398.2

The Un-love Letter

Dearest Georgie,

He stared at the letter, softened by the moisture of his palms, and creased at angles from when he'd left it crammed inside his breastpocket. George admired Matina's smooth-flowing script.

How he'd wished that it had brought him better news.

George searched for that last cigarette he'd saved. Before he could retrieve it, one appeared in front of him, held by a trembling hand. Kent nodded - an understanding between two comrades, fighting a war neither of them fully understood. George watched Kent exhale a circle of smoke.

If they died today, would that be his last memory? It faired better than remembering how his heart had broken.

I have finally met my prince...

Oceans separated him from Martina. Her in Tunisia, patching up the wounded, him in a foxhole somewhere along the Pacific. What did a lowly farm boy from Mississippi know about the trivialities of this war?

Kent, who had fought in Guadalcanal, understood the stakes. At least, Kent had a broad to go home to, if they ever did. What did George have--other than his parents, a piece of crop, and a cow older than his bean-shooter--waiting for him back at the farm? All he had were a broken heart, and an encumbered dream.

He should have told Martina how he felt before he'd been picked up and shipped to the other end of the world.

Bullets whipped past them.

His name is Philippe Laurent, an engineer...

We are to be married tomorrow, before moving into the heart of Europe, and stopping this senseless regime.

George crumpled the letter, and grabbed hold of the standard-issue rifle resting between his legs. His hands shook. His chest tightened. He leaned over to Kent, used the ember from the other man's gasper.

"We're behind an eight-ball, Georgie," Kent said, "Don't go off the track over a dame."

It was all the push George needed, an affirmation. He took a long drag, stood and fired at everything. He felt a bite on his leg and one in his shoulder. The force sent him back into the mud. As he succumbed into the darkness, he called her, "Martina, Martina."

****
There were muttered conversations and indistinct faces. But when he came to, he saw an innocent face of a woman. Angels, they were called. The courageous nurses who went into the field, caring for the broken and the infirm.

Her face lit up into a Lana Turner smile. Heck, he thought she was more beautiful than the actress. She whispered words to him, meant to make a man relax, instead they tripped the second hand in his heart.

"Welcome back to the living, soldier."

That he was--alive--given a second chance, perhaps to love again.

Jane Gordon, of the Navy Nurses Corps, attended to hundreds of men. For George, she was his own Angel, someone who had saved him from his own self-destruction. Jane cared for him until he was well enough to swing his own legs over the bed and limp around the hospital. On that day, she retrieved a folded piece of paper from her pocket and handed it to him.

"I believe this is yours. It was in your person when you came in."

George looked down at her hand. He knew what it was. "Keep it. It belongs to you now."

Jane lowered her eyes, and blushed. "I couldn't. It isn't for me."

"But it is." He took the paper, unfolded it, and read the letter he had written for the woman who owned his heart.

To my dearest...