On the Front

September 15, 1915
France
To: Brighton Beach, England, UK


Dear Mamma:

You’ll notice this letter doesn’t say where I am posted. It is for the best, because it could be dangerous for me and the rest of the staff, and my patients. You and Papa, and Sophie (give her my love) will have to conform with knowing I am posted on the Western Front. At least this way, this letter won’t arrive all cut up by the censors. Coworker says her sister wrote back saying they could even see the edges of blue lines from the censor’s pencil. I have many patients here mother, the trenches seem to spout them endlessly. The wounds are frightening, and very new. The use of gas causes the most awful effects on the human body, mother. The injured, more than men they are boys really, are almost jaded to it. It’s a frightening new world mother. The other day, a boy woke up to find the gas had left him blind. I held his hand as he screamed, and then let him sob in my arms. He didn’t speak English, and my French was too broken to have a conversation. They are sending him home tomorrow. They say he called for me at night, (I work the day shift) calling me “mother”. He reminds me of Benjamin as child, remember how he’d fall and scrape his knees? He cried so hard, I remember, and I’d comfort him, and treat his wounds. Like Papa said, nursing is in my blood. Still, this war makes even me doubt my ways. The men come back muddy and dazed from the trenches. They say nonsensical things. Or they don’t speak t all. It is fearsome; they sit together in big groups, unused to solitude, but silent, with haunted eyes. They say they are “shell shocked”. This war scares me mother, and I wonder how you and father and my beloved little Sophie are doing at home. Does she miss me? A little girl should not be without her mother I know, but her father is in a trench somewhere, and I am needed her, my skills are indispensable. Tell her I miss her, every night and day, and that her Daddy does too, and that they miss her, but have duties to attend to. I love you mother. Give father my best too, I miss his stories. The truth is mother, I miss Britain. The familiar accent, the food (the rationing must be affecting this, I know), ice cream on Sundays. The walks I would take with Steven. Ah my Steven. I have not heard from him mother. I hope he is safe, maybe being treated by a fellow colleague. At least I am well liked here mother. They have elected me head nurse. I should be overjoyed mother. But my ward is filled with silent brooding men, missing limbs, filled with holes because of the “machine gun”, or blinding by gases. The floor I never without puddles of fresh blood. It is chaos, the stretchers bearers burst in, wide eyed and panting, men, no boys, dying on old canvas. I cannot believe this war, with all its deaths, its missing, its injured. It’s a whole new world mother. Give Papa, and my darlingest Sophie all my love.

Attentively, your daughter,

Jane.