#war letter

[vilmakosola]

My great-grandfather’s letter home from the Second Soviet-Finnish War in 1944.

[quelques-mots-d-amour]

My beloved, 

Please forgive me for my lack of delicacy, but I must first and foremost apologise. What wouldn’t I give to kneel in front of you and beg for your forgiveness; Alas! The heavens are merciless, and I am not allowed to do so. Forgive me for not being by your side at this moment. Oh, I know it is too much to ask… If only you knew how guilty I feel for not being by your side, for not being able to alleviate your pain, or at least share it with you. I feel oh so guilty for being so far away, safe, far from the woes and terrors that fill your days. There is not one day when I don’t think of you, and of all those who suffer from the war. How I would love to hold you close and to carry a little of the burden that weighs on your heart. My dearest, know that my heart bleeds alongside yours; I will not rest until the day you are free from the oppressor, until you live at home and without any fear for the morrow. 

How I would love to give you the future you desire and deserve. How I would love to kneel at your feet and kiss your hands tenderly, whispering to you: “all will be well.”

It seems so difficult to find the right words; they all appear shallow to me. My neighbours have forgotten about your everyday life, I know, but I do not forget. How could I ignore the cruel life that you suffer, how could I go to bed without a thought for you and for your beautiful country that has already seen so much. 

I must admit that my hunger has returned, and so has my sleep. I've heard that despite everything, you get used to such things. I can only imagine what you have to get used to... Yes, when I read the newspapers, when I read that hearing the alarms is part of your daily life, that taking shelter becomes almost boring, I can see that I am not living this war. And yet, how could I live as if it were not unfolding? Aren't we made of the same blood, don't we breathe the same air? Don't we all have a heart that beats?

The indifference of those around me makes me sick to my stomach; I only want to grab them and wake them up! To hear that it does not concern them makes me lose hope in humanity. Between the indifferents and the oppressors... Doesn't the world know enough woes in normal times? Is it really necessary to go and lose one's humanity, torturing one's neighbor who hasn't asked for anything? Ah, forgive me, I am going astray… 

Bien-aimée, for many years I have promised myself to visit a Sevastopol free of battles, free of oppressors, and now I hear that the city is once again in the midst of fighting. What a tragedy, what suffering your people and your country have endured. You know I am not pious, but I often find myself praying for peace.

I am unable to find the words that will make you feel better, I know that words can only do so much. Peace and freedom will come to you, I promise. Your people are good, and your fervour can only make you the victors. If you do not come to me, I will come to you. Forgive me for not being able to protect you; yet it is my deepest desire. I wish that evil would never come near you.

I send you my thoughts, and soft kisses, hoping that they bring you some comfort in these tumultuous times.

Yours.

[tobyfobywoahby]

Jamantha,

While the day grows thinner, falling out of my grasp, and the nights come closing in on someone such as myself, I am so grateful to have survived another day on the battlefield, keeping my country safe. 

I pray for you each night, dreaming that it may even do something as little as catch your ear. Even while all my other fellow soldiers are asleep, I stay awake, praying for everyone I know, even someone as sweet as you. And I will surmise that my insurmountable attempts at keeping you safe hopefully work. 

I would love to know how you are keeping up in times like these, while I'm in the trenches. Are you really sweeping like my dear friend Sage is asking of you? 

I would love to catch up with you sometime whenever this battle has ceased, if it ever does. Some days it feels like it never does. 

May every whim of hope be with you,  

Cherri

(this better give you motivation istfg on another note i had too much fun writing this)

this made me clean up like 1-2 months worth of laundry and cleaning thank you

everyone go say thank you cherri RIGHT NOW!!!!

[isoboto]

A Letter to Da

Da,

It's a cold Christmas. No snow. We've an early attack today, got shot in the forearm. My old wounds ached, especially the one on the crook of my neck. You nailed the outcome, too, by the way. I got out of this war with a pair of crutches, a wooden leg and a fucked-up brain.

I supposed it's finally time to admit that you're right about war. Right all along. There's no goddamn glory rotting in trenches, nor there's any thrill traveling across the shell-plague Europe and killing men.

This war isn't going to end soon. We celebrated our third Christmas yesterday in a wide-mouth shellhole, next by our comrades' freshly dug graves, the low, white noise of shell further to the Front droning on and on in the background. We raised a Christmas tree, and the Huns shot it down. We didn't sing this year.

They are desperate. It's hopeless. The war is a disease, deaths and deaths and deaths piling up. Flesh and wood and metal and blood. Dead and living, no difference.

My body started shaking whenever the bombing started. The bunk coughed dust down on us during a bombing, and I kept anticipating the wooden beams buckled and gave up under the smashing force of a shell, burying me alive, and then all I wanted was getting out.

Sometimes, as the shells rolled over the landscape, I consider getting on my knees and claw at the earth. Eating the dirt away back to Canada.

I envy the dead. Their battle is done. But we continue to suffer through hell. I wonder did those foul thoughts run through Charlie's mind before he deserted his post, I wonder did he regret when facing the gun barrel.

Charlie must be eighteen, now. Conrad, sixteen, if he's able to make it through this New Year's Eve. Young. Stupid. Hopeful. My brothers.

When I knew Charlie's death, the first thing that hit me wasn't grief. No. It was regret. If I hadn't convinced them to enlist onto this so-called adventure, they wouldn't been in this war, they wouldn't have die.

Those nights following, I could feel your dark, hooded eyes drilling on me again from the blackness, drilling and drilling deeper. You've looked at me for a long time before remarked simply: Fools, then you went onto the field, didn't bother to see us off.

Fools. A simple, innocent syllable. It contains youth and guilt and regrets and anger and you.

We were at Marne yesterday, I've got a place with the prostitute. She's young, very young. Soft. As I wrapped my gigantic hands around her bony hips, thinking how easily can she be crushed.

Afterward, I sat by the bed, she quietly massaging my shoulder blades. She remarked: "Don't keep on hunching your shoulders. It's bad for the muscles there. See, feel it, all tight up."

Funny.

I see a flash of you, smoking and drowning in beer, illuminated by flickering shadow. You always have your shoulders hunched up and head to the ground, regardless of whether you're ploughing through the stubborn soil or sitting by yourself.

When they removed my leg, between the constant drifting from conscious to blackness, I was with you. Fighting. Shouting. Over something. You dressed in the same fade pants and shirts you've wore for the past decades. Same broad shoulders. Same slouch posture, same big boots and muscular arms, same angle the head hung from your neck. A rifle drooped loosely from your palm, cigar clamped between your teeth.

Your voice, crude, still carrying the Yorkshire-accent the way you wear your ego on your sleeves.

"I told you boys, did I not? Told you not to believe in fairy tales. Told you not to believe in some goddamn glory. Now look at what you've got out of this war: a pair of crutches, a wooden leg and fucked-up brain."

"At least I don't hole up wasting away when the country needs me, I said to him."

"Well, hero. The war had ended; the fighting had done; the ink had dried; peace had restored. The country no longer needed you."

The next thing was a blur.

When I woke up, the paralyzed feeling stayed with me for a long time. breathing heavily, staring at the still, hunched shadow at my feet. Remembered you snarling at me.

My hobnail boot is big and tough, made me looks sturdy and powerful when facing the mouth of a machine gun. Yet, standing before Da, I felt no more than a naked, wounded boy with bare foot and missing limb and tears coursing down my cheeks.

I shouldn't be writing you this letter. I shouldn't be wasting my time writing an unsent letter that will be torn to pieces anyway.

You're everything I hate and you're everything I'm becoming.

I've curb my dialect. Curb my ego. Curb the angry nature I inherit from you. I buzzed my hair clean so that none would see our same mossy, frizz black curls. I rarely looked in mirror. I don't like to see your unibrows, hooked nose, thin lips, strong jaw.

The more I hate you, the more resemblance to you I bear.

And sometimes, I look into the mirror and thought, By the end of the war, I'd be a second you.

A small part of me still abhors that future, but the other smiles ruefully at the possibility.

If I could survive the end of this to become a second you, that is. If I could survive the end of this to come back and resume bickering over petty matters of the farm with you, that is.

If, if, if.

If I could survive the end of the war and get to tell you how right you were about everything, Da.

▬▬▬

posted on Wattpad at some point in 2019

[myowncentralperk]

Dear mother, I don’t know how to start this letter but I write to you with tears streaming down my face, they fall because of loneliness, sadness, pain and suffering I live day by day here. The first thing I have to say to you is that I Love You and even I don’t show it frequently, I Love You madly, for me you are the most important person, you have always been there supporting me and protecting me, you make that the bad things seem good, your advice are full of wisdom and you have always led me to the right path. Now I’m an adult, I’m eighteen years old, I can face things alone… but the truth is I can’t mother… Forgive me, I miss you so much, I don’t want to be here! I know at home beside father and my siblings you are proud of me, you can presume of having a son in the front. I’m sorry I’m a coward mother but I have fear, more that I can bear. I don’t understand this war, I don’t know which is the good side, I don’t know why I fight, I don’t understand anything that happens, I just follow orders. The incessant sound of the guns mixed with the screams and cries of the people torturing my ears night and day, I live with a continuous melody of machine guns and constant rain of bombers. I don’t even speak anymore, nor think because other do it for me, I just need a sentence to muddle through here, “to order”. They say love is enough to continue, that we have to fight for our families, show what we are capable of, but I don’t have the courage to be in this battle, my legs shake nonstop, I don’t sleep, I have difficulties to breathe, I cry secretly because I can’t show what I feel in front of my companions, be strong and fight I repeat to myself constantly, but the words get lost in my mind like the life of the people around me, I’m the puppet of a tyrant puppeteer. Last night they parachuted us in a new battle zone, they say we are the best unit ever seen, the force of the eight they call us. The eighth parachuting unit, always in the front fighting for the nation, for the ideals of a state, living in conflict with loyalty and courage. We are valiant soldiers, we open gaps in the enemy ranks, we cause casualties in them like they are animals and we don’t have regrets, but it’s all lies, pure lies, just a facade, an appearance; the faces of the people show the contrary, their faces have turned dark and pale, they show the fear, the horror and abandonment that it’s lived here, but like they repeat us constantly “soldiers, them or you!”. Mother the real reason why I write you is to tell you what happened last night. I was in the battle field sheltering from the crossfire and the shrapnel. As always I was following orders, we had to pass a level to reach a strategically point that it could be used as our base camp, for that to happen we had to beat the contrary with all our force, we didn't spare in monition, nor violence… Mother yesterday in the trenches I saw the enemy running towards me, I pointed them with my rifle, and without giving them any time to react I shot them; something weird happened then, I already had killed more people before but in that boy there was something different, a light enlightened his face, the face of the enemy I was killing… Mother it was my friend José (Joseph), my classmate, our neighbor, the son of Francisca, my best friend, with whom I played so many time at soldiers and trenches. Mother now the game was real, there are no laughs, just darkness and sobs, we will never play again, they are burying him! I’m so sorry, I ask you for forgiveness mother but I can’t stand being here anymore, I want to die, I’m fed up with this war, do they not realize no one will win, fuck! Maybe I will write you again, but the next time will be from heaven, where I’ll find José and we’ll play again. Mother rest assure that if my blood was ink and my heart an inkwell, with the blood in my veins I would write an “I LOVE YOU”. Until forever.

Letter of an anonymous soldier during the Spanish Civil War. The soldier died in the battle field. His mother never received the letter. 

(translated by me)

[juxtaposedsabotage]

Sullivan Ballou's Letter

Washington D.C.

My very dear Sarah:

The indications are very strong that we shall move in a few days—perhaps tomorrow. Lest I should not be able to write you again, I feel impelled to write lines that may fall under your eye when I shall be no more.

Our movement may be one of a few days duration and full of pleasure—and it may be one of severe conflict and death to me. Not my will, but thine O God, be done. If it is necessary that I should fall on the battlefield for my country, I am ready. I have no misgivings about, or lack of confidence in, the cause in which I am engaged, and my courage does not halt or falter. I know how strongly American Civilization now leans upon the triumph of the Government, and how great a debt we owe to those who went before us through the blood and suffering of the Revolution. And I am willing—perfectly willing—to lay down all my joys in this life, to help maintain this Government, and to pay that debt.

But, my dear wife, when I know that with my own joys I lay down nearly all of yours, and replace them in this life with cares and sorrows—when, after having eaten for long years the bitter fruit of orphanage myself, I must offer it as their only sustenance to my dear little children—is it weak or dishonorable, while the banner of my purpose floats calmly and proudly in the breeze, that my unbounded love for you, my darling wife and children, should struggle in fierce, though useless, contest with my love of country.

Sarah, my love for you is deathless, it seems to bind me to you with mighty cables that nothing but Omnipotence could break; and yet my love of Country comes over me like a strong wind and bears me irresistibly on with all these chains to the battlefield.

The memories of the blissful moments I have spent with you come creeping over me, and I feel most gratified to God and to you that I have enjoyed them so long. And hard it is for me to give them up and burn to ashes the hopes of future years, when God willing, we might still have lived and loved together and seen our sons grow up to honorable manhood around us. I have, I know, but few and small claims upon Divine Providence, but something whispers to me—perhaps it is the wafted prayer of my little Edgar—that I shall return to my loved ones unharmed. If I do not, my dear Sarah, never forget how much I love you, and when my last breath escapes me on the battlefield, it will whisper your name.

Forgive my many faults, and the many pains I have caused you. How thoughtless and foolish I have often been! How gladly would I wash out with my tears every little spot upon your happiness, and struggle with all the misfortune of this world, to shield you and my children from harm. But I cannot. I must watch you from the spirit land and hover near you, while you buffet the storms with your precious little freight, and wait with sad patience till we meet to part no more.

But, O Sarah! If the dead can come back to this earth and flit unseen around those they loved, I shall always be near you; in the brightest day and in the darkest night—amidst your happiest scenes and gloomiest hours—always, always; and if there be a soft breeze upon your cheek, it shall be my breath; or the cool air fans your throbbing temple, it shall be my spirit passing by.

Sarah, do not mourn me dead; think I am gone and wait for me, for we shall meet again.

As for my little boys, they will grow as I have done, and never know a father's love and care. Little Willie is too young to remember me long, and my blue-eyed Edgar will keep my frolics with him among the dimmest memories of his childhood. Sarah, I have unlimited confidence in your maternal care and your development of their characters. Tell my two mothers his and hers I call God's blessing upon them. O Sarah, I wait for you there! Come to me, and lead thither my children.

Sullivan

This man's devotion to both his family and country is beyond amazing. And this letter fills me with sorrow when I read it. It's beyond sad to think this was a letter he had written, knowing that he may very well die on the battlefield and leave his family behind. And then fate decided to fulfill that prophecy. Sullivan died from complications due to amputation when artillery fire had tore off his leg.

[devilsdontcry-blog]

My Dearest,

I've missed you very very much since that last night we were together and will hold that night especially in my memories for years to come. I've been turning it over and over in my mind lately. I've read your letter through at least four times and will probably read it more times before I'm through. I've been sitting here.. looking at your picture and getting more homesick every minute. I've wanted that picture more than anything else I know of. Except of course... You yourself. I keep thinking of you darling, I keep wishing I could be home with you.I want to leave in the worst possible way so I can come home to see you but... things don't look so good on that subject. This war has spoiled a lot of things for everyone I guess.. I've never been so lonesome in my life as I am right now. I'm completely lost without you darling. I never realized I could miss any one person so much. I just hope it won't be too much longer until I'm able to be with you again and live a sane and normal life.