that they would risk themselves just so that ordinary folk like you and I may correspond.
I lie in my cramped hospital cot as I write this, relishing the feel of the freshly laundered sheets that finally came today. I haven't had clean sheets for weeks, not a very hygienic or sanitary thing I know. But here in the hospital things are difficult as they are everywhere else. The food is standard fare for soldiers and you can go for days without any meat and days without seeing hide nor hair of a doctor. Medical officers are in short supply which, I suppose, is good for H---- and I. The less we see of them the less likely we are to be sent back to the front.
This hospital is mainly run by the French, with mostly French patients, which is better than being at one of the tented hospitals back nearer the Wall. No idea why they sent us back here. A stroke of luck I think.
We just see nurses and orderlies, mostly they are French and, apart from the odd individual, have little understanding of English. I haven't seen any W.R.V.S. from England. The French nurses seem to spend more time with the French wounded than us. I suppose that's natural. H---- says it is best to act as if we are more incapable than we really are when the M.O.s do come and I tend to think he is right.
Sometimes the French nurses are kind and let some of us walking wounded out for some fresh air. The British M.O.s don't like it but the nurses don't seem to care as they are not part of the British army. The chain of command here seems a bit confused, what with mostly French in charge. When British officers do appear I have heard stilted arguments born from language problems. The British tend to simply shout slower and louder in an attempt to make the French understand. This invariably fails, causing resentment, so the French simply do what they want anyway. Hence the nurses ignore orders and take us out when the British officers are not around.
We walk slowly together in a little huddling troop; shuffling along with our khaki greatcoats and blue greatcoats draped over our threadbare hospital gowns and slippers. British and French comrades in arms, sharing cigarettes as we walk. Our nurse escorts pushing bath-chairs through the dingy narrow French streets to the nearby beach. The local women smile as we pass, as they hang out faded washing or scrub their weary doorsteps, but they hardly ever speak. Not even a jaunty 'Bonjour' in that high lilting voice the French have. Their smiles have that resigned mournful look that you see everywhere. I imagine we remind them of their own sons or husbands or sweethearts; those lost or those in the French forces at the front.
H---- holds onto my free elbow as we walk; he still doesn't see so well with his good eye and my bad arm is still in a sling. I do not feel so bad now, less pain, but my fingers still resolutely refuse to move. I have no feeling in them; it is almost as if my left arm is not my own. The doctors think that I should eventually regain some feeling and use of it, but at the moment I don't mind. I am alive and my crippled arm and shoulder is the reason I am still here and not sent back to the front. At the last medical inspection it was deemed that H---- and I are yet to be considered 'viable soldiers' so have luckily been given more time as reprieve. Convalescence. The doctors are waiting for H---- to be able to see well enough and for me to be able to usefully grip my rifle.
It is obscene really that we are judged by the doctors in this way. It is as if we are deemed to not be useful human beings unless we can fire a weapon. One doctor, a Major, even suggested that I simply strap my Enfield through my sling. 'It is your right hand pulls the trigger after all,' he said in his posh accent. Their accents even seem to sneer, as if they use their voices to look down upon us. They don't seem to see us as real people at all.
I am hoping that it is not beyond hope that H---- and I both get a medical discharge. Or at the very least get a convalescence leave. It would be so wonderful to be sent back to England so that you and I could be together, even if it were just for a short time.
H---- and I strolled along that deserted French beach. A few of the other patients wandered about on the sand too and a few sat in their whicker bath chairs near a cafe, with their amputated stumps like odd lumps under grey blankets. I watched them drinking what the French call tea, or strong black coffee, as they stared silently at the waves. The nurses not bothering to even fuss over them; they simply sat on the sea wall smoking dark tobacco. I suppose they are long in the tooth these French nurses, and know that we are just another bunch in a lifetime of broken men to pass through here. So fussing or attachments seem pointless to them.
As I surveyed the scene and breathed in the fresh salt air it struck me that we could have been holiday-makers or some such. I have never had a holiday. Not a real one. The nearest I have had is the trip I made to Brighton, where I met you.
Odd to think of the forgotten luxury of a holiday. Although I don't suppose that anyone has taken a holiday in these parts of France for fifty years or more. It makes me wonder now as I think on it. I wonder about what you could describe as a 'real life'; a 'normal' life. The life we lead cannot be 'normal' by any stretch of the imagination; although so very much is done in our name to convince us that it is perfectly normal. I suppose that most people in America or Russia get to have holidays. Even Africa or India. Carefree days with their families on beaches such as that one I walked with H----.
I mentioned it to H---- as we strolled and he told me of his boyhood. Of the one holiday he had ever had. His father was on leave and took them to Blackpool. There was a tower there in those days and they played on the beach and at a funfair. Back when it was beyond the reach of German bombers. He even giggled at the thought of it. We stood together on that deserted beach, his hand on my arm, with the sun on our faces and breathed the salty ozone of the sea. All was quiet for the moment, all but the few scraggy seagulls, the breeze and lap of the waves.
But then it came, the war, back into our senses. The feint distant rumbles of explosions somewhere far off. I could see the chugging steam of the warships and freighters in the distance and wondered if men like H---- and I could ever truly escape it. It will always be with us. Inside and out. We are forever scarred by it, like so many before us. I looked back at those poor souls drinking tea. They are those who survive only to roam their homelands in squeaky wheelchairs, so often to be ignored or patronised. Deemed as almost useless, they are constant embarrassing reminders of the horror of this war. Discarded ghosts on wheels.
We have spent lives directed by others since we were born. It makes me wonder if there ever was such a thing as freewill. Is freewill a mythical thing when all lives are consumed by war? You called us 'tin soldiers' and that is exactly what we are; childish pawns for those fools to direct. Children. Foolish children. They push and pull us around on their maps, whole regiments like chess men, with no real goal or end in sight. A game. They play this game merely to avoid the unthinkable, to avoid giving in, for losing this war would be beyond their comprehension. Which, of course, means they are children too. These men who run this travesty of life are simply fighting it to prove their manliness. To show the world that they are not losers. Win at all costs rather than be seen to be a sore loser. Such a childish notion. They bully us smaller children into doing their bidding just to show their prowess.
They fear defeat and its consequences, when the truth is that we were all defeated long ago. Both sides. And the loser is humanity.
I truly hope that the women of this world can show their true mettle; show their true fight. Perhaps they are the real grown-ups. Perhaps they can end this war and perhaps, just perhaps, it will be their turn to be in charge. Surely the mothers of the world would not make such foolish decisions? Why would they ever want to send their sons and daughters, the fruit of their wombs, to die in the senseless grinding abattoir that this war has become? I do not feel they ever would.
H---- and I sat on the stony wet sand eating our stale sandwiches and joking about making a run for it. About how we were prisoners on death row, even though there were no guards around us on that beach. About how we could steal and boat and row it to Spain or Africa. It was the first time I hav
e laughed for such a long time. Guffawing out loud at the thought of a one armed man and his half-blind comrade pathetically trying to row a boat on the open ocean. I do not suppose we would have got very far.
I don't think I have laughed, or perhaps even smiled that much, since I met you my dear E----. I smiled then, if only to myself, at how enchanting you are.
Please let me know what happens when you visit my mother? I do think of her so very often. Her and my long gone father.
So I continue to wait, like much of my time here. Waiting for a better time in my moments of reprieve. I wait to see your eyes again. You are my hope. I wait for your letters. Stay safe and strong my E----.
All my love,
J----
Xxx
Miss B. Smith
P.O. Box 47853
Hammersmith
LONDON
(Defence Zone D)
W60AF
Friday 5th October 1962
Dear J,
Thank you for your letter. It is so heartening to know that you are still safe and not sent back to the ghastly Front. I do hope your wounds are healing well and that you are not in much pain.
I must tell you straight away the news of our journey to see your mother. It was Sunday last that