On My Way Home To You

24 December 1917

Bramshott Military Camp, Hampshire, England

Dear Nan,

Thank God you are safe. I have written half a dozen times since we heard about Kingsport, but don't know whether any mail can get through to you yet. I will keep writing in hopes that something gets delivered.

Your letter arrived this morning. I can't tell you what torture mail call has been these past few weeks. I expect you don't need to be told what that is like, but it is a novel experience for me, and one I could have done very well without.

When the news came through on the 7th, I thought it must be some sort of macabre joke. All of a sudden, everyone seemed to be whispering about Kingsport, but I only caught hints here and there until someone handed me a newspaper. Even then, I thought it couldn't possibly be real. Thousands dead? In Kingsport?

And then no news for such a long time — so very, very long, Nan. I wrote to Faith and Jem but neither of them had any word either and what news we could get from the papers was simply unspeakable. Can those photographs possibly be real? The whole northern half of the city just piles of rubble? I have seen cities like that, and villages — homes destroyed and churches wrecked and civilians killed in the blinking of an eye. But Kingsport? It still seems a nightmare. I spent these weeks poring over those photographs looking for landmarks and thinking that it seemed that Aster House probably would have been spared, but it was always possible that wasn't, or that you might have gone out on an errand, or got caught in the fire . . .

Nan, I am so very, very sorry. I should be home with you right this very moment. Instead, I am waist-deep in paperwork, driven half mad with worry, and cursing myself for signing on again. All I could think these past weeks was that the last thing I'd done was disappoint you and I never got a chance to make it right. I am so sorry, Nan. Sorrier than I ever have been over anything.

Of course I will do as you say and find Emile. Jem's in Bexhill-on-Sea and there's a good chance Emile will have written to him. If Emile is even half as anxious about Marie and Claude as I've been about you, I think an amputated leg will be rather far down the list of his troubles at the moment.

I have not seen Faith recently — she went down to Bexhill on her leave. I am quite wild with jealousy and miserable as well, knowing that it is my own fault I'm not with you right now. No, I did not laugh at you nailing up the rugs. I should have been there holding them up for you.

What can be beautiful here except what you have sent over? Letters, pictures, your piece of lace. Every day, I look for something beautiful in England and find that everything I want is already in my pockets.

I feel that perhaps I am only now getting a glimpse of what these past three years have been for you. From your letter, it seems that you are doing wonderful work. The city is as lucky to have you there as I am wretched here.

I love you. You are safe. That must be enough for now.

All my love and then more,

Jerry

25 December 1917

Aster House, Kingsport, Nova Scotia

Dear Anne,

Happy Christmas, darling. I'm sorry I have not written more often, but I know you understand how busy we have been here. I found the note you slipped into my valise, though, and was very glad that I did not let the girls unpack it for me!

You would be so proud of them, Anne. Both of them.

Through all of this, Nan has been a brick — I mean that absolutely and with more than a little awe. She has worked so calmly and steadily and has never succumbed to despair — I haven't heard her complain about a single thing the whole time I've been here. You were worried that she would go to pieces — that isn't her anymore. She's pitching in with the best of them.

The other day, I came back to Aster House for a change of clothes and there was Nan, on a ladder, hammering slats over the empty window frames, with a nail hanging out of the corner of her mouth. I had a sudden vision of her as a little girl, painting the side of the schoolhouse with her nose in the air and a smudge on her cheek. Do you remember that? How we laughed over it. Ideals indeed. I do hope she's forgiven Jerry for re-enlisting — I remember well enough what it is like to be on the outs and must extend my sympathies to the poor boy. The mail finally came in and nearly all of it was from him.

And Di. Anne-girl, she is a doctor to her fingertips. How can it be that there was a time when I didn't see it? The patients adore her. On the first day I was here, I saw her comfort a hysterical father, notice a smoke patient struggling to breathe when the doctors had passed him by without a second glance, and put in a line of sutures as expertly as I could have done myself. Edgar tends toward generosity in his compliments, but he was only telling the plain truth about Di. I know you worry about her and the difficult road she has chosen. But I've seen her at her work, and it is her home.

Phil and Jo send you their love. Jo has been doing the hardest work of any of us, going out to what used to be Patterson Street every day and working with the crews there. They are still pulling bodies out of the wreckage. Jo accompanies them to the morgue and then goes with the families to identify them when there's enough left to identify.* So many of his old congregation have been lost — sometimes whole families. There will never be a full count. I don't know how he can do it, Anne. You know how it is for me when I lose a patient who should have lived a long, happy, useful life. To lose so many like this — over nothing — is appalling. But you know Jo — a servant of all, as ever.**

Phil has been looking after the living — she and Nan and Marie take parcels of donations that come in from her Bolingbroke connections over to the churches nearly every day. Today, they have been down at one of the Presbyterian churches all day, serving soup to people who have lost everything. Phil says to tell you that Gordon is doing much better. He is convalescing at Mount Holly with his grandparents, and though his lungs may never be what they once were, they have hope that he will continue to improve with fresh air and exercise. Phil had a letter from Olly last week and he is well. He was the only officer in his battalion to come through Passchendaele without a scratch.

I mean to stay in Kingsport another week and then I'll be on my way home to you. The immediate crisis is past — most of the patients are stable now, and the hospitals are operating more normally. Doctors have come from all over to help — Harvard Medical School sent a hospital train, fully staffed, with 500 beds. How many doctors do they have at that place anyway? And how do they get any teaching done when they are forever running off to one disaster or another?

It will take years to rebuild, though. Poor old Kingsport. You would weep to see it. Crowded with refugees and rubble — quite as bad as Belgium, from what I've seen. Housing and feeding them all will be no small task, and we must see that the Island sends as much aid as possible.

But I have done what I can for now. I hate to be apart from you, especially at Christmas. Nothing but true disaster could have called me away, and even that not for long. Coming home from the hospital to a cold, lonely bed only makes me realize how unutterably lucky I have been these many years, and how no accolades or honors at a big city hospital could be better than our life together in the Glen. I have a mad desire to tell you get your snowshoes ready, so that I when I come home, we can go tramping out together through the winter woods. But I think perhaps we might just tell the others we've both come down with a touch of cold and really must be left undisturbed while we recover.

Keep a warm place for me, won't you? I'll be home soon.

All my love always,

Gil

*Arthur Barnstead, the Registrar of Deaths in Halifax, was in charge of the overwhelming job of identifying the dead, many of whom were burned beyond recognition. He implemented a system that had been developed by his father, coroner John Barnstead, who had been in charge of the bodies recovered from the Titanic five years earlier. This system involved describing each corpse in terms that might be useful to relatives and placing any clothing or objects found with the body in a bag that stayed with it. Many badly damaged corpses were identified by their personal effects.

**Mark 9:35