Saturday, XXXX
I would say congratulations, and I am really proud of you (seriously, I am); but, dear one, how I fear for you! I hope I sounded supportive in the letter that I sent, but I don't think I shall ever resign myself to the idea of you in an open battlefield. I understand that it sounds stupid, and that you are your own person, entitled to do whatever you want, live howsoever you please, love whomever you wish to, and jump into battlefields because it is the right thing to do. (It is not.) Call it my sentimentality, dear one, but I do still want to shield you from the world. I do not know what you look like now, what with the very ideal sanitary conditions (not that we had any better, but still), however, in my memories you are always the little spitfire from our back alley, with too much righteousness and rage to be appreciably locked in your tiny body. You will be that friend who gets into fights they cannot win, and yet will not accept your help. I don't think I can ever reconcile myself to an image of you in camouflage uniform with a rifle in your hands shooting left right and centre.
But I suppose that now I must. I hope you have trained well and learnt to keep your head down. Please, please, I beseech you, keep in mind that this is a war. It may seem heroic in movies to jump in front of your friends in a bid to save them, or to leap into enemy lines like Hercules leaping into... well I don't know where he leapt, but you get my point. It is not something you do in real life. Listen to your CO, they know what they are doing, even if they act like jackasses all the time. I wish you had stayed home. You tell me it is selfish to keep you at home when others are laying down their lives, but man is selfish, and I am sure everyone can be granted a few vices.
In any case, I shall do the only thing I am good at, kneeling down and praying to a God whom I do not believe, and whose existence has no proof whatsoever in scenarios such as this. I can only hope that amongst all this cruelty, said God will find some kindness to spare for me and keep you hale and well.
Sincerely yours,
The Soldier.
YOU ARE READING
At War
Romance"Revenge by young men is considered victory, but old men who stay at home in times of war, and mothers who have sons to lose know better." -Chief Seattle This is an anti- war epistolary novella written for ONC 2022. Prompts 5 and...
