Letter to a Dear Friend
Nov. 7th, 2008 04:57 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nozenfordaddyLetter from Dick Winters to his friend DeEtta while Easy was posted to Bastonge.
January 18, 1945
DeEtta,
I've stopped wondering if I'll ever be warm again, and I keep
remembering that hot bath I took in Paris and wishing I were there.
Wishing I was home with my loved ones. With your letter came letters
from home, from Lottie and Ann, and my parents.
Lottie and Ann's were full of delightful nothings that once would have
made me smile. Ann is growing up without her older brother, nearly a
woman now and in my mind she is still a strippling, lanky and awkward
at twelve. Just growing into her feet. And I wonder if the brother she
misses so in her letters will ever return to her.
Lottie is more practical, she narrated the goings on in Lancaster, who
married who, the Christmas service, who'd come home and who will never
come home. She joined the ladies aid, and rolls bandages and packs
kits for the boys. She's so proud thinking that one of them might make
it to me here.
My father's letter was more of the same. He too would like a recent
picture and I will tell you what I didn't have the heart to tell him.
I fear that you would not recognize your friend if I sent a picture as
I am now. The face in my mirror is one that I barely regonize as my
own, so much older than it was even a month ago, and chapped from the
cold.
My family waits at home for my return, fearing that it will come in a
box, and I don't know how to tell them that the young man they sent to
war will never return. If he survived D-Day, he was certainly a
casualty in the forest outside *censored*. Thirty one days on the
line De, watching men I love like brothers freeze and starve. Thirty one days and more deaths than I want to remember but will never
forget. Men I respected, trusted with my company, lost to fatigue and
despair, others lost to Nazi shelling.
I was so young once, convinced I was invincible and now I am so old
and tired. I cannot fathom that there will be a time when I do not
have to live like this, do not have to fight and kill to survive. It
seems to far away, so long ago that I was home and impossible that I
will ever be there again.
I will never forget this last Christmas and New Years, and I fear that
the chill will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Your friend
Dick
January 18, 1945
DeEtta,
I've stopped wondering if I'll ever be warm again, and I keep
remembering that hot bath I took in Paris and wishing I were there.
Wishing I was home with my loved ones. With your letter came letters
from home, from Lottie and Ann, and my parents.
Lottie and Ann's were full of delightful nothings that once would have
made me smile. Ann is growing up without her older brother, nearly a
woman now and in my mind she is still a strippling, lanky and awkward
at twelve. Just growing into her feet. And I wonder if the brother she
misses so in her letters will ever return to her.
Lottie is more practical, she narrated the goings on in Lancaster, who
married who, the Christmas service, who'd come home and who will never
come home. She joined the ladies aid, and rolls bandages and packs
kits for the boys. She's so proud thinking that one of them might make
it to me here.
My father's letter was more of the same. He too would like a recent
picture and I will tell you what I didn't have the heart to tell him.
I fear that you would not recognize your friend if I sent a picture as
I am now. The face in my mirror is one that I barely regonize as my
own, so much older than it was even a month ago, and chapped from the
cold.
My family waits at home for my return, fearing that it will come in a
box, and I don't know how to tell them that the young man they sent to
war will never return. If he survived D-Day, he was certainly a
casualty in the forest outside *censored*. Thirty one days on the
line De, watching men I love like brothers freeze and starve. Thirty one days and more deaths than I want to remember but will never
forget. Men I respected, trusted with my company, lost to fatigue and
despair, others lost to Nazi shelling.
I was so young once, convinced I was invincible and now I am so old
and tired. I cannot fathom that there will be a time when I do not
have to live like this, do not have to fight and kill to survive. It
seems to far away, so long ago that I was home and impossible that I
will ever be there again.
I will never forget this last Christmas and New Years, and I fear that
the chill will stay with me for the rest of my life.
Your friend
Dick
