34
Dear Jim,
Thank God to hear you’re alive. When I heard about your being wounded, I nearly collapsed. Your father had to console me in the front hallway, along with the Western Union man. I am just relieved that the worst did not happen. This is the second time you’ve been wounded and I understand it’s much worse than the first time. You know, I feel it in my gut when there’s something wrong, and I felt bad for about a week before. I knew there was something wrong with you, that either something was going to happen or had happened already. I felt this when you were shot in the arm in the spring, you know. I felt it when your brother crash-landed in England and lost his co-pilot. I have had many dreams about you lately. Call it mother-sense, or something like that. I don’t know. Call me crazy if you want to, but I’m just glad you’re safe, so glad you’re safe, my big brave boy is safe and will be coming home.
Your father tries to keep my spirits up about all this—I am proud of you, Jim, I’m proud of both of you, I really am—but I am so tired from worry. I suppose the best consolation I get from your being so wounded is that you will recover and you will come home. There will be no more fighting for you. One of my boys, my daring and adventurous boys, has been pulled out of the fire and will come home.
I cannot wait till I see you again.
I remember rocking you when you couldn’t sleep in the middle of the night, I remember helping you when you were sick, I remember disinfecting your bloody knees when you came in from roughhousing with Mark or your school friends. You always were an active one! I will do whatever I need to do for you, Jim—the work of a mother is never done.
Let me tell you something else. You will walk again. It might take weeks, it might take months, it might take years—but you WILL walk again. Never give up. Don’t let your spirits drag you down. So much depends on your attitude, your resolve.
I will now write to you about what is happening around here, but there is not much to report. Things are going fine here, the mines are booming, and since the mines are booming from the war effort, so is the city. Your father has been busy lately, and I have gotten involved with the Victory Bond drives to spend my nervous energy. It has been going well. The neighbours are always asking after Mark and you, and I often have to answer, “I don’t know, I hope they are doing fine, I don’t hear from them too often, especially Mark.” Well, I know you are okay now; at least you will be okay over time.
I miss you Jim, my little Jimmy, miss you so much and I will see you sometime in the coming months, I am sure of it. At church, the priest led the congregation in a prayer for local boys who have been wounded. Your name was mentioned. In like fashion, I continue to pray for your recovery.
Take care, and once again, I cannot wait to see you—
Love Mom
***
Dear Jim,
Al Riley here. I hope you’re on the mend—that’s quite a wound you took there at Coriano. One hell of a battle that was. My real baptism of fire, as it were. I went in after you to relieve your command and had to finish the battle as commander of Able Company. It raged on until the wee hours the next morning. It took forever to clear the Germans out of the castle and out of every last damn house. There wasn’t much of the town left afterward, let me tell you.
Well, after the battle we had ourselves a proper rest and reorganization back in San Giovanni for over a week. Though, I can tell you that reinforcements are getting thin around here—we are fighting on a forgotten front, as they say. Some of the reinforcements aren’t even fit for combat—we have truck drivers and cooks pressed into the infantry. It would be nice if they sent us conscripts to get the job done, but that doesn’t seem to be happening. The conscripts just get to sit around and hold the fort against imaginary invaders. The damn government keeps waffling on this conscription thing. But we manage! Over and onward, river by river, we are doing it.
Since our rest after Coriano, we have seen lots of action lately. I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I feel that I should tell you about some recent casualties. Captain Van Der Hecke’s company found themselves cut off north of a river, having pushed too far without support. After a short battle, they surrendered en masse. The padre led a search party for information a few days later, and they found scattered webgear and abandoned weapons, along with several bodies.
As well, and this pains me the most—Warrant Officer Witchewski was killed by a sniper while in action near San Mauro. He was leading a platoon to capture a fortified house in a mucky field. The bastard got him at three hundred yards! I know that he thought very highly of you. I’m sorry to bring you this news. But that is war, I guess.
I want to thank you again for making my introduction to the front line easier for me. It’s hard to make friends among hardened veterans—everyone seems to keep their distance. You gave me the confidence boost I needed the night before my first action. Anyway, I hope you are recovering well from your wounds. We are in a pleasant medieval city right now on rotation off the line, and I will raise a glass to your recovery with some of the boys tonight. Take care, Jim, and I hope to catch up with you some time when all this mess is over (judging by the morale of some of the enemy we have taken prisoner lately, that hopefully shouldn’t be too long from now.)
Over and out,
Al Riley
***
Dear Jim,
I’m sorry to hear that you were wounded, but I know that you will pull through. You’re my big brother and I look up to you. Always have, always will. I am sorry to hear about you and Marianne, by the way—hardly the first time that that has happened among us fighting men. I thought that you two were very good together. Oh, well—plenty more fish in the sea, right? There are plenty of beautiful and available nurses in the service, let me tell you …
It’s been awfully busy here. We’ve been on lots of raids, and some of them have been really hairy. I’ve lost a lot of friends over the last while, but thankfully we have been flying light duty assignments lately to rest and rebuild the squadron—laying sonar buoys in the ocean, that sort of thing. We did one raid over Cologne awhile back that really tore us up bad. The night fighters really had their way with us on that one. Our plane limped back on three engines and with a huge hole in the fuselage. We had a dead gunner and a wounded navigator. Our plane was all shot to hell—Thank God Almighty the landing gear deployed well enough!
It’s about time this war ended. I’ve had about enough of Mom’s fretting and Dad’s “I’m so proud of my fighting son,” all that sort of stuff. Boy, we have sure been over here for a long time, haven’t we?
I really enjoyed those times that we met up while in England—I’m so glad that we were able to spend time together before you got shipped off to Sunny Italy. Well, pull through, big brother, and I can’t wait to see you when all this is over. Take care over there—
Mark
***
Dear Jim,
I am sorry to hear about what happened to you. I wished the timing wasn’t so bad—I feel guilty now, I feel horrible pangs of guilt. I sometimes wonder if the receipt of the letter led to your wounding. Whatever has come between us, I want you to know that I worry about your wellbeing. I am not sure that these words will find you well, but you know that none of your words in recent months have found me well. I had been in an increasing funk over our separation. You can understand that I feel that you chose duty to country over me; I would certainly understand your decision were you a bachelor, but the fact is that you were not one. I have thought long and hard about the decision that I made in consequence of yours, and I feel that it is the correct decision.
We had some good times, we made some good memories, but now we must together make our separate ways. I hope that over there maybe you found the meaning you were looking for in life. I would like to think that I was fulfilling to you, that I satisfied you, that the two of us together made you genuinely happy. I always
thought that you were man enough, that there was nothing that you really needed to prove.
When you come home I will have gone. Where, I do not yet know. People can be very judging and when word gets out I think that I will find myself under very unpleasant scrutiny. I think I will be going far from here, and I cannot be certain that I will be leaving a forwarding address.
I wish you the best, Jim. I really do. I wish for you to find your own way, to achieve all it is that you want to achieve, to bloom where you are planted. Take care, Jim. Whatever it is you do in the future, wherever you go, take care. I hope you find happiness and contentment in any future venture. All the best—
Yours truly,
Marianne
35
Up, down, up, down, the lulling swells of the sea, the shifting mailed coat of the sea, the overlapping scaled armour of the sea, wind-flexed and rippling; a gunmetal sea under a gunmetal sky. The corvettes and destroyers that dive into the troughs and climb upon the swells, and sweep this way and that on patrol, their sticks and stacks protruding above the waves and the spray that break over their decks, the casemates of their deck guns pointed askew; the corvettes and destroyers that dive and sweep and arc are currents perched upon larger, deeper, subtler currents, like disturbed swirls of water in the wake of an insect swimming on the waves; the troopships and merchant ships in their charge are slower and more plodding, a steady westward current, a weighted momentum of men and materiel, lumbering through the water like lazily swimming beavers.
Push, pull, push, pull … The air is cold and damp and the wind is biting, but the sun now winks through the rolling grey clouds, the tatters of clouds that scroll through the sky, the winking sun like a semaphore message from the heavens, a Morse Code signal to hold steady, relief is on the way, there has been a breakthrough. The clouds are breaking apart in the sharpness of the wind. He shivers as a faint sunray makes its vague contact, the filtered light of the sun having made its ninety-three million mile journey through cosmic radiation, through the gases and water vapors of the atmosphere, reflected and refracted and trapped in transparent prison by countless droplets of moisture, the billowing and vaporous fortifications of the atmosphere that now crumble under the persistent bombardment of its radiant columns, aided now by the capricious winds that strip away the clouds, sometimes friend and sometimes foe, always switching sides; and the clouds loosen and whiten into tattered banners of surrender, and on this occasion, the sun has won the day and occupies the sky and the sea below it with its luminous legions, firmly set in its dominion of the day, turning the sea a sparkling blue as it glints off the calming ripples of the ocean in countless rows like shields upraised in victory; and as the sun hits his face, as the warmth of the sun caresses his face, he sighs almost inaudibly. He is the only one on the promenade right now save for the nurse who is blowing on her hands as she surveys the sunlit ocean scene. His head is humming, and he feels dreamy. The screaming pain in his legs and back has been reduced to distant background noise; it comes in waves, and he is riding the crest of one now. The slide down into the next trough will be as the codeine wears off. He wheels up closer to the deck railing, pushing the wheels of the chair with his hands, the metal turn-wheels of the chair cold to his hands. The chair squeaks ahead to the railing of the promenade deck. He can hear the swish of the sea as the converted liner cuts through the waves, and the ship rocks gently, wave by wave. He is not seasick; in fact, he has not been at all on this journey, however long it has been in the opiated haze in which he has been, sitting, sleeping, being tended by doctors and nurses, eating small meals with what little appetite he has had, and listlessly watching films and playing cards with other wounded servicemen on their way home, hailing from all the battlefields of Europe, from every corner of Canada.
Overhead, a buzz of planes, Liberator bombers covering the sea lanes, on the watch for submarines. It must be getting on to winter now. Of course it’s always winter on the North Atlantic; it is a wintry place, a snowy windswept storm-tossed prairie of water. At home it is cold, cold, cold, the front windows of houses straining their gaze through their cataracts of frost upon the denuded branches of the trees and the frosted blades of grass like hair gone white in the dawning old age of winter.
Ssshhhhh … ssshhhhh … ssshhhh, the lulling sound of the water against the hull, the sibilant swell of ocean waves … ssshhhhh … ssshhhhh … a temptation to become part of that sound, to immerse himself in the soft sibilance of the sea, the womb, the saltwater sea of origin; it would be cold at first, yes, so cold it would be like a million burning needles of heat, but sleep would come quickly and there would be no more pain to run from, no more pain at all. He would be dead before they could rescue him. The nurse would alert the crew, and the officer of the watch would yell, “Man overboard!” And that would be his eulogy. After a while, the pain intensifies a little from the vague throb it has been for the last hour, intensifies, heats up, becomes more acute. This is the time to do it.
“I’m going to try,” he says weakly to the nurse.
“Don’t hurt yourself, Captain. Just rest, and tell me when you want to go back inside into the saloon.” Her voice is patient, calm, caring.
“No—I want to.” He braces his arms against the turn-wheels and tries to lift himself out of his chair. As some of his weight shifts to his feet, there is a horrible, grinding pain all the way up his legs, up into his back. It takes his breath away, bright lights dance in front of his eyes, and he winces and gnashes his teeth together. His arms, weak from disuse, tremble and burn with exertion.
“Captain, let me help you,” the nurse enjoins from somewhere at the end of a tunnel.
“No—leave me alone, please,” he commands with teeth bared against the pain. He puts one hand and then the other on the railing. He focuses his concentration into throwing all his might into his arms so that he can hoist himself over the railing into the sea below, just concentrate, yes, concentrate, just concentrate, sssssshhhhhh … sssssshhhhhh; and as he begins to flex, to lift, he stops for a moment. Breathes a minute. Still grasping the railing, still weakly standing, he reaches into his pocket for his pillbox, and without any further thought casts it into the ocean where it disappears amid the foamy wash alongside the ship, amid the subsiding waves that lap and break against the parting of the hull. He settles with a thump back into his chair, and relief washes over him. Throw out the pills, not the pain, he thinks. The pain will subside on its own.
“I’m ready to go in now.”
Acknowledgements
I wish to thank, in no particular order, the following people and organizations for their help and encouragement during the writing of this novel. They are as follows: Adam Boyle, for your hands-on help with the extensive historical research needed to make the story authentic, and for the endless late-night discussions about the subject matter; Patti Murphy for your early support and editorial encouragement; Rick Dube, for your feedback and advice; Mary Sutton, for your expert critical faculties which you applied in the first full draft edit; Lia Roy, for your narrative advice and your eagle-eyed copyediting, and for your encouragement; my parents Lou and Sheila for your ongoing lifelong encouragement; the National Library and Archives of Canada, for the endless fund of resources that were made available to me in my research. Thanks also to Peter McCambridge, for your positive response to the book, and for putting me in touch with Robin Philpot of Baraka Books; and thank you to Robin Philpot for believing in this book and for publishing it. Thank you also to anyone else who, in any way, helped in the researching, writing, editing and publication of this book—I could not have done this without you.
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