19-year-old Private Johnny Terry of 13th platoon had been stationed to the mail station at Eagle base in South Korea. It had been an 8-hour shift on his first day and he’d had a lot of trouble with it. His mother had always said he was hopeless and his drill sergeant had believed that even more. That’s why he was stationed to mail he assumed. In his hand he had a stack of letters. He was sorting them into the different companies and platoons so that they would get to the soldiers. He had the letters for 13th, 14th and 15th platoon in his hand and was shuffling through the names on the letters to see if any were for him. Andrews, Anderson, Billington, Bradford, Gardiner, Grant.. He skipped to the middle… Lyon, Mackay, Richmond, Smith, and the remaining in the pile were for a man Taylor. There had to be at least 5 letters there. Someone at home must really care about him Terry thought to himself. It was as he was counting the letters in a jealous mood that his replacement arrived with a box of new letters. Terry put the pile of letters in his hand down on the counter in a hurry as if to hide the fact he was looking at the letters a little bit too carefully. The replacement laughed at the boy and without realizing put a box of letters to be sent to America down on top of the letters Terry had been counting. Terry left the room a minute later unaware that the letters he had been counting were to be lost and forgotten. He wouldn’t think about the soldier Taylor who had had a lot of letters from a love one again and he didn’t know that his letters would not get to him. The boy was just glad his shift was over.
The replacement began to sort the letters in the box to be sent to America. Amongst those letters was this one from that soldier named Taylor to his loved one.
“To my dearest Hailey,
How are you and that beautiful baby girl of ours? I know Gerard is back in Massachusetts so I hope I was right in sending this letter to Ger and Claire’s house. I knew that even if you weren’t staying there with them it would somehow find it’s way to you.
To be completely honest it’s even harder being here without Gerard because having the both of us here and someone you really knew to talk to is nice but I am definitely happier that Ger is home and safe. I am safe too before you go worrying about me. I’ve actually been promoted so hopefully that means I’ll be a little more out of harms way. I won’t ever put someone else’s life in danger to save mine however.
I haven’t received a letter in a while so I trust everything is ok. I still want to know what you were trying to tell me that day on Skype. You’ve got me a little bit worried but if it were really bad you would have told me right?
So I was thinking the other day about when you were pregnant with Amelia and it was about the 20-week mark we got those baby ultrasound photos and the baby kicked and everything. I was thinking that it must be close to that mark for Claire and Gerard. I’m glad he’s there to experience all that because if it was you that was pregnant I wouldn’t want to miss that stuff for the world.
Yours Always,
Chase
Ps. I am being deployed to Germany in a few days. Any letters should be redirected there though so don’t worry about getting the new address.
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Brothers at War
ActionChase Taylor has a good life, he has a wife, a daughter, good job and house. In 2016 the United States goes to war with North Korea and Chase and his twin brother find themselves enlisted with the draft into the US army. Chase is torn from his perfe...
