Chapter 2 - The First Rain of Normandy
“June 8, 1944. France. My Clara,
Yesterday, the letters they allowed us to send were short. I wrote to you that the French countryside is beautiful, that the orchards remind me of the valleys of Oregon, and that the boys in my squad are in high spirits. I told you not to worry, that the food is warm and my boots are dry.
*It was a beautiful lie, my love. I wrote it because I love you too much to let you feel the cold. But tonight, as I crouch beneath a wet canvas tarp in a forest that smells of wet ash and cordite, I must tell the dirt the truth.
We landed on the beach two days ago. The sea was not blue, Clara; it was a boiling, grey monster that threw us against the sand. The noise was a physical wall of iron and screams that made my ears bleed. When the ramp of the landing craft went down, the boy next to me—young Miller from Ohio, who used to brag about his mother’s peach pies—fell before his boots even touched the water.
I ran. I did not look back. I ran until my lungs burned like fire and my fingers dug deep into the wet, red mud of France. I lay there for hours, the artillery shells screaming overhead like angry birds, praying to a God I had forgotten. I did not pray for victory, Clara. I did not pray for honor. I only prayed that I would survive long enough to see the way the sunlight catches the dark curls of your hair when you laugh.
The rain has been falling since yesterday. My boots are filled with muddy water, and my uniform is stiff with salt and dirt. But when the shivering gets too bad, I close my eyes and reach into my chest pocket. I touch the small lace handkerchief you gave me at the station. It still carries the faint, sweet scent of rosewater. I hold it against my face, and for a second, the rain stops. The artillery fades. I am back in the garden, watching you hang the white linens on the clothesline.
Please forgive me for the lies I mail to you, Clara. I write them to keep you safe. But I write this to keep myself alive.”*
May you like
Clara lowered the letter, her chest rising and falling with a ragged, emotional breath. She looked out the small attic window. Below, her garden was quiet, the autumn leaves falling softly onto the grass. For forty years, she had believed Arthur’s deployment had been a relatively quiet one, that he had been stationed in the rear.
She closed her eyes, imagining her young husband—only twenty-three years old—huddled in the freezing mud of France, writing her name with a stubby pencil while the world tore itself apart around him.
