A Letter to those that serve

In 1945 my grandfather wrote the following letter and after I read it, it altered my perception on how the story of the journal should unfold.  

“I Had A Dream The Other Night”

One of those hazy, disjointed dreams, that cause you on awakening to try to connect it in sequence, and leave you greatly perturbed in mind – yes, and in spirit.

It seems that I was sitting at a table – it might have been after a good dinner, for I felt quite satisfied with everything, and very complacent. I leaned back in my chair, picked up a glass from the table, and was enjoying the odor of its contents – most likely and after-dinner brandy.

I seem to hear a noise and looked up, and there stood three of my old buddies, “Pudgie” Taylor, Bobbie Glue, and George Bramwell. I seemed to become elated with a supreme sense of happiness, just as if I was suddenly transported into a kind of world hitherto unknown to me. It seemed that we greeted each other with an enthusiasm beyond what we humans experience, and then it seemed that we all became rigid and Pudgie filled up glasses for each one of us. We stood, it seemed, a long time in silence, and then Pudgie spoke, just one of his utterances that I had heard so many times, “Here’s to you Old China (in modern parlance “Here’s to you, old pal) may we all do the job together”.

Then everything seemed hazy, as it does in dreams, and I woke up, and in the few moments it took to collect my senses, I was at first excited, then the let down, “I have been dreaming”, and memory took me over the years and thoughts drifted sadly.

 Pudgie, Bobby, George and I were old pals and a couple of days before the battle of Mons in August 1914, promised each other that should one or more of us get back, we, or he would call on the family of those who did not get back and explain how and when “it happened”.

Within a few weeks George was killed beside me at the Marne, and died in my arms. Pudgie got his at Ypres, repairing a telephone wire. Bobby’s legs left his torso when I tried to pull him from our blown-in dugout, also at Ypres.

The thought has been with me since, “May we all do the job together”. Pudgie meant when we made that pact just before the shooting started, that we all GET BACK TOGETHER.  Will, we didn’t! Just one of the four and that one failed to carry out the promise, for in the more than four years that the war continued, so much happened, and time softened the memory, which was now one among many.

Throughout the years I have had a great many dreams or mild nightmares fighting that war all over again, and have so often thought, “Was it worthwhile”? We know now, those of my generation who are left, together with the younger generation who are now completing the job. Will, I am very positive, see to it that it will be completed the RIGHT WAY this time.

I am wondering now, was that “visit” of my old buddies who have been lying in Flanders Fields for nearly thirty years, a reproach or a reminder? I don’t know, but it has certainly caused my criticism of myself to assert itself. Were they not telling me that the job has to be done together? Were they not asking, “Are we all working together? Were they telling me to do all I could to help COMPLETE the job which they and millions of others died for? It is all too complex for me to answer, but I do know one thing, and that very definitely, I HAVE NOT DONE MY BEST! I have made no sacrifice that could, in the smallest measure, be compared with the boys who are now going through that hell that I know so well.