Da,

It's a cold Christmas. No snow. We've an early attack today, got shot in the forearm. My old wounds ached, especially the one on the crook of my neck. You nailed the outcome, too, by the way. I got out of this war with a pair of crutches, a wooden leg and a fucked-up brain.

I supposed it's finally time to admit that you're right about war. Right all along. There's no goddamn glory rotting in trenches, nor there's any thrill traveling across the shell-plague Europe and killing men.

This war isn't going to end soon. We celebrated our third Christmas yesterday in a wide-mouth shellhole, next by our comrades' freshly dug graves, the low, white noise of shell further to the Front droning on and on in the background. We raised a Christmas tree, and the Huns shot it down. We didn't sing this year.

They are desperate. It's hopeless. The war is a disease, deaths and deaths and deaths piling up. Flesh and wood and metal and blood. Dead and living, no difference.

My body started shaking whenever the bombing started. The bunk coughed dust down on us during a bombing, and I kept anticipating the wooden beams buckled and gave up under the smashing force of a shell, burying me alive, and then all I wanted was getting out.

Sometimes, as the shells rolled over the landscape, I consider getting on my knees and claw at the earth. Eating the dirt away back to Canada.

I envy the dead. Their battle is done. But we continue to suffer through hell. I wonder did those foul thoughts run through Charlie's mind before he deserted his post, I wonder did he regret when facing the gun barrel.

Charlie must be eighteen, now. Conrad, sixteen, if he's able to make it through this New Year's Eve. Young. Stupid. Hopeful. My brothers.

When I knew Charlie's death, the first thing that hit me wasn't grief. No. It was regret. If I hadn't convinced them to enlist onto this so-called adventure, they wouldn't been in this war, they wouldn't have die.

Those nights following, I could feel your dark, hooded eyes drilling on me again from the blackness, drilling and drilling deeper. You've looked at me for a long time before remarked simply: Fools, then you went onto the field, didn't bother to see us off.

Fools. A simple, innocent syllable. It contains youth and guilt and regrets and anger and you.

We were at Marne yesterday, I've got a place with the prostitute. She's young, very young. Soft. As I wrapped my gigantic hands around her bony hips, thinking how easily can she be crushed.

Afterward, I sat by the bed, she quietly massaging my shoulder blades. She remarked: "Don't keep on hunching your shoulders. It's bad for the muscles there. See, feel it, all tight up."

Funny.

I see a flash of you, smoking and drowning in beer, illuminated by flickering shadow. You always have your shoulders hunched up and head to the ground, regardless of whether you're ploughing through the stubborn soil or sitting by yourself.

When they removed my leg, between the constant drifting from conscious to blackness, I was with you. Fighting. Shouting. Over something. You dressed in the same fade pants and shirts you've wore for the past decades. Same broad shoulders. Same slouch posture, same big boots and muscular arms, same angle the head hung from your neck. A rifle drooped loosely from your palm, cigar clamped between your teeth.

Your voice, crude, still carrying the Yorkshire-accent the way you wear your ego on your sleeves.

"I told you boys, did I not? Told you not to believe in fairy tales. Told you not to believe in some goddamn glory. Now look at what you've got out of this war: a pair of crutches, a wooden leg and fucked-up brain."

"At least I don't hole up wasting away when the country needs me, I said to him."

"Well, hero. The war had ended; the fighting had done; the ink had dried; peace had restored. The country no longer needed you."

The next thing was a blur.

When I woke up, the paralyzed feeling stayed with me for a long time. breathing heavily, staring at the still, hunched shadow at my feet. Remembered you snarling at me.

My hobnail boot is big and tough, made me looks sturdy and powerful when facing the mouth of a machine gun. Yet, standing before Da, I felt no more than a naked, wounded boy with bare foot and missing limb and tears coursing down my cheeks.

I shouldn't be writing you this letter. I shouldn't be wasting my time writing an unsent letter that will be torn to pieces anyway.

You're everything I hate and you're everything I'm becoming.

I've curb my dialect. Curb my ego. Curb the angry nature I inherit from you. I buzzed my hair clean so that none would see our same mossy, frizz black curls. I rarely looked in mirror. I don't like to see your unibrows, hooked nose, thin lips, strong jaw.

The more I hate you, the more resemblance to you I bear.

And sometimes, I look into the mirror and thought, By the end of the war, I'd be a second you.

A small part of me still abhors that future, but the other smiles ruefully at the possibility.

If I could survive the end of this to become a second you, that is. If I could survive the end of this to come back and resume bickering over petty matters of the farm with you, that is.

If, if, if.

If I could survive the end of the war and get to tell you how right you were about everything, Da.