Dear Margaret, he began.

He wiped some sweat from his forehead with his sleeve.

This was going to be more difficult than he’d imagined.

I regret to inform you that William

He scratched the words out.

That’s as far as he got. For two days. Two long days in which he wrestled with words in his mind, turning them over in every combination that attempted to break the news softly. But it was an impossible task.

Seeing it in ink made it all too real, as if he were watching William fall on that battlefield all over again. If it caused him this kind of anguish, how could he inflict that on Margaret? Just when she was rediscovering joy?

Dear Margaret, he tried again.

William was a good friend to both of us.

No. That wasn’t much better.

Two more days went by. Tom thought about it, starting and stopping more letters than he could count, keeping them in his head so as to not waste his supply of papier et stylo.

Thinking about William brought back memories that he wasn’t ready to relive.

Tom shook as he took a pen in his right hand, grateful that it hadn’t been the one to sustain damage. If he’d had to write with his left, the chicken-scratch look of it would have pulled him out of the world he was absorbed into when he wrote to her.

Dearest Margaret, he started, a sense of peace descending on him. The first he’d felt in a long time.

Returning to her felt like a puzzle piece nestled with its exact match.

By the time this letter arrives, you will have heard all about Normandy. It was as bad as the reports likely stated. And even worse. Good men were lost and I saw things that will be impossible to forget. I won’t belabor it because you know all that you need to know, and I don’t want to fill your head with those horrors by reliving them for you.

So enough of that.

As I write, I am looking out on the English Channel. In the distance is the Fort de I’île Pelée. I believe I am using all of the correct markings—I asked my nurse for help—but I am certain that I could not duplicate its pronunciation. It reminds me of pictures I’ve seen of that island prison in San Francisco—Alcatraz. Beyond it—and beyond my view—there are other fortifications of the last century—Forts de Chavagnac, de l’Ouest, Central, and de l’Est.

This simple town of Cherbourg is quite well guarded. And yet, things they couldn’t have imagined back when they were built—airplanes, bombs, and the like—managed to all but destroy it until we came to liberate its rubble.