It's not until he's properly rested in Foggia that he forces himself to write to her. There are clean blankets, showers, and hot chow there, luxuries Fitz never imagined he'd take for granted, and the promise of at least a few days rest off the line. They know they'll be going back shortly, but it's nice for a moment to pretend this is it. To sleep on a proper mattress and let himself dream of Jemma.

Writing to her is difficult. No word could be told of his specific activities or whereabouts, but he tells her some things. About how much Italian he has learned, how itchy the patchy beard growing on his cheeks is since he's given up trying to shave, and how Sergeant Hunter takes good care of him.

Those are the words that feel so hollow when he writes them. Taking care is so terribly vague. Of course he means it to be. He doesn't want to tell Jemma the intricacies of what that means to a rifleman. He's content to let her assume it means little more than making sure he changes his socks daily and eats a proper meal. He hopes she does not imagine it also means hauling Fitz to his feet after a round drops nearby or handing over his last charger when he thinks his number is up. Jemma wouldn't recognize any of that in the Fitz she'd said goodbye to in Bletchley.

When they get their hands on a newspaper he's annoyed to see the coverage seems to be almost entirely about the American landings at Salerno and not anything about how the Eighth Army has been slogging its way through the mountains.

He writes Jemma again on his second day in Foggia. This time he asks more about her, how her birthday last month was and whether she is able to follow news about the war in Italy at all. He asks whether her shift has changed again or if she is still working nights like the last letter he'd received months ago. He asks if there are any new movies playing this fall and whether she's still taking part in the Highland Dancing classes in town and whether they still remind her of him. Then he can't help himself. He tells her he thinks of her often and that she's typically the only pleasant thought he has all day. He apologizes for not writing and tries to explain that the kind of tired he's experienced in combat is unlike anything he's ever felt before. Laughing about what he used to believe were long nights at University, he explains how sometimes he doesn't know how he has the strength to dig in at the end of the day, but somehow every day he does. He admits that he can't begin to describe what life is like here. That sometimes he wishes he could just so she could understand, but then he's glad she doesn't have to experience it. That he'll fight here as long as need be so the horror and destruction that he's seen in these Italian villages and towns does not come to her. It's a bold letter, the most honest and forthright he's ever written to her.

He's not sure if any of it is the right thing to say. The letter to his mum contains nothing about the constant fatigue and horror and he wonders if he should have kept Jemma's the same. There is a deep-seated urge for her to know though, to be connected in some way with what he's doing, even if it is in half-truths and drastic understatements.

They receive mail in between drawing ammo and field rations. Fitz's stack of mail is again the heaviest and Hunter teases whether it will be his gas mask he swaps out for the letters this time. His mum has written to him each week and Jemma, again, nearly every day. He's amazed at how she finds things to write about. Her first letter is cheerful and describes things about home he didn't even know he missed. Knowing he'll need the bright reminder of home and something to look forward to in the days ahead, he wills himself to hold off on reading all of them. Instead, he stuffs her letters in an old tin that he then wedges in between his extra socks.

"You hear where we're going?" Hunter asks, throwing Fitz a charger.

"Haven't got a clue," Fitz laughs, recalling the constant inquiries he'd had when they'd first moved out. It feels like it had been years. He'd wanted to know every step they took, how it fit into the larger invasion force, and why they were doing it. Now he's resigned himself to knowing little except their immediate objective. All he knows is the Germans have retreated behind a succession of defensive lines and their job is to follow them into the mountains. The only reason he knows what direction they're heading is because he pays attention to the movement of the sun.

"You know you've got to sew that on before we leave." Hunter points to the chevron he'd handed him earlier that morning. "You're welcome by the way, Lance Corporal."

Fitz knows the promotion is mostly Hunter's doing and doesn't tell him he would have been happy to stay a Private. As a sergeant, who is both a combat veteran and former officer, Hunter has the subaltern's ear. Fitz is happy for the larger check that will go home to his mum and the fact that Hunter is now only two pay grades above him, but the added responsibility of two new soldiers to look after isn't something he wants. The new Privates ogle Fitz's rifle, much like Hunter first had, and ask a myriad of questions about how he developed it. They seem like good lads, both had been eager to join up for years, but Fitz can't shake the fact that they're still just children.

All the map says about where they are headed is "mountainous hinterland" so it's no surprise when they disembark from the trucks and start moving out on foot. For two days it's quiet. He manages to write to Jemma each night, recalling pleasant memories of their time together in Edinburgh and telling her about his recent promotion in the section. He leaves out where it had been the wounding of his team leader that prompted it.

The shelling starts on day three and the rain starts not long after that. Neither lessen for a whole week. Fitz lives in the mud. He sleeps in it, eats it and combs it from his hair every day. He dreams of dry feet the way he used to dream about Jemma. It becomes steadily more difficult to keep properly awake or anything close to warm. Both problems are linked in a vicious cycle. It's nearly impossible to get warm enough to get to sleep and the less sleep he has the colder he felt.

The leaves at the higher altitudes start to turn and, while it is beautiful at first, as soon as they start to fall the company loses any possible concealment from enemy observers. They're perched up high on the neighboring ridge line and artillery begins to rain down on their location with pinpoint accuracy. It's the first time Fitz has ever experienced such direct shelling. He soon learns surviving an artillery barrage isn't the mark of a good soldier, it's the mark of a lucky one. The shellburts in the trees shower wood and metal at random. In one week in the mountains, H company loses more men than in the previous whole month of fighting.

He wants to write to Jemma and tell her what it is like to be shelled by German artillery.

To hear the deafening sound and feel the concussive blasts. To lie at the bottom of a hole, able to do little but hope he has dug it deep enough. To stare at a beetle and wish he were that beetle, wish he were something else, somewhere else.

Their movement north that, while slow had at least indicated some kind of progress, grinds completely to a halt. The Germans are dug in and so they dig in too, using tactics from the Great War to grind their way forward. He spends every waking moment he's not on patrol or on watch improving his position. After two weeks, despite his best efforts at self-control, he's finished reading all of Jemma's letters. They're woefully out of sync. She's only just received his first letters from Sicily months ago. Still he takes pleasure knowing she's heard from him and knows he's okay or at least he was months ago. Using the light of the moon and a rare respite from the rain, he pulls his pen and paper out from the biscuit tin and begins writing to her.

First, he tells her how he's just now finished reading her last letter, dated the 30th of August. He writes about how hard it had been to imagine the humid August afternoon she'd penned her letter while sitting in a freezing muddy hole in October. He tells her about the craggy mountain valley and remote hamlets with their tightly crowded stone houses that cling to the steep slopes. Though the villages he describes are beautiful, sometimes complete with the crumbling ruins of ancient castles that peer down on them, it's difficult to see through the blood-stained bricks and cracked terra-cotta tiles. He doesn't tell Jemma that. Instead, he talks about the gnarled trees in the olive groves they'd stumbled into and how eery they'd looked in the cold morning mist.

They're constantly moving. He spends all day improving his position only to be told they're moving out again at dawn. There is never any news on the progress of the push. They never know what good they are doing in the campaign up the peninsula or whether the next assault will be the decisive one that lets them have a rest. It's a slogging advance from defended ridge to defended ridge, across river after river with little rest.

Each week brings a bit more loss and their platoon gets whittled down a bit more. They're shelled relentlessly. On the night they lose ΒΌ of their men from enemy artillery, Fitz is haunted by the pained screams of men in agony he can't help because the rounds are still falling with terrifying accuracy. In those moments, when his future takes a dip out of sight, he finds he takes a keen appreciation of the life around him. The scent of the burned trees and vegetation all around, the sight of Smyth's tense ashen face alongside his as they watch the earth loosened by each concussive blast.

When they're given the all clear to come out of their holes, he immediately shouts for Sergeant Hunter first, who is fortunately already up and taking inventory of the wounded. There's a Jock whose left arm is missing at the shoulder and left leg at the hip and another who looks like an ice cream scoop has been taken to his torso. Some are replacements and some are veterans who have fought their way across the North African desert. There's nothing that determines who gets hit except sheer dumb luck.

It's fourteen total casualties with four KIA. That night he sits with Hunter who is coaxing some dirty-looking water to boil over Hexamine tablets. They don't speak about their fallen comrades, but just muse about how the company will be reconfigured after this recent spate of losses. Platoons and sections need to be balanced. Lance Corporals need to become section leaders. Corporals need to become platoon sergeants. Fitz is pleased to be left in charge of his two-man team, but Hunter will take over all of 14 platoon. There is no reflection on the men no longer going out for patrol with them. Fitz wonders whether his reactions of compassion and sorrow are getting duller and duller. Whether it is sheer fatigue or he is simply getting callous.

He rereads Jemma's letters nearly every day and writes to her whenever he is not improving his position, cleaning his weapon, or checking on the two young soldiers he's now responsible for. It's difficult sometimes to find something to write about when there's nothing to reflect upon but another day of shelling. This morning they'd come across a field full of sheep carcasses torn apart by a German 105. Such sights would have made Fitz's stomach churn months ago, but having seen worse done to a human body at this point, he barely reacts. In fact, he's the one who asks if they can salvage any of the meat for supper. So he writes Jemma about how they'd had leg of lamb that night instead of bully beef.

After they drive out the Boche from the next valley, he tells her how a local shepherd and his family were so grateful, they'd brought his platoon offerings from their own table, which included little more than some sheep cheese, some honey-sweetened pastries, and a bottle of wine. The chance to eat something other than C rations was a welcome respite. The pastries especially reminded him of the pastry Jemma's landlord in Bletchley had given him while he waited for her. He fixates on that memory and doesn't tell Jemma about how the following day the shepherd's house had been leveled by their 25 pounders. He's lost track of the lives they've taken and he' s stopped wondering about who they are and the families they've left behind.

Each day he simply celebrates survival. Survival for him, for Hunter, for Smyth. Then he digs in a little deeper and rereads a letter from Jemma.

The consolidation of a key bridgehead in November brings their first opportunity for a brief period of rest. There's even a mobile bath unit. The cobbled roads are teeming with military traffic, mostly supply vehicles with ammunition and food, but it also brings the mail truck.

Fitz eagerly hands the courier his stack of letters. It's not much compared to the output he used to send her, but it's much more than any other soldier is sending out and the courier quips about how Fitz possibly has time to fight the war.

"Just make sure it gets out, yeah?" Fitz snaps, more than used to the ribbing at this point.

"If you're expecting mail, we're supposed to be making a delivery here in a couple days," the courier calls when Fitz turns on his heel.

He gives a wistful smile at the words. There had been real hope for a few days at least that their job would be to maintain security on the bridge while the forces consolidated, but they're supposed to be moving out any day. All the men in the unit wait in agony for the news. This brief respite, despite the fierce battle that had preceded it, had been a welcome change from life in the mountains. Fitz is not the only one anxiously waiting on the mail truck, but Hunter jokingly asks if Fitz is waiting to hear the response to a marriage proposal, he is so eager for it to arrive before they leave.

"Marriage?" Fitz laughs absurdly.

"I know, I know, you haven't even kissed her yet," Hunter teases. "Still, you're lying if you tell me you haven't thought about it."

"I haven't thought about anything after this," Fitz admits quietly what he hasn't dared even admit to himself. Before he'd come to Italy, he used to spend so much time worrying about a past he couldn't change or a future that hadn't come yet. Here all he does is survive each day. He doesn't dare think about what will happen in the next week, the next day, or even the next hour. He's stopped looking at the map to observe how much progress they have or haven't made.

He just exists.

He marches where they tell him, digs a hole where they tell him, shoots where they tell him, and sleeps where they tell him.

He's overjoyed when the mail arrives earlier than the courier told them it would and even more pleased to see it arrives alongside cases of ammunition. Fitz grabs the ammunition first, seizing as many rounds and grenades as he can carry in his arms. It's a far cry from when he'd seriously considered leaving behind his Mills bombs in place of Jemma's letters.

It doesn't take long before his name rings out again and again. He immediately retreats to load the ammunition into chargers, attach the grenades to his webbing, and settle down to read the stack of letters. Somewhere between the third and fourth letters, he boards a vehicle set to take them north to the Sangro River. Upon reading the fifth, something falls out from between the pages of Jemma's letter.

Hunter is the one who picks it up for him. It's a photograph. Jemma and Bobbi are dressed in skirts that touch their closed knees and are clad in simple white blouses. Their legs are angled toward each other and Jemma's hands are clasped on her lap. Despite the formal pose, it looks to be a relatively candid shot. Their smiles are natural, like they've been caught mid-conversation and they look to be seated in front of a tennis court.

"So that's Jemma," Hunter whistles, "and would you look at that bird next to her!"

The men surrounding Fitz eagerly clamor for the photograph too and Fitz quickly shoves it into his breast pocket to admire later. Instead, he turns to the letter, curious why she sent it, wondering how she could have possibly known how much he wanted to look upon her face again. To have some real beauty in these miserable mountains..

Dearest Fitz

His heart races upon reading the new salutation.

"Why do you look so gobsmacked? What'd she say yes or something?" Hunter teases.

Fitz continues to read. She tells him how she'd been hoping to have a real portrait taken, but how their schedules had never allowed it. This photo had been taken instead by a friend one afternoon in September.

I hope it will do for now, she writes in what Fitz imagines is one of the biggest understatements ever. She tells him Bobbi has given her permission to show her picture only to the most charming of his platoon. He thinks of Hunter, still ogling her, and tries to stifle a laugh.

The letter goes on to discuss that what little she can learn about Montgomery's Eighth Army fighting it's way up Italy comes from newspapers, reports on the wireless, and brief newsreels at the cinema. She shares his frustration that the Americans at Salerno seem to have gotten more attention and tells him she checks the newspapers every day in hopes of an update. He tries to figure out from the date on the letter where he was when she wrote it and what she had received from him. It had been before the Captain was hit, but after they crossed the Biferno River. She tells him she's not one to pray and had never been raised in the church, but she has taken to visiting the local parish simply to go somewhere quiet where she can keep him in her thoughts. From what he can gather, she seems to feel as helpless over in England as he does over here when the shells start to land.

In closing, she shares that she is about to start a new adventure and that she isn't sure how much she'll be able to write, but she will whenever she is able.

Please know, though you may not hear from me as often, that my thoughts are always of you.

The letter stays in his breast pocket, the photo he fixes to the inside of his helmet, but not before he tears it in half and gives the photo of Bobbi to Hunter.

He peppers Fitz with questions about her, what she likes, how long Jemma has known her. Long nights they spend in Fitz's trench, gazing at each photo like a couple of lovesick schoolboys. Hunter declares confidently that he's going to get home and marry Bobbi, rambling about how it will be difficult at first to be wed to a Yank, but how he's more than willing to adapt.

Fitz tries not to worry too much about what new adventure Jemma has embarked upon. He remembers her earlier desire to join the WRENS and wonders if she has been drawn into service.

"I mean Bobbi is in the American Navy. I know Jemma looked up to her," he muses, but the news that Bobbi was a uniformed service-member just sends Hunter into a new round of babbling and speculating about the blonde.

The temperature drops quickly, almost as soon as they begin their two-pronged drive toward the Sangro River. Digging into the freezing slopes becomes more difficult. Freezing temperatures and soaking rain make his teeth chatter so hard his jaw hurts. Snow, sleet, and rain all mix together and he's constantly worried that his rifle bolt will freeze solid.

"C - Caesar used to go to w-winter quarters, you know," Fitz stammers,from inside the hole he has managed to dig. Crouched deep in the ice and water, soaked, freezing and numb, he peers out anxiously between the earth and the tin hat rim. "Even h-he knew you can't fight a winter war here." The dig at their commanders and their seemingly idiotic decisions is intentional.

The barren rock peaks and mountains are a formidable obstacle for any army, the rivers they have to constantly cross only reinforce that barrier, the German defenses are dug in well and make any movement off the line deadly, but it is the freezing mud and howling rain that are the reason they gain less and less every day.

It begins to feel more and more like what Fitz imagines his father's war had been like. The more bullets that ricochet off the rocks the deeper Fitz digs his hole and the less keen he is on coming out of it. There is an endless need for reconnaissance patrols and 14 Platoon, H Company's number comes up all too often. Each patrol is deadly and each time a platoon goes out they come back with fewer soldiers. Replacements supplement their dwindling platoon, but seem to leave as quickly as they arrive.

Fitz has become adept at treating bullet wounds. For someone who'd used to blanch at the sight of a paper cut, he now hardly hesitates. Applying field dressings, sulfa powder and punching in a morphine syrette are as second nature as screwing a ratchet used to be to him.

It's not a sniper, but a spray from a machine gun nest that forces him to tend directly to his first dying man. The young private from Inverness, who Fitz remembers writing to Jemma about saying he hadn't wanted in his section, is shot through the throat right in front of him. It is so close that blood sprays Fitz's face and woodchips from where the bullet ricochets off a tree, stick to his cheek. The private falls to the ground in a bizarrely graceful arc and Fitz can do little but watch. He has to wait for the machine gunner to stop and reload before the section can lay down covering fire and he can scramble out to get him.

He knows there's not much to do, but tries anyway. The private's throat is open and bright red blood quickly soaks the bandages Fitz tries to stuff into the gaping wound. He doesn't know much about medicine, certainly not as much as Jemma, but he knows bright red means it's arterial. He makes promises to the private he knows are a lie, that he'll be okay and they'll get him home to his mum, but attempting to provide any real medical care while under fire is impossible. Still alive, but numb, the private looks to Fitz, who is sickened at the futility of the sight.

All he can do is watch him die. In three months of combat, it's the first he's seen a life expire so vividly right in front of him. He knows there's a chain-of-command. He knows it is the lieutenant and Sergeant Hunter who will write to the boy's mother, but he can't help but feel responsible.

"Nothing you could have done," Hunter attempts to comfort that night back in his trench.

"Could have been me," Fitz remarks, recalling with vivid detail how close the bullet had come to him. The woodchips and blood that had coated his cheek. The hopelessness of the sight as the young private had bled out. The way his eyes had suddenly fixed in the moment he died.

"But it wasn't," Hunter states simply. "You're gonna get home to her." He claps the toe of Fitz's boot with his hand then reminds him to change his socks.

At the words, Fitz pulls Jemma's photo out from his tin hat and wonders how he'll ever tell her about days like today. Blood is still trapped under his fingernails and soaked into the fabric of his uniform. Not more than a year ago, he remembers confessing to Jemma how squeamish he was around blood. He told her one of the reasons he loved engineering is because he liked the clean nature of his work. He could design a prototype and predict with a reasonable degree of accuracy how it would operate. But there is no logic or predictive analysis to combat.

It was all so horribly simple. Every time they met the Germans they killed as many as they could and the Germans, in turn, killed as many Jocks as they could. After the fighting, they tended to the dead and wounded, headed back to camp or continued the mission. Then they woke up and did it again. That was the life of a soldier in Italy. It was all so painfully simple. Accomplishing the mission, seizing the next ridgeline meant nothing in the grand scheme of things. You fought until you died, got wounded or went home.

Fitz does the math. He takes out the replacements and calculates how many soldiers with the company have been there since Sicily. He tries to figure out how many have not been wounded once. Aside from scrapes and abrasions from their time in the mountains, he's made it through relatively unscathed. With no sign of the war in Europe ending anytime soon, he knows he doesn't have to do predictive analysis to know his number is up.

He writes Jemma, not knowing where she is or when she'll even receive this. He doubts mail call will happen anytime soon. They've been eating cold rations for weeks and still have yet to be supplied with their winter clothing. He doesn't want to write a letter like this. It seems much too maudlin and fatalistic, but Hunter assures him he'll feel better when he puts everything on paper.

So he does.

Dear Jemma, he writes, still unable to use the more familiar term she'd used in her letter. I don't know where your adventure has taken you, but mine is still much the same. If I'm truly honest, it's quite a bit worse. The Teutons are dug in well, every ridgeline we must cross always seems to be perfectly perpendicular to our line of advance, and every river swollen high over its banks with all the rain (it hasn't stopped since I first wrote you). I am fighting hard to come home, but sometimes it's just bad luck out here. If I don't return, I want you to know how much your friendship has meant to me. I think often of how different I might be if I'd made your acquaintance eight years ago at a Christmas lecture. Wearing this uniform and serving with these Jocks has been the greatest source of pride of my entire life, but not the greatest joy. That has surely been knowing you. I have done my best these many months not to dwell in the past or hold onto regret, but I'll indulge it just this once in case I never get the chance. It's certainly not my intent to scare you, but every day here feels like borrowed time sometimes. My greatest regret is not having the courage to tell you every chance I had how much you mean to me. I've realised it so many times these last few months when I thought my number was up. Always the regret of never telling you properly how much I care for you was topmost in my mind. You cannot imagine what it has meant to me to meet a girl such as you and to be able to enjoy her company for so long. I could write a lot of nonsense, but words don't really seem enough. I think that you are perfect and each day I spend here it becomes more obvious that I don't deserve you, Jemma. If I make it through this and home to you, I'm well aware that I'm the luckiest man on any planet. If I don't, please know what I sincerely hope you already do. I love you.