Flanders

MARCH 2, OFF THE COAST OF ENGLAND

Dear Bobby,

It grieved me to leave you, considering how mad you were. It’s just that I am not cut out to be a homebody. Ma knows that. Don’t you recall her saying as how she had to tether me to the porch to keep me from straying? Well, I’m past my toddler days and the neighborhood’s bigger, and war or no, I could not pass up a trip to Europe. Besides, the hostilities will be over by fall.

Make me two promises: First, take care of Ma and watch her close. If she’s feeling poorly, she will never give you a hint of it. Second, don’t let Pa come on the place. I know you don’t recall him well, but he has the disposition of a junkman’s dog. And mind that he doesn’t come courting Ma. I suspect she harbors a weakness for him that may override her Christian virtues.

Don’t fret for my sake, either. When this is over, I’ll settle down, finish my studies, and spend the rest of my life doctoring lumbago. Still, come to find I sorely needed a vacation. Maybe when I get back stateside I won’t mind those tight-assed Harvard Congregationalists.

But I miss my English literature classes, especially as I am within sight of Shakespeare’s “sceptered isle.” It galls not being able to step foot where Keats walked. I’d like to see one of Wordsworth’s daffodils. I feel an awful longing to hear a nightingale. Tomorrow I sail the channel to France and, like as not, I’ll spend that trip as I did from New York to here—with my head over the rail, bestowing a free lunch on the fishes.

Didn’t see any submarines on the way. In that, I was luckier than those poor souls on the Lusitania who probably never realized they were dying as an example of bastardly German gutlessness.

Kiss Ma and tell her not to worry. Assure her General Wood’s battle lessons will come in handy. Remind her that I graduated at the top of my class, way over all those Yankee boys who cannot shoot straight and who complain mercilessly when they are made to shit in the woods. The general always did say that he perceived in me the élan for battle, and in a real man’s war, spirit is all that is needed to win.

Yours in brotherly affection,

Travis Lee

P.S. I knew it, for folks had told me; but I hardly believed until I saw for myself—the cliffs of Dover really are white. Yesterday I stood at the rail in the pouring rain until long after we had left them behind. How can I begin to tell you about Dover? It’s a chalk line God drew to separate gray from green, breakers from earth. Seeing it, I don’t know why William the Conqueror didn’t just put down his sword and take England captive with his eyes.

* * *

MARCH 18, FRANCE, REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

The postman finally caught up with me, and it was no child’s play to find me, either, since my location has moved about. The Brits put me first in one battalion and then in another when they saw how well I could shoot.

“Good God, Yank,” Captain Hodgeson said to me the other day at target practice. “Do you realize that out of five bullets, you have shot five perfect bull’s-eyes?”

I speak fluent Texan around the limeys as they enjoy it so, and are not hurtful with their joshing like the Yankee boys. Anyway, I scratched my head like I was puzzled and said, “Did I ruin that target, sir?”

Captain Hodgeson then called up Major Woodhouse to see, and both officers asked me to fire once more, which I proceeded to do. Now it appears that, after a semester of introductory grenade tossing and an advanced course in trench-digging, I am to be a sharpshooter.

“Where did you learn to shoot like that, Private?” the major asked.

I told him, “Plinking squirrels for Ma’s varmint stew,” which delighted the two of them so that they had me repeat the phrase again and again for a succession of other officers. But my own jest was my downfall, for it caused me to ruminate upon those times before Ma started raising those fancy goats of hers. I was somber for the remainder of the day. You do not recall how strapped Ma and I were after Pa left us; how we lived off grits and yard greens and possum, like poor coloreds. Still, now I am filled with a sense of superiority. The English may have seen war, but I have lived with Pa, so I have seen Hell. Therefore I will always be hardier than they, and if that was all the inheritance that drunken bastard will give me, I suppose forcing me to become a man is enough.

Anyway, it is always good to hear laughter, no matter if the source of it is sorrow.

I cannot tell you where I am, but suffice it to say that it is a pleasant and verdant place in France. Here green has no overtones, not like in Texas where dry is always pushing through. Nailing France’s grass to its brown earth are massive chestnut trees and elms as stately as Gothic cathedrals. Oh Lord, Bobby, the flowers—all colors, and everywhere you look. Europe has such a tender and civilized countryside.

I wish you were here. Fondly,

Travis Lee

* * *

MARCH 21, FRANCE, REST AREA

Dear Bobby,

You must not tell Ma, for it would send her entire praying circle to their knees, but the Tommies took me into town and got me knee-walking drunk.

At some point that night I found out that they don’t like being called “limeys,” and I informed them of my personal objection to “Yank.” After another few tots of French brandy I went to echoing some of the more choice selections of their speech like: “Not by ‘arf” and “Gotcher mouf on yer, ain’t yer?” I tell you, they may have invented it, and it might even be named after them, but their language doesn’t bear much resemblance to English. After a few minutes of my aping them, a private from Lancaster started shouting, “Oos iff it, Yank? Oos iff it?” or something like, which I immediately parroted. He began a pushing sort of fight. I beat a retreat and went outside to find an outhouse. There I searched and searched, and the more I looked, the more urgency I suffered. In desperation, I crept around the side of the inn and unfastened my pants. I was joined by a drunken French private who spoke no better English than the Tommies, but who parley-voued well enough in gestures to let me know that he was of the opinion that he could piss farther than I. Little did he know that I was not only possessed of a sorely laden bladder, but I was a sharpshooter besides.