know what that tune is called but it sings to me in the night when I wake and think of those poor women.
I do not blame those who ran, or those who panicked, and I thank Aunt Mathilda for her quick thinking. Without her I would have been one of those women in that deathly crush. It was fear that killed those women. We counted over twenty dead as we left, but there must have been more. Not to mention the injured, like Doreen and that woman who was bleeding so. She was still alive when a nurse gently removed my bloody hands from her stomach. I don't know if she made it. I wiped my hands on my dress and once we were eventually on the tube back to Harrow, I realised that I had left the gloves that Mathilda had lent me, and stupidly left my best coat behind, under my seat. It was then that I cried and Mathilda hugged me all the way home.
She tells me that I am a brave soul and that it was selfless of me to help that poor bleeding woman. I think she is braver than I; possibly the bravest woman I have ever met.
I have thought about it quite a lot since. In my mind the part of the evening where the orchestra played so beautifully is like an entirely different evening, separate from the horrible events that took place during the air raid. It is as if my mind wants to cling to the beauty of the music and not have it tainted by death. Do you think it strange that I think of it like this?
It is another reminder that, even here, our lives could be so short. And after such an experience how could I be anything but frank with you. So Jimmy I will tell you that it would not be so terrible for us to kiss and that I would definitely consider such a thing when we next meet. It is the stuff of life, so perhaps we should seize the day. The more we correspond with each other the more feelings that I have for you James Fitzpatrick. I like your honesty and openness very much.
There is not much else for me to say right now, as I have to set about the ironing before it is time for us to sit by the wireless. I will write again soon as I hope you do. Know that we are all well and that I am thinking of you, as I often do.
Love
Esme
X
P.S. I thought you should know that I had a conversation with Aunt Mathilda about your mother the other day. Of course she knows her. She says she will make some enquiries about your mother's whereabouts with some of her connections in Whitehall when she next goes up to the city. Goodness knows how she knows such people. She says she will be discreet and that it should be a secret between us. I do hope you don't mind me doing this; I just sense that you miss her so.
M.O.D Approved. This letter has been censored in accordance with War Office Directive 728/4. All content of a sensitive nature has been removed by order of the Ministry of War.
Remember - CARELESS TALK COSTS LIVES!
076938964
Ypres Zone
Middlesex Regiment
Sappers Unit 2064
3rd March 1962
Pvt. 761382 J.Fitzpatrick
Dearest Esme,
Another lovely letter from you, thank you so much. This one especially made my heart sing. I cannot help but feel romantic about it, not only because of your talk of kissing and of relations between men and women and 'seizing the day' but also because, my dear, you sign off your letter with 'love'. You do not know how this makes me feel. I cherish every word you write although sometimes the longing I have to see you is so great. I have a longing to actually be in your presence that is like a physical hurt in me. A delicious torment that forms on my insides. I look at your picture daily and cannot help but think of it.
I am so sorry that you had to suffer the sorrow of what happened at the concert. All those poor innocent women. I sometimes think it is an accident of birth that we have to live through such times where we are faced with such anguish. This is not to say that I wish I had not been born, I simply wonder what it must have been like to have been born in a better time. Perhaps there will be better times in the future. I do not think it is too much to hope for.
Having said this if I were to be born in a different time by some strange twist of fate or happenstance then I would surely have never met you. And that, for me, makes it worth living in this time. I hope that you are strong dear Esme, and do not let your experiences depress your spirit.
I too feel amazement at the thought of that Russian man in space. There was no official announcement of it here, but momentous news often travels quickly by word of mouth and the day after it happened it seemed to be the talk of the whole camp. News here is often a stilted thing and mostly we do not hear of things from outside our bubble of war until weeks later. This was different, and around every campfire men huddled and you could hear the chatter and muttering about rockets and space and the Soviets. He must be a very brave soul, this 'Yuri' you speak of. I cannot think of a lonelier place than the jet black vacuum of space. Jet, it seems to me, is the colour of death. Without wishing to be morbid, my fearful mind conjures it in the dark of night, jet black; the only colour one can see when one finally closes one’s eyes for the very last time. An eternal solitary lonesome blackness. Even in the hellish dirt that is no-man's land there are other souls to cling to and, if you are lucky, a touch of blue in the sky above.
I suppose though that the spaceman Yuri was looking at the stars, twinkling all around him in hope, and the blue and green of the planet below. What must that look like? I can't imagine it. Perhaps he wasn't aware of the engulfing blackness surrounding him as he soared. Perhaps in death we won't be aware either, and if we are then I hope we are only aware of peacefulness. A peacefulness that the silence of endless space must bring.
Be assured my dear Esme that I am safe and we are still ensconced in our camp awaiting the next set of orders. It is unusual to be billeted with no orders for so long. Mostly though this is a reasonable state of affairs, although there have been one or two fresh attacks from these new sorts of rockets. At least that’s what I think they may be. Missiles of some kind. The whispered rumours link them to the soviets. The officers don't mention any of this, perhaps because they themselves don't know what these new weapons are either. They seem just as resigned as us to the inevitability of it and simply pick various units at random for the grizzly cleanup after an attack. These attacks leave craters of unprecedented size and destruction. Almost beyond comprehension. And there have been some screaming appearances of those frighteningly CENSORED new sorts of CENSORED. They fairly hurtle through the sky like hawks with their swept back wings and CENSORED.
There isn't much defence from these attacks, only the anti-aircraft batteries and our meagre hand held weapons. We have all dug new foxholes as best we can next each bivvy; there are no shelters or tunnels this far back from the Front. We barely have time to throw ourselves into these makeshift holes whenever there is a shout or you hear the quick screaming of the CENSORED coming. Sometimes you don't even hear that. There isn't even enough time to sound any alarm, either on the bugle or via the clang of bells, sirens or dinner triangles. Mostly the explosions have occurred way over on our right flank where there are the CENSORED dumps and CENSORED. This could very problematic, or so the rumours say; seriously hampering the CENSORED CENSORED CENSORED. One learns though, to try not to pay too much attention to the endless rumour mill which is mostly churned by fear.
Yesterday a large squadron of German bombers flew over our patch of bivouacs. In broad daylight. They don't normally do that, any raids that are headed for England seem to either skirt around the more populated areas of the Front or they tend to fly at night. So it seemed either daring or foolhardy of the Germans. Are they really growing in confidence? Who can tell?
The batteries erupted from all sides of the camp and you could see the bright sparkling tracers against the grey cloud zooming from the direction of the Wall. Some foolhardy young men stood on the rutted mud track in their undershirts, braces hanging, and let off optimistic Enfield rounds into the sky as if they were farmhands on a duck shoot. Pretty soon they were bawled out by various N.C.O.s for wasting precious ammunition.
I can't remember seeing
such a large flotilla of enemy planes and could not but help be worried about you as I hunkered down in our foxhole with Jones, Hendricks and Thompson. Would they bomb us? Or was there destination London or Paris? It was hard to tell.
Sitting next to Thompson in our foxhole I could see his frail body shaking beneath his oversized uniform. His wide bloodshot eyes staring up at the multitudinous dark shapes of the Fokkers, their engines ominously rumbling like bees slowed down. Thompson seemed to shake in time with the low piston pulse of these deathly flying machines.
I put my arm around his shoulder and pulled his chin strap tight, gently trying to bend his head down so that he was looking at the ground. Every experienced soldier knows to keep your face down. Even if those bombers weren't letting loose their heavy cargo on us the constantly firing high caliber anti-aircraft bullets have to land somewhere if they don't hit their target. I have seen men hit and killed or wounded by these falling from the sky. The large portable twin-gun batteries mounted on the summit of the wall swivel on greased platforms and continued to pump their tracer-fire at the aircraft over the heads of their own troops. The larger Ack-Ack guns fire shells with fuses and they burst in white cloud puffs in and around the swarm