Chapter XVII

17th September 1942

My dearest sis and parents,

I can finally write this letter to you all and explain what in Heaven's name has happened to me during those past few months. I can't imagine how terribly worried you all were and I am very, very sorry about that although it wasn't my fault that I went missing in action after all.

Our plane crashed into some forest in north Germany, I don't even know where exactly. We were meant to bomb on that night but there was evidently something wrong with the engine and because I am no expert on the machinery I won't tell you what went wrong exactly besides once we knew that we were going to crash we didn't talk much about what could have been wrong, you know what I'm saying? Well, anyway, we did crash into the forest and the landing was obviously terrible, fatal really. I thanked God that Marshall was on another plane that night and that he safely returned to our station.

I lost consiousness and when I woke up there was nothing but silence and daylight around me. Well, I was inside the plane still but I could see the light coming from the damaged windows. The men I was on a plane with were all dead. I didn't know them very well but the sight of them (which I won't describe to you in a hundred years) made me cry like a baby.

I couldn't move at first but then I started to feel my feet and fingers again and so I slowly started to move even though I wasn't sure how I would get out of the airplane at all, not even mentioning making my way out and back to the station which was, by God, very far away. Suddenly though, I heard German-speaking soldiers outside, inspecting the plane and I do know that I should have kept quiet but I could not because fury was the only thing I could feel in that moment.

I won't tell you what I shouted to them either, Dad probably laughs now for he most likely can imagine what I called out to them. They heard me, of course, and did everything to get me out of the plane and I thought that that was it, they will shoot me right there and that will be the end. They didn't, though, and instead, once I was outside and my arms were held by two soldiers, I started to toss around. But of course that was a fail already and they knocked me out. When I woke up, I was in their station, in what seemed like a prison.

I shared a cell with a British man called Harry, a jolly fellow, that one. I don't think that after such a long time of sharing one room we have any secrets between each other although we couldn't talk at all while a German officer was there sitting in his chair and watching us while eating his sandwich. No, they didn't do anything to me (or Harry), I promise you. Of course they weren't entirely "nice" and I got several bruises and nosebleeds but those are meaningless, I'm telling you.

Harry and I finally had a plan of escaping, it was a very complicated plan and I will tell you the detailed version of it one day but the most important thing was that we did escape, by digging up a hole, let me tell you that much. It was not easy and it took us the whole night, the only night when we could do that because the officer wasn't there as he was called upon on a "very important situation".

We escaped somehow and we ran to the nearest forest. We didn't know where we were and where we should go. We didn't have anything to eat or drink and that was why I learned from Harry how to hunt and also that drinking water from a river is quite essential to survive. Thank God we escaped during summer and not during a cold winter!

A day or two, I can't remember correctly, before Harry and I were found by the Dutch soliders, Germans patrolling the forest spotted us and started their run after us. They shot Harry in the leg and his shoulder and myself in a leg and an arm, my left one and that's why I can write this letter to you really because my left arm is in a bandage right now, all stitched up as well as my left leg is (which apparently is broken in two places as well).

Both Harry and I lost consciousness and the next thing I remember was waking up in a bed in a very bright and a calm hospital, my bed next to Harry's.

We are both doing fine, we're bruised here and there, we're quite weak still and malnourished as the doctor said but they say that we'll be good to go in a month and a half. I'm in no hurry to go back to the front, certainly not, and I'm going to enjoy staying at this hospital which isn't big at all and seems quite alright. The staff especially is very, very alright.

And now here comes the real news, more important to me news because something happened while my three-weeks-stay at this hospital and that is: I fell in love for the very first and the very last time in my life and I'm certain of it.

Her name is Daria Walczak and she's Polish, her accent sounding very interesting. She speaks English very fluently and we both understand each other even without words. She's a nurse over here and she's quite frankly the most beautiful girl I have ever seen (and once I thought that Camila was the prettiest!). Daria has a short bob of black thick hair (which reminds me of you, Hes, but her hair is straighter than yours), her cheeks are full and always rosy, and her eyes are the best thing about her as they are green, the purest green in the world.

She always smiles and I cannot believe how, not after she told me her story (during the telling me of it she did cry and I did with her). Daria's parents, two uncles and one auntie (her family wasn't as big as ours) all died in the invasion of Poland which started the war, of course. She's from Warsaw, the capital. She said that at the time of invasion she was out of the house buying groceries and her entire house of flats with her family inside was crushed entirely. She went to Poznan, to her only auntie left with her son, her one and only cousin whom she always considered her brother. She stayed there for a bit but when the Germans started to open up ghettos her auntie told her to leave the country at once for she and Daria's cousin were both Jewish and knew that they will soon be in trouble and didn't want Daria to be a part of it. Daria's Catholic and not Jewish like them but of course the Germans wouldn't believe her if she'd tell them otherwise, "I look Jewish." she told me and she does, I know it too.

So she did leave Poland and went to Netherlands where she trained as a nurse and started her work here. She learned that both her auntie and her cousin were to be sent to a concentration camp last March and she haven't heard of them since.

I asked her how is she always smiling and how is she so optimistic, for she is, and simply happy. She smiled at me again and said: "After the invasion I wanted nothing but to die myself, but my auntie told me that I was given a life and that whatever happend in it I should always try to be happy, day by day, and find joy in small things. Not only she was right but I myself came to a conclusion that I will make my parents proud for I know they're watching over me.". She is the most extraordinary person I know. I told her so too and she laughed at me for saying so. She replied to me that I'm silly because everyone in this hospital is extraordinary, not just her.

I know that I don't know her for very long but it didn't take me long to realise that this is the woman whom I want to marry and spend my life with. Apparently she thinks the same way about me for I kissed her today (even though I'm still so hurting that I can't sit up without feeling my body being ripped apart) and she didn't move away.

Mum, remember how you promised me (as I'm your firstborn) to give me your engagement ring once I'll know on whose finger I want to put it on? Well, then, now is the time, I'm as certain of it as of the fact that I'm breathing right now. So please send it to me as soon as possible and I shall ask Daria what she thinks about it as soon as I'll receive it. I do think that she'll say yes.

I shall go to sleep now, Daria is sitting right beside me, re-bandaging my arm and smiling at me and I am smiling at her and so I know that it's almost time to turn off the lights again.

I'll write to you soon,

Your very happy brother and son,

Gilbert (not a Wing Commander today)

14th October 1942

Dear Diary,

Pfff… What a weekend it was! So much revelations, well two only, but both very important ones. One is a very happy one and the second one… well, it depends how one looks at it. I'll start with the happy one then (and I'll try to forget about the third battle in Matanikau which happened only two days ago).

My dearest Auntie Una is in love!

I needed to make a seperate paragraph for that statement because goodness gracious we're all so terribly overhappy for her! Especially because she is so happy herself, I don't think I've ever seen her smiling as much as she does now and how her cheeks are so rosy, and I've known her for eighteen years after all.

Let's start from the beginning then. About a month ago, Auntie Una was as usual working in the orphanage. It was already time for her to go back home but while she was leaving the building she accidentally bumped into a visitor, her colleague's (who I know as well) Lisa's, brother who started his work at the office in Four Winds. His entire suitcase exploded with paper and she helped him to gather it all together, apologising kindly. Lisa's brother didn't mind that at all, of course, and before they put all the paper back into his suitcase they couldn't stop talking with each other! How romantic! And how perfect!

His name is Liam Evans and he is very handsome indeed. We've all met him, last Saturday, as Auntie Una invited him for dinner which she and Grandma Rosemary prepared at the Manse. He has very curly blonde hair, freckles on his nose and cheeks and his eyes are very brown. He looks as if he is thirty years old and he's in fact a year older than Auntie Una which makes him forty seven! He is a businessman and he looks like one too.

Liam is extremely sweet and polite and he truly has a soul very much the same as Auntie Una's but he's more open than her, she said that herself and we noticed that too. They complete each other very much. And they talked and talked the whole dinner and no one dared to distract them because it was as if they were in a sacred bubble of intimacy.

They are officially courting and sweethearting every single day of the week. They make several walks to the Rainbow Valley where Vance, Marion and I see them from time to time as we go there often ourselves after work. (Oh! I forgot to say that I officially have four students of my own and teach them playing the cello, cello again, the violin and the violin again respectively. I also help out in the orphanage as often as I can and meet there with Vance who is an official worker over there, of course. Marion is obviously a professional now, for she's teaching English at our old Glen school for two months almost! How fast this time flies… And I haven't even had time to write it all down before today!).

Coming back to Auntie Una and Liam again.

We're delighted to see Auntie in love. Mum told me, of course, that Auntie sweared that she'd never love again, not after Uncle Walter died in 1916. She did keep this promise to herself for almost thirty years! But she did say to Mum (Mother told me after Auntie went home yesterday when they had lunch together) that it was hard for her to decide whether she wants to open her gate to love for someone who isn't Uncle Walter. They both shared a silent moment on the verandah and neither Dad nor I dared to distract them for we knew they were talking about the uncle I never knew but Dad knew too well himself.

But Auntie decided that it is time for her to open up to love especially because "Well, it's Liam." as she said to both me and Mum while we were eating cookies yesterday. And we're happy that she did decide that, for it makes her happy and it makes us happy too.

So that's the happy revelation I wanted to share here and now it is time for the one which is quite… I'm not sure what to think about it, nobody in our family seems to know really, especially because we've learnt about it only yesterday!

Jo is going to have a baby.

Another seperate paragraph for it is as important to our family as the fact that Auntie Una's life welcomed in love.

Yes, Jo is pregnant. She found out yesterday for the results of the test she has sent (about which nobody knew) came in and they reassured her of what she suspected anyway and that is that come next February there will be the very first child of the new generation in our family. That is the beauty of the news, the only one, I think. A new baby will be welcomed into our family and it will certainly bring joy, especially in the midst of the war and everything surrounding and concerning it.

The father of Jo's baby is a man called Cal Sutton, a student from Redmond with whom Jo is courting, or was, while she was at Redmond herself. They courted before he enlisted as he is at the front right now, recently arriving there apparently, in Italy.

I don't know all the details about this whole situation for we learned of the fact only through Auntie Nan and Uncle Jerry who attended the family dinner yesterday. Jo didn't come for she was most definitely in "depths of despair" in her own room, thinking and sobbing from time to time, as Auntie Nan said with a very sorrowful expression on her face.

Jo didn't plan anything of that kind (all I'll write in here now is what Auntie Nan and Uncle Jerry told us all yesterday after dinner at Ingleside) and especially because she's not very much in love with Cal, she simply "lived in a moment for he was to be sent overseas and she was afraid she wouldn't see him again". I don't know how to think about it all and neither do Jo's parents. Partially one can understand why she did it but at the same time one can't, not without getting married first… Oh, I don't know! Neither of us does!

Auntie Nan was crying yestrday while being embraced by Grandma Anne. She cried because as she said that it's all her fault and that it must be because she raised her daughter. But Grandma, of course, calmed her down and so did all the other Aunties of mine and Mum too. They told her that it's nobody's fault really, only Jo's for she acted foolishly. I agree with that most entirely for Auntie Nan and Uncle Jerry also raised John who is the complete opposite of his sister, in personality at least.

I think that the baby will make Jo more responsibe, more patient and more herself than she really is right now. We all think so really. There's still more to learn about Jo's Cal and what is she actually planning to do now: will she marry him when (if...) he comes back from the war? We don't know that at all.

Grandpa John promised Uncle Jerry and Auntie Nan to talk with his granddaughter and try to calm her down. From all the people I might not be sure about whether Jo trusts and respects, she truly does love Reverend John Meredith and I know he'll help her like he always used to. Even though what Jo did wasn't "religious" at all, he said himself that "she's my granddaughter and everyone makes mistakes, so does she. That's why I'll help her.". Bless his dearest heart!

So we just have to see what will happen but one thing is certain, a new baby will come into our family next year and we will all welcome it with our open arms, like hope itself.

Who will be next to have a baby of their own, from my siblings and cousins, I wonder? It makes me melancholy but excited for the future. Who knows, maybe the next one will be Gilly? He is engaged to Daria after all and even though he says that they plan to have a wedding after the war, we all know that Gil might change his mind about that quickly enough and decide to marry his Daria sooner than that. I cannot wait to meet this girl who entirely and completely stole the heart of my oldest brother!

I shall be going to bed now, it's been a very long weekend and I am going for the Red Cross meeting with Vance tomorrow morning and I still have five hours of teaching afterwards and so I will need a lot of energy for all of that!

It seems to me that the last two months were full of changes which are very much visible in my family and myself. Auntie Una in love, Jo is pregnant and my own brother Gilly is now found and engaged to a "woman of his dreams"! Everything changes around me but I find myself thinking that I actually don't mind it at all. And this too makes me content with my life for now.

Right now I shall be going off to bed and I'll think of Seb. I'll look at his photograph which still stands on my nightstand and I'll think of our future life together which seems very much alive to me right now and it's going to be here soon. I hope it will.

Goodnight then,

Yours,

Hester