What a Salutation!
21 December 1917
Amiens, France
Dear Carl,
Kingsport news still bad. I haven't had any letters from home dated after the 6th. Have you?
I did get a Christmas package, though, just like the ones Susan used to send us those weekends during exam time when we would stay at Queen's. Do you remember? She must have sent it before the explosion because the note inside had no word of Di and Nan.
Saturday, I was in a real fight. I took down one German plane and sent another limping home. When I got back to solid earth, I was sick in a ditch. I won't deny that there is a certain thrill to aerial combat, but I don't think it can be quite the same kind of thrill my mother used to speak of. I've grown to enjoy the flying, but the shooting is something else altogether.
Somehow I don't think the folks at home would like Paris very much.
Yours truly,
Shirley
28 December 1917
Chaudière, France
Dear Shirley,
You're right, I don't suppose they would. I did, though, and that is what counts.
Oh, I certainly do remember those care packages. Some of my best memories of Queen's are of days when we shared one of them.
Unfortunately, I have had no letters written after the 6th — I suppose mail must be somewhat disrupted there. But when I do, I will write you straight away.
Right now, things are going pretty well. The boys in my section had the idea of a rat hunt through the trenches this week and that kept us occupied. I know rats and their habits and won first prize easily. I did feel bad about spearing them with my bayonet, though. After all, they are my poor, earth-born companions and fellow-mortals.* I did take pity on one. He is a friendly little fellow and I have named him Cricket because he chirps. He curls up and sleeps in my pocket at night and I feed him on bits of biscuit.**
Surely I never knew anybody with nerves like yours, so I believe you when you say that aerial combat is hard on them. I once thought it must take a reckless sort of courage to go up in one of those contraptions. But now I can imagine you, calm and steady, getting the job done and only being sick about it after. You know I will always worry, but I am grateful to have you looking out for all of us down here.
Yours truly,
Carl
P.S. Every time I see an aeroplane, I say a prayer for you. There are rather a lot of them.
3 January 1918
Amiens, France
Dear Carl,
Makes sense that you have a tame rat. I would expect nothing less. I suppose your bunkmates are very pleased to know that they share such close quarters with one of the charming creatures. I remember now that Jerry refused to share a bed with you when you were children for a similar reason.***
I am doing as well as anybody here. I have taken down another German fighter and a loaded bomber that was headed for a run on some trenches. I shot it down in no-man's-land and it exploded in a tremendous fireball without doing any damage at all to our line.
Nan and Di are safe. My mother writes that my father went to Kingsport to help at the hospital, so things must be pretty bad there.
Every time I see a rat, I say a prayer for you. There are rather a lot of them.
Yours truly,
Shirley
9 January 1918
Canadian Training School, Bexhill-on-Sea, Sussex, England
Dear Mrs. Blythe,
What a salutation! I have waited an awfully long time to use it and sorely regret that I can only write it, rather than shouting it from the rooftops! Must we really keep it secret? Oh well, I suppose you are well aware of it and that's what counts. Whoever censors this letter will know it, too (hello, censor!) but I don't suppose he will take much notice (I promise that I got permission to marry from my CO, dear censor. Cross my heart).
I could tell you all about training here, but who cares? Clean beds and hot food and it is very nearly a holiday, even with all the lectures and parading around. I laugh every morning when I wake up to my view of the sea and again every evening when I come home to this fancy old hotel with its grand staircase and chandeliers. Whoever thought to house us in a vacationer's paradise had a very keen appreciation for the absurd. We even have parade drill at the shore! They can go on training me forever as far as I'm concerned.****
Yesterday, we spent three hours (! ! !) going over proper salutes and greetings for officers. How officer cadets must salute commissioned officers, and are encouraged to offer a verbal greeting as well. And if you are leading your men past another officer, you must order them eyes-left or eyes-right and salute, but only if he is of field rank (major or higher). And that if an officer passes an OR and the OR's hands are occupied, a verbal greeting will stand in for a proper salute. The instructors must have come up with a hundred scenarios and demonstrated them all with little skits.
I know the army thinks a lot of it, but it's all desperately funny. A few of the boys here haven't been over to France yet, but nearly all of us are field-commissioned and it is sometimes very hard to keep a straight face when we are drilled on the finer points of protocol. But as long as they keep fattening us up, I'll happily learn the proper way to salute a brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on his mother's birthday when the wind is from the southeast.
The best thing about this place (besides its proximity to London) is the recreation. I've joined my cadet class football team and my, but we have a good time. It is freezing and muddy, but it feels wonderful to run hard and then go in for a hot shower. We are quite sensible of the luxury, I tell you.
Do see if you can't come down again, Faith. We have liberty often enough in the evenings and Sundays as well. Say hello to Sylvia for me (that girl is a peach and I owe her one).
Your loving husband (! ! !),
Jem
XXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXXX
P.S. I had a letter from Emile today. He was so relieved to have word of Marie and Claude. He will be in the hospital a long while yet, but the leg means that he has a guaranteed ticket home and he cannot wait to punch it. As for myself, I am more content with my current circumstances than I have been at any time since the dance at the Four Winds light.
13 January 1918
St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London
Jem!
As much as I enjoyed reading your last letter (and I did!) you must be more circumspect about what you put in writing! I hate to destroy any of your correspondence, but I'd be in quite a bit of trouble if anyone saw that particular salutation, so I had to snip off the top of the page. I didn't ask permission to marry and if the V.A.D. knew that we had, they'd never allow me to transfer to a hospital in France. Please take a bit more care!
I'm very glad to hear word of Emile. I have had another letter from Nan (dated the 24th) and she says that Marie is getting on fine. She writes that Claude is a darling and everyone in the house loves him to pieces. She also writes that Hazel is getting by alright — she was very low in November, of course, but Nan says she has met the emergency with grace and is directing the Reds like a general. Thank you again for sending those papers, love. And for writing. I know it was not easy, but it meant the world.
Nan and Di are doing well. I'm ashamed to admit that I am a bit surprised at Nan's pluck (often thinking her the wilting type), but she has risen to the occasion. They all have. Di can't write much, of course, being far too busy at the hospital. But things are starting to calm down there as well, or at least that's what Sylvia tells me. Nan says that your father is getting ready to go home, so the hospitals and their staffs must be back on their feet.
Do you ever get enough liberty to come to London? I can't make it to Bexhill and back on a half-day off, but if you can ever come up, tell me and I will try to get my break then. Will you have leave at the end of your training?
Love and love and love,
Faith
P.S. I am sending along some gingerbread. Not homemade, alas, but it's the best I could manage. Take care you don't share too much of it — I intend it medicinally, as it is my professional opinion that you could indeed use a bit of fattening up.*****
P.P.S. All clear.
3 January 1918
St. Mary's Hospital, Paddington, London
Dear Di,
I have your letter at last. Faith got Nan's earlier letter and shared it with me, so I knew that you were safe, but it is still a relief to see it in your own hand.
I wish I were by your side in the the current emergency. It is awful to think of lovely Kingsport in ashes. We always thought it such a safe place, almost as if it were an invisible sanctuary out of the ordinary world. I have seen London, but Kingsport will always seem to me the very best city and Aster House the very best home in it.
I took two weeks' leave with Faith so that she could go down and see Jem in Bexhill-on-Sea. We are not allowed to travel alone or stay in hotels alone, and I owe her several favors in that line, as you well know.
I got rather a lot of reading done on our trip. I am sending you a copy of a vampire story called Carmilla that I found in a bookshop on one of my lonely evenings at the seaside.****** At first blush, you will think it is more Nan's type of story, but at second I think you will find something in it for yourself as well. I know I certainly laughed myself silly over it. I know you are far too busy to read for pleasure. But do take a moment to rest — you won't do anyone any good if you run yourself into the ground, dearest.
My love to Nan and hello to all your guests. Of course I don't mind that Rev. and Mrs. Blake are using my room — someone should.
Keep up your good work and write me whenever you can, even a single line.
Yours truly,
Sylvia
*Robert Burns, "To a Mouse" (1785) As established in Glen Notes, this is Carl's favorite poem.
**Rilla of Ingleside, chapter 27. Rilla's diary entry for December 31, 1917: "I had a great batch of letters from overseas this week. Shirley is at the front now, too, and writes about it all as coolly and matter-of-factly as he used to write of football at Queen's. Carl wrote that it had been raining for weeks . . . Carl's letters are always full of jokes and bits of fun. They had a great rat-hunt the night before he wrote — spearing rats with their bayonets — and he got the best bag and won the prize. He has a tame rat that knows him and sleeps in his pocket at night."
***"Jerry refused to sleep with him because Carl had once taken a young garter snake to bed with him; so Carl slept in his old cot, which was so short that he could never stretch out, and had strange bed-fellows." Rainbow Valley, chapter 4.
**** Canadian officer candidates at the training school in Bexhill-on-Sea were housed in the lovely seaside Metropole Hotel. Thanks, kslchen!
***** "Jem is a lieutenant now — he won his promotion on the field. He sent me a snap-shot, taken in his new uniform. He looked thin and old — old — my boy-brother Jem. I can't forget mother's face when I showed it to her. 'That — my little Jem — the baby of the old House of Dreams?' was all she said. There was a letter from Faith, too. She is doing V.A.D. work in England and writes hopefully and brightly. I think she is almost happy — she saw Jem on his last leave and she is so near him she could go to him, if he were wounded. That means so much to her." RoI chapter 27
******Carmilla (1872) by Joseph Sheridan Le Fanu is a Gothic novella in which a female vampire preys on beautiful young women (including the teenage narrator, Laura). The lesbian subtext is . . . not all that subtextual.