#Courcelette

[theworldofwars]

Medical orderlies tend to the wounded in a trench during the Battle of Courcelette in mid-September 1916. The medical orderlies wear non-combatant red cross armbands. The man on the bottom left is commonly referred to as a "Shell Shock" victim.

[gogandmagog]

I just want you to know that the Thematic Implications of Ken Ford dying in WWI instead of Walter lives in my brain now. The way it would so subtly change the story! That being the Hero won't save you, that being the Heroine doesn't mean you get your prize at the end, that "the white flame of sacrifice" doesn't mean you will get to be the sacrificial lamb--that the sensitive genius will have to live with the horrors anyway. Rilla being the symbol of all those girls who were left without sweethearts instead of Una--who might instead by a symbol of all those girls who found their sweethearts irrevocably changed. Obsessed.

SO WELL SAID, @sparrowsarus!!!!   VERY MUCH. All of this, very much.     Obviously, I understand why it had to be a Blythe, for the simple fact that it cuts the reader ever so much deeper than the converse option of losing the very negligible Ken Ford... Walter is a loss that stings everyone, because we are so profoundly attached to him, and if not to him, then to his family. What hurts them hurts us. But everything you say does feel thematically more attractive to the after-shocks message underlying in the story, because of the occasional inference to the still-coming uphill battle of post-war recovery. Maud can be quoted as personally saying, “If ever peace comes again, we will not know how to live in it.” And really, I think of Rilla were to have ever to’ve had a sequel, this thought, together with what you’ve outlined would’ve been far more realistic to grapple with. Rilla’s ending, as it stands, is rooted in an idealistic ‘return’ to innocence, as we see demonstrated with the coinciding return of her childhood lisp... but to me it’s also another semi-contrived signature fairytale ending that we often see in LMM’s classic wrap-up scenes. And for me, this is the only time I actually do clock her classic quick wrap-up as contrived. Usually, I fully recognise that her books were meant for children; that she herself calls them fairytales, and states that the rules laid out in her books would never work in real life. That the natural adult world and the natural adult questions that come with them, don’t have a place or belong in these fairytales. Kids have an effortless trust in happy-ever-afters that grownups struggle with. But Rilla spent so long being seeped in harsh reality, and the pain of a very ugly War... that really, if not for x-ray vision we get from TBAQ that shows us the Blythe’s (and Una’s!) residual struggle, the ending Rilla got would almost feel unequal to the pain in its pages.

The sensitive genius having to live with the horrors anyway? Could’ve been an even stronger message of hope and resilience, in some ways. Learning the hard parts of Keeping the Faith. Faith put to the test, faith contending with survivors guilt.

Rilla, in Una’s spot, though! I kind of waffle with the idea of her as being a lifelong leftover sweetheart, the way Una is. Right before Ken comes back, Rilla’s coolly resigned herself to the notion of him never coming back for her, and in the very next moment shrugs it off and has decided to go to Redmond after all, lol. 😅 Of course she would’ve had an appropriate period of mourning for Ken, but I honestly think she would’ve married someone else, in the years following.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Battle of Flers-Courcelette. Reinforcements (possibly from a NZ division) crossing the old German front line during the advance towards Flers, 15 September 1916.

[historyofguns]

The article discusses the introduction and deployment of the British Mark I tank during World War I, emphasizing its significant impact on warfare during the Battle of the Somme. First seen in action on September 15, 1916, the tank was a terrifying sight for the Kaiser’s First Army in France, which was unprepared for this new warfare technology. The Mark I tanks, classified as either "Male" with cannons or "Female" with machine guns, showcased tactical innovation, despite operational challenges such as mechanical failures and the hazardous conditions inside the tank. Developed under great secrecy and inspired by naval technology, these tanks fundamentally changed military strategy. Despite encountering significant issues like spalling and overheating, they proved influential on the battlefield, prompting advancements in both tank design and anti-tank weaponry. The article, written by Will Dabbs, MD, highlights the evolution of tanks from these early days to their crucial role in modern military operations.

[k2kid]

"... a magnificent spectacle...": Eye Witness at Flers-Courcelette

[savage-kult-of-gorthaur]

LOOK WITHIN THESE EYES OF MADNESS AND DESPAIR -- "WAR IS A BLACK HOLE TO AVOID."

PIC(S) INFO: Spotlight on a shell shocked Allied soldier in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during the Somme Offensive, c. September 1916.

PIC #2: The original photograph. Medical orderlies tend to the wounded in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in mid-September 1916. The man on the left is suffering from Shell Shock. Photographer unknown.

OVERVIEW: "His eyes express the madness of the war. The soldier looks like he has gone insane from what he has seen. In that moment in time everything he’s been raised to work within, the social constructs which make up every part of his life just exploded and shattered to nothing, and he’s lying there, slumped in a trench, afraid for his life, hearing and seeing death around him, his entire psyche broken. Even more haunting when you think that people didn’t smile for the pictures back then.

PART II: The circumstances of the First World War pushed hundreds of thousands of men beyond the limits of human endurance. They faced weapons that denied any chance for heroism or courage or even military skill because the artillery weapons that caused 60 percent of all casualties were miles away from the battlefield.

PART III: The term “shell shock” was coined by the soldiers themselves. Symptoms included fatigue, tremor, confusion, nightmares and impaired sight and hearing, an inability to reason, hysterical paralysis, a dazed thousand-yard stare is also typical. It was often diagnosed when a soldier was unable to function and no obvious cause could be identified. "Simply put, after even the most obedient soldier had enough shells rain down on him, without any means of fighting back, he often lost all self-control.""

-- RARE HISTORICAL PHOTOS

Source: https://rarehistoricalphotos.com/shell-shocked-soldier-1916.

[jomiddlemarch]

Of them who running on that last high place

Walter was wrong.

The Piper may have come to Courcelette, but he did not pipe Walter west.

The letter he’d written Rilla was the last they received in his own hand, though it was weeks before he came home to the Island.

The telegram arrived five days after Courcelette, the bell at Ingleside’s door ringing as Rilla sang a Scotch air that had always been one of Walter’s favorites.

Walter’s commanding officer was as generous as he might be in the wire but the message itself was simple.

Walter would come home. For good.

He was blind.

*

“Walter’s blind,” Rilla said, her voice strained and tight, as tense as Una could remember her being. Mrs. Blythe had fainted when Dr. Blythe read the telegram, but Susan had said Rilla hadn’t faltered for an instant, had dashed away the tears in her eyes and gone to the ‘phone to give the news to Nan and Di. By the next day, the entire family had rallied, though Mrs. Blythe remained pale and Rilla would not let herself have a moment’s stillness, busy at some sort of work every waking moment. It was only now, in Rainbow Valley with Mary Vance and Una herself beside her, that Rilla sat quietly, her hands holding a wadded-up handkerchief as if that’s all they’d been made to do.

“Might’ve been a lot worse,” Mary Vance replied matter-of-factly. 

“He’s blind,” Rilla repeated.

“He’s alive,” Una said. Every night since he’d left, she prayed for him to be spared, to come back home and she hadn’t put any conditions on it when she begged God on her knees for Walter’s life. These were prayers she couldn’t speak of, as she could mention her concern for her brothers, and perhaps that was what made them twice as fervent. Perhaps.

“Una’s right. While there’s life, there’s hope,” Mary said. “And he could still be a professor of poetry books even if he can’t see anything. He’s got about a hundred poems by heart already—”

“But to be always in the darkness, to have to live without the dawn, without the view of the harbor in the moonlight,” Rilla trailed off. There was an echo of Walter’s voice in hers, that heartfelt yearning that Una had first fallen in love with or at least had first allowed to herself that she loved in him, and it was an unanticipated consolation to hear it in Rilla’s tone, a reminder that for all their differences, they were almost as close as the Blythe twins. Walter would sound much the same when he was at Rainbow Valley again, though Una expected he would try to conceal how his blindness hurt him. 

“He did always set a store on the looks of things,” Mary agreed, crossing her booted feet at the ankle, smoothing her apron across her lap. “Never thought a man would care so much about wild asters and sunsets. I mean, I wasn’t so surprised he did when we were all kids, but he’s a hero now, saving all those men in his battalion, getting a battlefield promotion to Sergeant Blythe instead of plain Private—”

“He’s still Walter,” Una said. Walter, whose dreamy grey eyes would never light up in the recognition of unexpected beauty. “Whatever his rank is, whatever’s happened, whatever he’s done.”

“I don’t expect he’ll look much different and plenty of soldiers will have canes, so he won’t stand out,” Mary said.

“He’s coming home, anyway,” Rilla said, letting out a soft breath that might have been a sigh. “They can’t send him back. He’ll be back home, here at Ingleside, and we’ll all just have to muddle through and wait for Jem and Shirley to come back too. And Jerry and Carl, Una—"

“Would’ve been worse for Jem,” Mary said. “He could never be a doctor blind.”

*

It was weeks before Walter came back to the Island. The time neither flew nor lagged. The days went by, pearl beads on a string, and if they had had a number they’d been promised, it would have been impossible, Susan fretting about the linens and the state of the pantry, Mrs. Blythe staying out too late in her garden, Jims whining and naughty with the growing apprehension, but there was no telegram with an update until the day he arrived. It beat the train by barely an hour, which was just enough time for the Blythes to hurry to the station and for Una, her father and Rosemary to join them.

Una had crammed the first hat at hand on her head as they’d gone out, which was why she was waiting for Walter wearing Rosemary’s old blue velvet cloche.

He wouldn’t know and that couldn’t be a relief, nor an agony. It simply was.

There was a nurse with him, a plain, spare woman that Una knew she herself could have turned into if he’d never returned, but the woman had retreated as soon as the Blythes had surged forward to take Walter into their embrace. Mrs. Blythe clung to him and Dr. Blythe stood very near and Susan let tears stream down her face and wiped them with the hem of her apron instead of a handkerchief. Una could hear Jims little voice piping “Willa? Willa?” and thought she should have offered to carry the baby so Rilla could greet Walter unencumbered but there’d been no time to say anything.

It took a good fifteen minutes before Una could see Walter.

She would never have known he was blind. He looked almost exactly the same as when he’d left, still slender and so finely made, his dark hair shining, his face unscarred. She’d seen men return missing arms and legs, their faces ruined by scar, bandages around their heads, backs bent. Young men made old before their time, their bodies frail and trembling. 

Walter looked every inch the young prince, just as he had when he’d first gone away. Then he turned his head, as if he was looking for someone, and faced in her direction and she saw he was no longer a young prince but a king who’d gone into battle, willing to sacrifice everything for his people. Who’d come back to acclaim and praise and the most exuberant welcome when all he wanted was the peace of Rainbow Valley on a terribly hot August afternoon and the quiet of the calm sea in the winter moonlight.

“Perhaps we should call round tomorrow,” she murmured to Rosemary, who was, as ever, the most understanding person of Una’s acquaintance. “The Blythes, and it’s so much right now, it must be overwhelming—he can’t want—”

“Very sensible,” Rosemary said, as if anything Una had said was remotely sensible and not a jumble of words, her emotions scattering her thoughts like petals in a storm. “Tomorrow and we can bring some shortbread. Walter always liked shortbread more than pie.”

“But the butter is rationed,” Una said.

“It was meet that we should make merry, and be glad: for this thy brother was dead, and is alive again; and was lost, and is found,” Una’s father quoted, giving her a little wry smile that said he understood how the verse did not exactly suit the moment. 

He thought it was only that Walter had never been thought to be dead.

Rosemary gave Una a look that said she understood Una had two brothers, not three.

*

A month later, the shortbread delivered with Susan still too overjoyed to do much more than sniff disparagingly once, the regular pattern of visits re-established, Una found herself alone with Mary Vance on the Ingleside sitting room. The wintry day was dank and chill without, a fire crackling merrily in the fireplace. Rilla had gone up to settle Jims who was fractious with a cold and Una and Mary had been left to their own devices.

“Poor old Walter. It would’ve been better if he’d never come back,” Mary said.

“You think he’d be better off dead?” Una said, aghast, relieved that Rilla was not present, that Mary had at least waited until Rilla had left them to say something so devastating.

“Of course not! Don’t put words in my mouth, I’ve plenty to say for myself,” Mary replied, shaking her head and pursing her lips. The firelight was flattering to her, but her flare of temper was more so, imperturbable Mary slightly flushed, her chin lifted. Annoyance made her positively pretty. “I meant, it would have been better if he hadn’t come back to Ingleside. His folks don’t know what to make of him, well, the womenfolk. Dr. Blythe might do all right if it was just him but the rest of them can’t decide whether Walter’s to be stuck on a pedestal or pushed around like a baby in a wagon. Think about it and tell me I’m wrong—you mightn’t like the way I say it, but you can’t argue with the facts of the matter.”

“I can’t,” Una said. “I can’t blame his family—”

“Nor I,” Mary replied. “But it doesn’t change the truth. He’d be better off somewhere else where people aren’t mourning his life to his face and counting on him being too blind to notice.”

“Mary!”

“Jem wouldn’t let it happen,” Mary went on. Mary was fondest of Rilla of the Blythe clan, but she admired Jem the most and if you were someone like Una, used to observing the small detail and nuance, if was easy enough to see how that admiration might be become something more.

“I don’t suppose he would,” Una said. “But I don’t think there’s anything much he can do from the Front. I’m not even sure Dr. Blythe’s written about Walter’s injury to Jem. He didn’t want to do anything that might endanger Jem, distract him.”

“You’ll have to do something then, that’s all there is to it,” Mary replied.

“Me?”

“No one cares about Walter more than you do, Una, and no one will expect you to speak up, let alone make a fuss, so they’ll go along with whatever you do. Rilla will be relieved, see if she doesn’t come to you by and by and say so,” Mary nodded as she spoke, something between encouragement and exhortation.

“You sound so sure,” Una said.

“I’ve eyes, ain’t I? He’ll listen to you. He always paid attention to you, even if you didn’t think he did,” Mary said. There was a sound above of a door closing and it meant Rilla would be coming back down shortly. “Anyway, it’s not just me—Cornelia believes you’ll be the making of Walter if you’ll only try though she said it with twice as much vinegar as I just did.”

“I’m so sorry,” Rilla said, walking into the room and sitting down in the chair near the window. Before the War, she would have toed off her shoes and tucked her feet up beneath her, but now she sat as properly as Susan could ever have wished, though without a basket of mending. “Jims would make such a noise and I didn’t want Walter disturbed. He needs peace and quiet more than anything.”

Una was certain that the sound of Jims crying would not have bothered Walter a bit and might well have been a comfort, a homely sound far from the brutality of the Front, the choked whimpers of men in hospital, half-drowned from gas and nightmares.

Mary was right, which she would crow over. Una must find a way to help Walter before his loving family made his survival a burden too great to be borne.

*

It had taken Una a fortnight to decide what she ought to do and how to say it. To whom and when. She came to Ingleside nearly every day and noticed how quiet Walter was, how still. How his family bustled around him and spoke for him, cossetting him and plying him with cups of tea he didn’t drink and Susan’s “bites” he didn’t eat. She saw how few questions they asked of him and how they avoided speaking of Jem and Shirley, Carl and Jerry, of Di’s quest for the medical course. Miss Oliver was the most natural around him, trying to discuss metaphysical poetry and the novel her student Elspeth Sheridan was writing, but Walter was diffident and in their various ways, his family hurried to fill silences he left. Una considered what was happening and what might. She prayed beside her narrow bed and shook hands with Walter when she left each day. 

She chose a Tuesday, the day Susan did her baking. Una wore her best gloves and hat, though it couldn’t make any difference to anyone at Ingleside, and she’d waited for a time she knew Rilla would be away from home with Jims in tow. Susan had fetched Walter, who came down the familiar staircase with more care than he ought to have needed, and then she left them alone, because she trusted Una.

“Let’s run away, Walter,” she said.

As she’d hoped, he smiled but didn’t laugh. She had not been so close to him since his return and noticed that there were streaks of silver in his dark hair, but his face was unmarked. He wore his old clothes, but somehow there was still a sense of him being in uniform.

“Run away? You and I?” he said.

“We’re not who they think we are. Our families, everyone in the Glen,” Una said. She knew he’d want an explanation, though she was not used to being the person who spoke at length on any topic. “They love us, who they think we are, but that love isn’t enough—”

“It’s too much,” he said softly. Bitterly. “A prison—”

“A crypt,” she replied, startling him. She hadn’t spoken so frankly before he went away. Before, she had not imagined he could ever come home and find it something other than a joyous reunion. He’d offer her a kind smile and a greeting when he came to visit and he’d forget about her as soon as he walked away. Before, she’d thought she’d be the one left behind when he went on to greater things, his splendid shining life as a poet, renowned, celebrated. 

Something like that was still possible for him, but not in the Glen. Perhaps not even on the Island. He could write again, but not here. He could live a full life, altered but not diminished, but not here.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” she said.

“What way should it be, Una? How could we go—”

“However you wanted it to be,” she said. She took a deep breath and reminded herself he could not see her blush, even if he’d hear her shy boldness in her voice. “You didn’t write me as many letters as Rilla, but I didn’t think—they weren’t the same as the ones you wrote to your sister, she read me hers… We might be friends, I’ve no particular expectations but I care—oh Walter, I care very much and I’m not like everyone else, I don’t think that has to look a certain way—”

“You deserve better—”

“Surely, you must have learned life isn’t about what we deserve! You can’t think you deserved to lose your sight,” she exclaimed.

“Sometimes, it seems the only way the scales could balance. What I saw, what I looked away from, and now the darkness, there’s no respite from the memories…I can still see in my dreams, you know,” he said.

“I didn’t know,” she said. His shoulders were hunched, his head canted in an angle she knew meant a fearful grief held him. She got up and went over to where he sat, kneeling before him. His hands lay on his thighs and she took them in her own, holding them very lightly. “You didn’t deserve this, Walter. It doesn’t have to be the way it is. We, you and I, we can change it. We can go somewhere else and live another life.”

“Are we fleeing in the middle of the night?” he asked. It was a good sign, that he was teasing her. It wasn’t something he’d done before but it could be something he did now and in the future.

“I didn’t think so,” she replied. “I shouldn’t like to worry anyone.”

“You’re very dear, Una,” Walter said and tightened his grip on her hands subtly. “I ought to tell you no, but I’ve discovered I’m selfish and I want what you’re talking about.”

“Another life,” she said, the repetition a question without the form, a seeking after clarity. She wanted him to tell her what it was he wanted.

“With you. You,” he said. 

“I’ll always be your friend,” she said.

“I hope more, one day. If you don’t tire of helping a cripple, leading me around, a clumsy, blind crock,” he said.

“Don’t say those things. You don’t need to hope for some distant future,” she said. “I told you, I care, very much. Now. Today. I know that’s forward, terribly forward, but I don’t want you to wait when you needn’t—”

“Now?” he asked and drew her up with his hands, pulling her close to him so she was on his knee. His grey eyes were unfocused but she knew that expression from well before the War, when he was half-beguiled thinking about some turn of phrase, some piece of errant loveliness he’d spin into a sonnet.

“I told you I wanted to run away with you,” she said, just above a whisper.

“That’s not exactly what you said, but I gather it’s what you meant,” he said. “I should have written you more letters. I thought of them, in France, but I didn’t always want to connect you to that place, those horrors. And now I can’t write any more letters myself.”

“You shan’t need to write to me and I’m sure I’ll get quite good at taking dictation,” she said.

“Shan’t you want more than that?” he asked.

“If I do, I promise to tell you,” Una replied.

“When. Not if,” Walter said.

*

To begin with, they didn’t run very far.

Rosemary and Mary Vance stood as witnesses at the brief wedding Una’s father officiated at the manse. Rilla’s telegram to Leslie Ford secured the unlet House of Dreams for the next year, though Una suspected they would not stay until their anniversary. They ate Susan’s pie at the Ingleside table and Mrs. Blythe bid them goodbye with a warning that the bottom of the garden was too shady for peonies and the gate latch had a trick to it. Dr. Blythe shook Walter’s hand and kissed Una on the forehead.

They left Ingleside. They left the Glen. They came to the sea, both of them unfamiliar with the way the salt breeze tasted on their lips.

They discovered the salt did not taste the same, shared in a kiss.

That if sufficiently provoked, Una would lose the temper no one ever supposed she had. 

That Walter made a better loaf of bread and kneading the dough was the best remedy for those mornings when he wished he had not woken.

That Mary Vance was a better friend to them that either had given her credit for and when they attempted to, she laughed it off, though they could tell she was very pleased indeed.

When Jem came home, they’d gone. Walter was offered a place at Redmond, but they’d moved to Montreal, to McGill.

One day, Walter would return to France. He’d bring Una and they’d both be fluent in French.

@freyafrida your Walter/Una fic recs list inspired me to write this!

[cid5]

A shell shocked british soldier in a trench during the Battle of Flers-Courcelette during the Somme Offensive in September 1916.

[the-moral-of-the-rose]

Rilla of Ingleside created a new timeline...

Anne's House of Dreams mentioned a historical event - a federal election: “Mistress Blythe, the Liberals are in with a sweeping majority. After eighteen years of Tory mismanagement this down-trodden country is going to have a chance at last.” (AHoD).

From Wikipedia: "The 1896 Canadian federal election was held on June 23, 1896, to elect members of the House of Commons of Canada of the 8th Parliament of Canada. Though the Conservative Party, led by Prime Minister Charles Tupper, won a plurality of the popular vote, the Liberal Party, led by Wilfrid Laurier, won the majority of seats to form the next government. The election ended 18 years of Conservative rule."

It wouldn't be surprsing, but... it was also the year in which Jem Blythe was born! The election took place few weeks after his birth: "When Anne came downstairs again, the Island, as well as all Canada, was in the throes of a campaign preceding a general election." (AHoD).

So... according to this timeline, Walter was born a year later (1897), then the twins (1899), Shirley (1901) and Rilla (1903).

The point is... at the outbreak of the war, Walter would have been only 17 years old, the twins 15, Shirley 13, Rilla 11...

Shirley would have been too young to participate in the war and Walter would have barely turned nineteen at the time of the Battle of Flers-Courcelette in September of 1916...

Someone in one of my older posts noticed that puff sleeves fashion suggested that Anne of Green Gables took place in 1880s rather than 1870s... so it would make sense!

I wonder why Montgomery chose Rilla as her teenage heroine (according to the original chronology, Rilla should have been only 11 years old), while there were 15-year-old twins...

Can you imagine Nan and Di as the main characters of the war book? Two young girls at Queen's, trying to come to terms with rapidly changing world? Rilla and Shirley at Ingleside, growing closer in such trying times? Teenage boys - Jem and Walter - who had to choose if they wanted to sacrifice their life at even younger age - at eighteen? Walter, never reaching the age of twenty (or maybe - dare I hope - coming back home safely)? Anne and Gilbert in their 40s, trying to collect all the broken pieces that was once their family?

It would have been equally good, in my opinion. I wonder... why Montgomery felt she had to suddenly change a whole chronology?

Side note: of course, I love Rilla of Ingleside. But I am just curious... (Nan and Di of Ingleside would be a good book, too!).

@diario-de-gilbert-blythe @gogandmagog @pinkenamelheart @valancystirling48

[herprivateswe]

Image: IWM (Q 5576) Battle of Flers–Courcelette. Four Mark I tanks filling with petrol. Chimpanzee Valley, 15 September 1916, the day tanks first went into action.

[redarmyscreaming]

Mark I tank knocked during the type's first combat use in the Battle of Flers–Courcelette pictured in September 1917

[theworldofwars]

German Prisoners

From 15 to 20 September 1916, the Canadians captured and held the village of Courcelette. During that time, they took 1,040 German prisoners. Canadians here are seen providing the prisoners with cigarettes, food, and drinks. Prisoners would then likely have been taken to cages behind the lines, and finally to prisoner of war camps in France or England.

[captain-price-unofficially]

Battle of Flers-Courcelette. A stretcher-borne wounded soldier waves his helmet (and leg) as he is carried in by German prisoners. Near Ginchy, 15th September 1916.

[aisakalegacy]

Automne 1916, Hylewood, Canada (1/4)

Chers cousins,

Merci pour les nouvelles de la famille. Je suis heureux d’apprendre que Constantin et Adelphe vont bien. Transmettez à Rose et à Juliette tous mes encouragements. J’ai fait ma convalescence à l’hôpital de Lijddsenthoek, et c’est bien grâce à l’effort de femmes comme elles que les pauvres yabes comme moi se remettent de leurs mutilations.

Je suis avec attention la progression du 22e Batataillon dans le journal. Mes anciens camarades sont sortis des tranchées belges et se battent actuellement dans la Somme, dans le village de Courcelette, et livrent des combats acharnés pour déloger les Allemands qui occupent ce village. Il parait que les hommes y sont sans ravitaillement en armes, fournitures et eau, ce qui les contraint à se battre au corps à corps, au poing ou à la pelle. Les pertes y sont inquiétantes, et j’attends avec appréhension des nouvelles de mes cousins.

[redplaidjacket]

Every time I read a WWI fic, and every time I know this is coming, and every time I am heartbroken, all over again. Walter dies in Courcelette.

[jomiddlemarch]

A letter always seemed to me like immortality

Everyone Diana wanted to write to was dead.

Walter, what seemed like a dozen lifetimes ago, at Courcelette if his last letter to Rilla was to be believed; Diana had often wondered whether he had already considered himself a dead man walking before the day of the last battle, the boy he’d been destroyed beyond repair or rebirth.

Aunt Leslie, whom she’d found it easier to talk to than her own mother, perhaps because she’d also had a brother she adored. Perhaps because she’d left Glen St. Mary and never missed it. 

Perhaps because Leslie liked whiskey better than tea, newspapers better than poetry. 

Una, who’d been too pale since she barely survived nursing her father and stepmother through the Spanish flu, who’d been someone everyone underestimated or decided to treat as a martyr, who would not have judged Di the way her own sisters would. 

Rosalind Foyle, whom she’d had to ask about as discreetly as she could, counting on her general reception as a cheerful and polite Canadian, not much like a bossy Yank, to yield her the few details she’d squirreled away. An artist, a mother. A beauty. Better-bred than her husband, well-liked, she’d had elegant hands and never forgot to wear gloves.

Diana only wore gloves to operate and if an actual gale was blowing in a blizzard.

Who had thought all she wanted was to go to France, to make something of her life that would last her the rest of it. That might make the rest of it of a duration she could bear, an end her family could cope with or justify why she’d never return to PEI.

Dear Una, You’re the best one to write to, I think. The one who’d mind the least, like it the most. The least awkward for me to imagine reading this, the least likely to tell me something I don’t want to know. I leave for France in a few weeks and now I don’t want to go. Or rather, I do and then I don’t. There’s something holding me in England now, something to do with Walter, a mystery. Men, who’ve died. A man who’s alive, very much so.

A man I want to know. His name is Foyle. Christopher. He knew Walter, said Walter knew him as Kit. Everyone calls him Foyle or sir or Superintendent. Christopher. Oh Una, I thought this was behind me. That it was something I’d never have to deal with, some sort of consolation of being a woman in a world missing a generation of men. I thought I wouldn’t know this and that was a relief, watching you and Rilla and Nan. Faith. Mary. I thought it was fair, that I’d never know heartbreak like this. And now there’s Christopher. A half-dozen dead men. Walter’s poem. And France, waiting for me. I have to go, I know that, but how do I go wanting to stay here, a place I can’t call home. Wanting to come back.

Christopher. I like writing his name because I oughtn’t say it often. That’s what a young girl does, lovesick, dull, embarrassing herself, making everyone around her smile behind their hands unless it’s Miss Cornelia, scolding you for making a fool of yourself and for what, a man? What’s a man worth, I ask you—can’t you hear her say it, tart, ready to wash her hands of us— I don’t care what a man’s worth, Una. Just Christopher. And I can’t answer the question, not to satisfy Miss Cornelia or you or myself.

You’d write me back something comforting, if you could. If you hadn’t died before your time, twice over, after the telegram, after the epidemic. I should have insisted you leave before me or with me. I should have told your father you were worth more than all the rest of them put together or made Dad send you away to convalesce, somewhere warm, where you might have lolled about, turning brown in the sun. I’ve said I’ll go to France and sew up the men who need sewing up. Cut off the parts that need cutting off. I’ve said that’s my life, my vocation, as important as Mother’s poetry, as Walter’s, as the babies Jem delivers and the columns Ken Ford writes, and it must be but now there’s murder and Christopher to contend with, a dozen mysteries at the heart of me. For it seems I’ve a heart after all, Una. It beats and beats and leaps when it oughtn’t. It will break, I know it shall.

Christopher. I’ll take a dream in lieu of a letter. A flower, out of place, in lieu of a word. Answer me if you can, Una. You can’t and I know that, but I’ll still hope, silly Di Blythe.

She put the letter in an envelope but left it unsealed and unaddressed.

Left the envelope in an otherwise empty drawer of the desk in her flat. If she didn’t return from France, well, that didn’t bear thinking about too closely. If her papers were sent back to Canada, her father would likely burn the letter rather than let her mother see it unless if gave it to Nan, thinking her twin would derive some comfort and, happily married to Jerry, the bonny wife and mother Di had not made of herself, could weather any pang it gave her.

If somehow it ended up with Christopher, he’d know how she’d once felt.

She could make that happen, writing his name across the white field of the envelope, but that was too much like a dare, and for all she was her father’s daughter, she still had her mother’s wise fear of the fey.

She’d written his name enough. She’d hope she’d come back to say it.