Thank you for understanding. I am a pitiful friend these days, but please know I hold you close to my heart. No one on this earth knows me as you do. Not anymore. They are gone, but I thank God you aren’t.
A few weeks here in Scotland and I am, at last, able to eat again. I’d lost my appetite completely, my head filled with horrors I won’t name, and the burden of my guilt for all the men who died at my hand, and those who are still at the Front whom I left behind. You wouldn’t recognise the scrawny man I’ve become. But I am slowly regaining my strength.
The doctors have been kind, but sometimes I wonder at their absurd treatments. They think a little golf and the occasional walk around the grounds will help. Hypnosis is another favourite of theirs. I don’t see how playing at sports or falling into a trance will empty the gruesome memories from my head. I’m too thick skulled for such simple measures. Yet I suppose it’s worth a try.
I am also commissioned to write as much as possible. Every battle, every terrible thing I can recall, I outline in a journal. The doctor discusses my notes with me. You’ve never seen a grown man cry so much (though I do most of it when the doctor has gone). I didn’t know I had so many tears. It’s a ghastly business, but somehow, I think it helps to get it down on paper.
It’s the shame that is the most difficult to overcome. You see, the reason I fell into this oblivion is because of something that happened back in March. We had just finished the morning hate (this is what we call “stand to,” or waking an hour before dawn to guard against an enemy raid of men sporting bayonets. A despicable thing). We had scarcely finished a quick breakfast when a grenade landed in the trench. It took a flash—just a flash, the shortest inkling of a second, yet the longest moment in my memory—to decide what to do. My commanding officer and several of my men sat nearby. If I threw myself over the grenade, they would be saved. It was the honourable thing to do. But I hesitated, and scrambled to my feet—too late. The blast killed all five men, blew a few rotting sandbags to hell, and all descended into chaos. I was spared; sprayed with shrapnel and lost my hearing for a few hours, suffered an excruciating pain and ringing in my ears, but I was spared.
I live, but my commander—and friends—are gone. Had we not lost our commander due to my hesitation, we wouldn’t have had to march again so soon to join the battalions in Verdun. Thousands and thousands went down, Evie. All because of that tiny moment of hesitation months earlier.
I have felt like nothing but a coward ever since. I failed, utterly, in my position as leader of my men. I didn’t mention it to you before because I couldn’t. The shame goes beyond anything I can describe. It’s their faces that haunt me at night, the screams I hear as the phantom gas swirls around them. And now I’ve left them behind again, in the hell they call Verdun, facing all that terror every day. What sort of leader cracks into a thousand shards like brittle glass and abandons his men? The guilt strangles me sometimes.
I’ve thought often about you and your journals, how you used to carry them around. Now I understand that we can express ourselves on paper in a way we can’t out loud. Which reminds me—how are your columns coming along? Well, I hope.
The pressed daisies I enclose are from my daily walk around the lake. Their sunshine makes me think of you.
Ever yours,
Tom
P.S. Visitors are allowed, but I’ll need permission, and I would rather you didn’t ask your Uncle to look in on me. We aren’t well acquainted, and I can’t put on any false cheer these days. I am able to leave the grounds most days as well, venture into town or around the lake. I would dearly like to see you.
From Evie to Thomas
7th September, 1916
Richmond, England
Dear Thomas,
Thank you for writing when I know it must be so hard for you to tell me what you are going through. Your words mean so much to me.
While I can never fully understand the horrors you have witnessed, I refuse to shy away from the truth. I saw the film The Battle of the Somme last week. I am ashamed to admit I’d been putting it off, afraid to see the brutal reality for myself. I found it terribly upsetting—everyone left the picture house with reddened eyes and without speaking a word—but I am glad to have seen it, and to understand a little better what you face out there.
While the film and your descriptions distress me, it serves no purpose to pretend it isn’t the truth. Do not blame yourself for what happened. Never blame yourself, Tom. This is nobody’s fault but those who brought this war upon us. The blame lies all with them. And for all that I am saddened to hear of the loss of your commander and fellow men, at least that moment of hesitation spared you, Tom. And for that, I would wish you a lifetime of hesitation. That extra second is sometimes all we need to make the right decision, even if it doesn’t feel like that at the time. God must play his part in these matters. It was his will that you survived.
We heard of the most dreadful casualties at Verdun and the Somme, although reports in the papers back in July were of nothing but remarkable victories, and terrific bombardments and vigorous attacks on the enemy. I am terrified to know that you were among them. So many didn’t come back. While I am desperately sorry to hear of your suffering, I am also—selfishly—full of relief to know that you survived the worst of it and are away from the firing line for a while.
Try not to resist the doctors’ treatments. They really do know best. And please try to eat. I cannot begin to imagine you as “scrawny.” That chubby young fellow who used to pinch whatever he could from Cook’s larder—scrawny? That strong hearty fellow whose laughter filled a room and made the chandeliers shake—scrawny? I don’t believe it. Eat, Thomas, please. You really must. For me, if not for yourself. If you will not eat, then neither will I, and you know how desperately bony I am at the best of times. And if they cannot clear you to return to the Front, if this is the end of your war, then so be it. You have done your bit. You have done far more than your bit.