Fic: "The Letter Home"

[watch_is_me]

Verse: Personal canon.
Words: 3,687.
Prompt: oncoming_storms, Prompt 30.2.b, "Hope," and some personal research.

EDIT: Fixed my obvious historical error, go, me!

I know it's a lot of text, this piece, not broken up by dialogue, but I'd love feedback on it! I did quite a bit of research to get it put together, and I'd very much like to hear what people think. I'd like to believe it's worth the textiness, but that's me reading it. What are you folks' reactions? I shall give you Interweb virtual cookies for your thoughts!

Dear Mother and Father,

I know that you will wonder why I am writing again so soon. My last letter was only a week ago, so that this one may arrive right behind it. You’ll think that your son has all the time in the world here, to write and to stargaze. The war, I can hear you say, that must all be a sham in the papers, the dear boy’s down there larking about, writing us serial novels and learning the constellations. A Continental vacation, that’s what it is, government-paid!

It’s not like that. Paper’s hard to get, and time is harder, and a dry spot in the trenches, even harder still. So you’ll have to believe me when I tell you I’m writing again because I’ve got a story worth telling. Really worth telling, and I hope you put this on to the local paper, though I don’t doubt they’ll think I’m mad.

It’s a story about Christmas, Mum and Da, and about peace and the best parts of us English. Maybe the Germans, too, though I don’t know about that.

It’s a story about a Sparrow and a Doctor, and that won’t make any sense to you until I start at the beginning, which is where I ought to have started straight off. I’ve always been backward, haven’t I, Da?

When I thought about spending Christmas here in the trenches, my mind was back on the both of you, and the family, and how you’d be spending the season warm and together and wondering how I was and hoping maybe I was doing well and that the water in the trenches wasn’t quite so high as it usually is and the food not quite so meager. I thought I’d write you a nice letter after the holiday and say I’d done quite well by myself, whether it was true or not.

I was writing that letter in my mind all Christmas Eve, and there wasn’t a word in it true. It was a Silent Night, that’s all I could swear-on-the-Bible say was Christmas about it; and across from us, there were lights above the German trenches, and some of the men thought they might be candles that the Jerries had put up on Christmas trees. It was too dark to tell, and I wasn’t believing it, because in a night that cold with the mud freezing in my boots, it was hard to keep Christmas in my heart, and if it was hard for me, I thought how hard must it be for them across the way, with what we’ve read in the papers about them? Bloodthirsty savages, what’s Christmas to a lot like that?

So I had my letter written out, excepting the paper and the ink and the spare moments to write it, when dawn started coming up over us. It was a hard morning, frost on the ground everywhere and fog in the air like someone’d ground up a Solomon’s Mine of diamonds and puffed them out in the air—puff! I thought that maybe the Germans would be clever and come across when they thought we’d be wanting the peace, and I was on alert, you can be certain of that, Da. Never a coward yet, your son.

Then we all heard this sound, out of the fog. We couldn’t tell what it was, and we were throwing suggestions up and down the trenches. Metal scraping on metal, most of us said, including me. Some wag said maybe it was the biggest vulture in Christendom, come screeching in to eat the corpses. I think most of us thought it was some new toy the Germans had got. I know I did.

Then we heard a voice out between the trenches, singing. It was a girl’s voice, singing a Christmas song, pretty as you please, come drifting out of the fog like it was part of it, part of the diamonds. None of us knew the song, but it was for Christmas, right enough. “Come they told me, pa-rum-pa-pa-pum.” It was about a drummer boy, playing his drum for the newborn Christ child, and the voice sang it through to the end, and then it stopped.

You’d never be able to imagine the silence then, Mum, Da. I think all of us, on both sides, we were just listening, struck to stone.

Then the girl’s voice called out, “English, Germans! Come out halfway and we’ll meet you halfway! Peace on Earth, goodwill to men!” A man’s voice called after hers, in German and then in Latin and then in English: “Right, you lot, happy Christmas, out of those trenches, hop to!”

We looked at each other, up and down the trench, and you could see each of us wondering who’d be the first to go, because someone had to go, even if it was a trick, or who’d be the first to take a shot out into the fog. Mackie, close to me, shrugged and chucked down his rifle and then he was over the top. I don’t know if you’ll be proud of me, Da, or ashamed, but I was the second one over, right after old Mackie. I’ve always been more curious than I should be, and I know you keep saying I’ll come to a bad end because of it, but wouldn’t you have gone? Voices shouting out on Christmas morning, voices that weren’t the Germans’ and weren’t ours?

When I came through the fog, there were others there already. Men from up and down our lines, and I recognized some officers, who’d come out like Mackie and me, and Germans! As many as there were Englishmen, and most of them young, as young as we are, here, and younger. They were shaking hands with each other and with the strangers who’d shouted. One of them was the girl who’d been singing. She said her name was Sally Sparrow. I wish you could have met her, Mum, you would have got right on. She said she was travelling with the Doctor and that she was English and that they were doing charitable work for our side, which I don’t think was the truth, not for an instant. I don’t know what the truth was, but I’ll tell you, I had this feeling it didn’t have anything to do with the war, even though they were standing there, right in the middle of it! It was like they’d popped in for Christmas and none of the war, us living and dying there, touched them, not quite. I should have got angry at her, but I couldn’t. She had blonde hair and a beautiful singing voice, and the way she looked at everything, it was like she was trying to press it all into her mind.

I know you’re asking now, but who’s the Doctor? He was the man who was shouting, and I’ll come to him. I don’t know about putting that one down on paper; it’s as though there’s more to him than I could ever describe and at the same time nothing at all. He came, and he went, and I can tell you about Sally but I couldn’t tell you about him, not like I could tell you about her. She was English, and he was something else. Not German, if that’s what you’re thinking. I don’t know what he was. He was thin and excitable and solemn, and he was dressed all in black, with a dark jacket, and that’s enough to go on, for now.

I shook hands with the both of them, and said how do you do and it was like a dream, this beautiful girl Sally and the Doctor. When I shook hands with him, it was like shaking hands with a ghost, I don’t know how to explain it any better. His clothes all dark and his eyes darker, somehow. He was younger than you, Da, much younger, you’ll have to excuse me saying so, and not so old as some of the men on our side, nor on the Germans either. He told me later that he’d seen war, and he didn’t half like it; but even war doesn’t make a man’s eyes so old.

I shook hands with some of the Jerries, too, and but we didn’t get on! Shooting at one another the day before and there we were, telling each other happy Christmas and swapping souvenirs. I got a button off of one man, and two cigars for some of the cigarettes Princess Mary sent us in her Christmas present. Some of the others traded for helmets and chocolate and jackknives and whatever else caught their fancy. We had a camera out on the field and had our photographs taken and exchanged autographs and addresses all round. There’s one, with Sally and us men, that I hope gets made up alright, because if I can send it along you will have to believe my story. One of the Germans told me he had a wife and children waiting for him back in England and that he used to work at a club in London. It is strange, how the war has divided us. They say they are ready to be quit of it and cannot get home quick enough.

There was not a shot the entire day, and both sides, we talked and laughed and shared food and drink as though we’d known each other for years. We had fires blazing in the shell-holes and we gathered around and had singsongs. The Germans sang “God Save the King,” and we gave them a cheer and applause, and we sang the Austrian National Anthem, and they cheered and whooped. We had the old Christmas hymns, “O Tannenbaum,” “Silent Night,” “Good King Wenceslas.” One of the Germans sang opera; the men told us he had been a professional before the war, and I believe they told the truth, he had such a voice. Sally sang us songs, though not so many as we might have liked. Many of the ones she sang I had never heard before, and some were very odd. The Doctor sang, too. “O Come All Ye Faithful,” in the original Latin, and “Home Sweet Home.” He sang that one straight through once, and the second time we all sang along, and I dare say there wasn’t anyone there not wishing for home right then. He also played the mouth organ a treat.

Part of that day we spent burying our dead. Some of them, Mum, they’d been lying in the frozen ground out there for weeks and it was hard to look at them, even after I’ve seen men dead out here in numbers. I didn’t recognize many of them by name, thank God, and there were more of the Germans than ours. It took hours to dig the graves, though the Doctor made it go faster than it might have. He had this device, I didn’t recognize it and no one else did either that I’ve asked, a thing like a baton that he used to thaw the ground. It had everyone on edge, you could tell, because it wasn’t anything that we’ve seen in the war before and he held it in that way a man has, you won’t know, Mum, like it could do harm and he’d used it to do harm before. He put it away smart quick when he was done, but that was the most dangerous time in all that Christmas. It could have gone right up in a blaze, if he’d been doing anything other than helping our dead. You don’t challenge a man who’s helping you bury your dead, no matter if he’s got two heads and bloodstains on his coat and knives in his pockets.

The funeral was beautiful. Everyone was solemn and still and the sky had cleared right out, blue straight across, like the sun wanted to see the day and pay its respects. We had a service in English and then one in German. By that time of the day, when we’d been talking back and forth for hours and working in the dirt side by side digging the graves, I must have gotten used to the sound of the German, because I would almost say I understood the German service as well as the English, the tone and the cadence and the sentiments were so clear. Sally threw the first handful of soil onto the corpses, and then the burial detail pitched in and buried them properly. I was on the detail, and the Doctor asked if he might help, too. He threw off his jacket and worked down in the mud with us, and I would never have thought such a thin man could work so hard, but he shifted more earth than any two of us put together. His face while he did it, his expression was set like some of the men I’ve seen here who’ve been out at the front for longer than anyone else or come in from the bad places. He was seeing things that I wouldn’t want to imagine, I’d put down money on it, and maybe hoping to bury some memories with the men. If I ever get like that, I don’t know if I’d be able to come back home and be good for anyone. It’d be hard, Mum and Da, to look you in the face and not want to run away, if I had that much death in me.

I was worn down after that, though it was good work, and I was proud to do it, but the Doctor came up out of the graves, covered in mud like some wild-eyed corpse gone walking, and threw himself into putting together a football match. Someone managed to get a ball from somewhere, and they ran about on the flattest patch of ground they could find, which wasn’t very, with the shell-holes everywhere you step between the trenches. The men had arranged themselves into two teams by sides, Germans on one and English on the other, but the Doctor insisted that that wasn’t the way to go about it and had them count out into mixed sides, English and Germans on both. Some of the men refused to play that way, and the Doctor told them, stay on the side, then, and drummed up new players. It was quite a game. I didn’t play myself, but I watched, and so did Sally, and if the Doctor could shift dirt, he could run twice as well. His shoes were all wrong for the ground, funny black canvas things with stars on the sides, but he still ran like Pheidippides at the Battle of Marathon. Fortunately for the other side, he was a terrible shot, and the game ended in a tie, 3-3. He missed with the last kick entirely. The men on his team ribbed him about it, saying it was good for him he wasn’t in the trenches because if he was as poor a shot with a gun as with a kick, he’d never have one man to his name. He said he hoped he wouldn’t, and then walked off into no man's land on his own.

I spent as much time as I could, the rest of the day, with Sally, and a few of the Germans that I got on with. We talked about books and poetry and astronomy and the food and the conditions in the trenches. Sally was very well-read, and occasionally made references to authors foreign to me. She recommended one title in particular, The Great Gatsby, by F. Scott Fitzgerald, I had her write the name and title down for me, and another, All Quiet on the Western Front. She said I might have a job finding them in the shops, but I ought to run into them eventually. Mackie joined us around our fire, late in the evening, and told us that he’d gone out to meet the Doctor and Sally between the lines because the Doctor’s voice had sounded exactly like a teacher of his, back at his school. He didn’t know what to make of it, he said, because they looked the same, too, as like as twins. John Smith, the teacher’s name is, and he was Mackie’s favorite, teaching history. Mackie showed us a poem Smith had given to each of the boys in his class before they went off to war. It was called “The Next War,” by a fellow called Wilfred Owen, and it was drawn up in handwriting. A funny sort of poem to send soldiers off to war with, it was, though it had a comfort to it and a peculiar hope. I will try to get Mackie to lend it me so I may copy it out for you. I asked Mackie if he’d mentioned Smith to the Doctor, and he said he had, and the Doctor hadn’t answered him straight but had gone off to the side, asking Mackie about what he’d thought of his school. Neither the Germans nor I knew what to make of that, and we told Mackie so.

Evening fell, and the cold came harder than ever, but we had our fires and the stars were brighter than I’ve ever seen them. I felt like one of the Kings, looking for the star that would lead me to the birthplace of our Lord and Savior, staring up at that sparkling firmament. The singing started up again, and there was whiskey and wine going from hand to hand, and it was German and English at every fire. Some of the officers had had enough of it, and thought we should fall back to the normal order, but their power to move the men couldn’t stand up to the power of that Day. Truly, it was

“Long live His truth, and may it last forever,
For in His name all discordant noise shall cease."

The Doctor came to our fire late, and he was still so covered in the mud of the place it was like inviting a genius of the trenches to sit and have a drink, a black-and-gray golem. He sat with us into the night and then had some words aside with Sally, and I could tell they would be leaving soon. He toasted us and our return home safe at the end of the war, Germans and English both, and told us it was the most peaceful Christmas he had ever had. We laughed, though he didn’t seem to be joking. He and Sally took their leave, then. I asked for a kiss to remember her by, and she gave me one, a sweet chaste kiss, Mum, on the cheek, and smiled at me, a sad smile but happy, too, like the day. If I don’t get out of this war, I think that she will remember me, and that will help when the water’s high in the trenches and the shells won’t stop coming, because wherever she is now, she’s far from here and in that way, I will be, too, some part of me, always.

The Doctor gave me a watch before he went, as a Christmas present, he said. I asked why me and not any of the others, and he said it was because I spent so much of the night looking at the stars. He wouldn’t say anything else. It’s a very handsome watch, silver with engraving on the case like an old astronomical chart. It keeps wonderful time, even with the damp and my forgetting to wind it on the longer days.

The noise came again, that noise like a bird and like a metal thing both at once, after they had left our fire. What it was, I don’t imagine I will ever know, but I hope it means that they got safe away, Sally Sparrow and the Doctor.

Was there ever such a Christmas? It was almost as miraculous as the very first. It will be in my heart always, along with the Doctor and Sally and the stars winking down clear through the glare of the spotlights.

Far From Home,

Your Loving Boy

P.S. I love you. I love you more and more with every day I am away, and I will come home to you, no matter how much time and space should come between us. I promise.

Author's Appendix

Wilfred Owen, "The Next War"

War's a joke for me and you,
While we know such dreams are true.
- Siegfried Sassoon

Out there, we've walked quite friendly up to Death,-
Sat down and eaten with him, cool and bland,-
Pardoned his spilling mess-tins in our hand.
We've sniffed the green thick odour of his breath,-
Our eyes wept, but our courage didn't writhe.
He's spat at us with bullets and he's coughed
Shrapnel. We chorussed when he sang aloft,
We whistled while he shaved us with his scythe.

Oh, Death was never enemy of ours!
We laughed at him, we leagued with him, old chum.
No soldier's paid to kick against His powers.
We laughed, -knowing that better men would come,
And greater wars: when each proud fighter brags
He wars on Death, for lives; not men, for flags.