My dear Josephine,

My Dear Josephine,

Tonight the sea is quieter than the men beside me. They all sound like rusted engines. They speak in half-whispers, half-prayers, sharpening their fear. I sit by a small mattress-less bed, watching a silver moon I cannot touch, and I pretend you are watching it too.

A moment ago, a plane passed overhead. Its scream rattled the roof so hard that Sergeant Watkins dropped to his knees and covered his head like a child in a thunderstorm. No one laughed. We’ve stopped laughing at anything now.

The others are scattered around the room, whispering to their paper, writing letters home they know they’ll never be able to send. I suppose I should write one too. Mother would want to know my last thoughts, and Father would want me to say something brave. But neither have I met my mother and nor am I brave, Josephine. So I write to you.

It is strange, isn’t it? How we can feel less alone simply by imagining someone beside us . Someone whose hand fits into ours without having to ever hold it. Someone whose name feels older than the world, yet belongs to a face I have never seen.

Sergeant told us to write letters, in case.

No officer says what “in case” means, but tonight everyone understands. The engines humming above are our verdict.

I keep thinking, Josephine, that if I write fast enough, I might outrun the sounds outside.

The footsteps in the sand.

The bursts of gunfire in the dark.

The rumble that travels through this wooden floor before the bombs touch the ground.

Every time the lamps flicker, the Private beside me looks at the door like he expects help to walk in. He hasn’t spoken in hours. None of us have, except for the rustle of paper and the scratch of pencils.

I wish I could write you something beautiful. Something soft. Something that would make you smile if you ever existed long enough to read it. But the truth is, I don’t know how to be gentle. Not here.

Another plane just passed.

The roof shook like it was remembering a happier time.

Someone cried out.

Someone prayed louder.

The commander walked by a moment ago and told us to stay low. He didn’t look at any of us while he said it. I think he knows we won’t make it till morning. I think he’s trying not to let the truth sit too long in the air.

But the truth is a patient thing, Josephine.

It finds you whether you speak it or not.

So I will end this letter the way I wish my life had begun: With you.

I need to say this plainly now, before the noise returns and I lose the chance.

Josephine, you do not exist. You never have.

No photograph waits for me in a wallet.

No letter will ever arrive with your handwriting on it.

I gave you a name because I needed one.

I gave you a voice because silence was unbearable.

I gave you a face because I could not stand the idea of dying without loving someone.

You are the life I imagined for myself if this war had not already decided otherwise.

If somewhere, somehow, there is a world where I grow old, I hope I find you there. I hope we meet in a small bookshop or on a quiet street. I hope I learn your real name, not the one I borrowed from my own dream.

But I will not live long enough for that.

So I wrote you instead.

I chose to believe, just for these few pages, that I was a man who had been loved, not merely a man who had survived until tonight.

The walls are shaking again.

This time enemies are closer.

If this letter is found, let whoever reads it understand this:

I was not writing to a sweetheart.

I was writing to the future that was taken from me.

And if there is nothing after this — no memory, no meaning, then let it be enough for the end, where I did not face death entirely alone.

I faced it with you. Josephine.

— Elias J. Somers

"In memory of the soldiers who never returned, and the lives they never lived."