My dearest Sherlock,
I don't really know how to begin this letter. It would probably be appropriate to start by apologising for the fact that I have written so little in the last weeks and months. So, my darling, I am infinitely sorry that my last letters were so unbelievably short and even almost loveless towards the end. I know that my apology can never make up for this, even if I tried to explain to you how it happened.
I will still try to explain it to you. Here in Afghanistan we are somehow entering another world. You can forget about a normal daily rhythm right away, although living together with you is not different sometimes. I stray. This different way of doing things reminds me again and again of what I am missing and that is you. In the last few months, however, there has been so little going on here that a certain daily routine has settled down for all of us. And of course I missed you in spite of everything, but somehow I suppressed that by this unusual regularity.
It never happened in any of the previous deployments, there was always something and you, you were my centre of peace. Writing to you made me forget the chaos around me every time. I could come to rest. The nights after the days when I wrote the letters to you were always the most restful. Even when you are not there, the thought of you and your image before my inner eye gives me peace and strength.
Today there was an enemy attack right near our base. I and my group were sent to care for the injured while the gunfire was still going on. On the way to the scene I suddenly realized how horribly I treated you. I was so terribly afraid that something would happen and I would not be able to apologize to you. There was a detonation and suddenly we were in the middle of the battle. It was cruel. A lot has happened since I joined the military, but I have never faced the enemy directly. We have fought on the front line and every time there was a moment of silence I begged for it to be over.
Today I have once again experienced how fleeting life is and how painful it could come to an end. One of our soldiers did not make it, his wife was among the wounded and was also in the hospital when I pronounced him dead. I will never in my life be able to forget this scream.
What I would give if you could take me in your arms now, if you could rub my back and kiss my forehead. I am so ashamed of my behaviour. I hope that you can forgive me. I promise you that I will never let it happen again. You mean everything to me and I don't want to imagine how terrible it must have been for you at home to read my letters, which were getting shorter and shorter.
And then I kept talking about how much I was doing with my colleagues and... oh God, how many times I wrote from William. I hope you weren't jealous, although I think you had every reason to be. I really don't know what made him think I was interested in him, but he just caught me, thought he had to tell me how happy he was that I was unhurt and then tried to kiss me. I hope he has finally understood me now. I told him that you are my boyfriend, my partner, my life companion.
I did not treat him differently from the others. On the contrary, I had much more to do with some of the others and he too was actually more involved with others. I really don't know what made him think that and Sherlock, I promise you I never thought of him in that way. You are the only person I think of in this way and as I am writing about it, I am very aware of how much I miss this aspect of our relationship. The anticipation of our reunion is so great. Fortunately, it is not long anymore.
I miss you as much as I think I have never missed you before and I would love to pack my things right now and fly to London. But now I'm going to lie down and hopefully find some sleep after all this stress. Maybe we will see each other in our dreams.
In infinite love,
John