I see people venture out every day, still untrusting that the enemy has moved out for good. But they slip out of their homes and catch fish and sunshine and rebuild brick by brick.

It’s an admirable thing.

I understand this town and its people, even from this little room. I have always been protected by the expectations of my parents—a life laid out and one that I have dutifully embraced. But the war has similarly dismantled that security and I find myself wanting to…create a new edifice on an old foundation.

Please forgive the metaphor. Too much salt air and too much time has softened a hardened soldier.

I want you to know, though, that with every step I took in my cracked leather boots, you were near me. Your friendship is that fortification that kept me safe. When I saw the beauty of the yellow rapeseed flowers blooming on landscape, I wanted to pick them and make a bouquet to give you. A real one, not simply the ones sketched for you at the end of my letters.

The thought resuscitated me when I feared I would suffocate from the ugliness of the battle. I carried your picture in my left chest pocket. Not as a talisman but as a reminder of why we were there. What—who—we were fighting for. All the beloved ones we left behind when we crossed the Atlantic. I pressed on when I wanted to give up because I wanted to believe that we will all see home again.

Dare I hope—I would like to see you in person when we are on the other side of this.

This is more than we have shared before, but when you have been surrounded by too many lives cut short, it makes you think about the things you want to say and to say them now rather than to wait. And say them without reservation.

Please write soon. You can’t possibly know how your letters give me the strength to continue on.

Tom set the pen down and looked it over.

The words were a surprise, even to himself. There was something about the curve of handwriting—the slope up, the slant down, over and over—that dulled inhibitions and crafted courage where one wouldn’t have thought it existed.

He meant what he’d said—seeing how swiftly death could take a man created an indelible change.

The nurse had somehow procured two pencils at his request—yellow and green—jaune et verte—and he drew out the delicate petals of the rapeseed flower. He held it at arm’s length when he was finished and frowned. Individually, it was an unremarkable blossom. But it had been the one beauty in the battlefield—yellow so vibrant and abundant that it seemed as if heaven itself had spilled paint upon the ground.

How he wished Margaret could see it in person.

He picked the pen up again and stared at it.

He still had to finish the letter.

Love, he began.

He took a breath.