himself that Margaret didn’t need to suffer another loss so soon after John’s. The postcard from Paris was forgivable as well—with no paper to write a proper letter and no space on the card to tell William’s story, signing his name was expedient at the least.
He’d had enough of it.
“There comes a time in a man’s life, Thomas, when he must determine right from wrong and choose right, no matter how difficult it is.”
The first time he’d heard his father say those words, he was about three years old and had been caught spreading his finger across the iced cake that his mother had baked for the church bake sale. Perhaps it was premature to begin talking of manhood to one so small, but it was a theme his father had pressed on him all through his life.
And he wasn’t wrong. Tom had recalled those words again that night under the bridge and every day since.
He set the flashlight down. He was shivering in his bunk, sore from curling in a fetal position through the night. The sun ascended through the clear plastic windows of the canvas barracks, though it did not bring warmth. Dawn had always been his favorite time growing up. The household was quiet, accompanied only by the sound of the geese that gathered in the river. For a blissful second, he could close his eyes and pretend he was there.
The other men were waking up, preparing for whatever lay ahead. There was a wilted look to them—just as he’d told Margaret—the excitement over the new supplies already overshadowed by fresh worries.
Tom was saddened by the loss of their youthful bloom. These were not warriors who had volunteered with patriotic enthusiasm. These were boys scarcely out of high school who’d had aspirations of college or factory work or other callings. Not near-death on a land they could barely find on a map.
They had become warriors. Baptized in blood.
Tom was a good deal older and was here by choice. But none of that mattered on the field. What was important was to remember Hank and Dr. Weinstein and the McClintocks and William. Every soldier had their own version. How could he give up? How could he not press on with everything he had?
Renewed determination coursed through him. He stood up, muscles stiff and bones freezing.
After brushing his teeth with the new tube of Pepsodent that he’d been given, he read his letter to Margaret one more time. He set it aside, next to its envelope, already addressed and stamped in his eagerness to send it. But he was not going to. Not this one. When he returned from today’s jump, he’d write a different one.
With a new signature.
Love, Tom
He opened the pocket of his rucksack and pulled out the two bottles of perfume that he’d bought at the House of Fragonard, surprised that they had both survived. He looked for the one with the little V written in the corner and put the other one back. He held the vanilla one to his nose, inhaling deeply, pretending that he could smell its warm scent through all of the wrapping. He closed his eyes and remembered what it had evoked when the shopgirl had sprayed it on his arm. It was a scent that he now associated with Margaret, even though it had never graced her skin. But he hoped that it would. And until then, it was one more thin tie to the woman whose letters had inadvertently kept him going.
He returned it to the pocket, resisting the temptation to open it. It was not something you could buy at your corner Walgreens. If he ever had the chance to present it to her personally, he hoped that having thought of her in Paris and purchased something so special, his delay in telling her about William might be forgiven.