1910s: Anna writes home from the war

 

A small note about Anna's letters. While I have made up most of what is in them based on the screenshot in the game, I have also added bits and pieces from actual letters and diaries written by American nurses who went to France to serve in the war. Online, I found an essay about these very brave women with extracts from the things they had written or shared in other ways, and I cannot help but to incorporate these into Anna's letters home. This way I can bring some real piece of history to the story, and give a glimpse of the conditions these women lived and worked under.

 ***

Dear mother and father, 

I have arrived safely in Glimmerbrook, a beautiful little French town where the evacuation hospital is located. The hospital, if one could call it that, is little more than a tent hosted in the ruins of an abbey that must once have been beautiful, but which has been damaged by the bombs that once fell here. Do not be alarmed, however, the front has moved on and we've been promised the area is quite safe. They would not put a hospital here if it were not, after all. 

 The house we sleep in is an old manor home that has seen better days, but it's easy to picture it in its grandeur. It must have been a beautiful place. My own room is small, but adequate. For us, it's merely a place to eat and sleep, and we spend next to no time at the house itself, as the soldiers need us and we're dreadfully understaffed. 

There are three of us here, and then Madame Bain who more or less runs the entire hospital. Only the doctor do not officially serve under her, though he too listens when she speak. There is so much to do, and we are constantly tired, but the work is its own reward. To go on duty in a large tent and find strange, haggard, unshaven faces, to know that you alone are responsible for the well-being of a certain number and to see the change in their general condition and the improvement in their wounds after a few days care is reward for your work which no other work in the world can give. Yet sometimes I feel like I will never be enough. Oh, mother if you could urge your charity members to send more of everything. We need medicine, blankets, sweaters, bandages. Nothing is in enough supply and these poor men have nothing but the tent to provide them any kind of shelter from the freezing temperature. 

I know neither one of you wanted me to leave, but do think well of me because I have never done anything more important in my life, nor am I likely to do so again. 

Your loving daughter, 

Anna

***
Dearest Alice, 

It warms my heart to hear from you, and to hear of your plans for the future. Never have I known cold like this, but your letter was enough to bring warmth back to me again. Of course you should go to Del Sol Valley, with or without Lizzie! Do not let anyone, not our parents, nor Lizzie, dictate what you do in life. Do not let go of your dreams. Not for anyone. 

As for me, I have arrived safely in France. I thought we'd get more time training in Canada before we were shipped off, but the need is too great and we are too few. The shipping over was horrible, nothing like the smooth comfortable sailing that our parents and Ida spoke about. Of course, they travelled in the middle of summer rather than in the month of January, but pleasant it was not. I was utterly grateful to set foot on solid land again once we were here. 

 Oh, how can I start to describe what it's like here? It's cold, most of all. In fact, it's freezing. The house we stay in is stately, or used to be, but was damaged in a bombardment of the village some time ago. Not as badly as some of the other houses in town. We still have a roof over our heads and walls that are intact. A few cracks, some damage to the wall paper and a cracked window is all that you can see apart from the crater in the garden outside. The heating was damaged, however, and apart from the fireplaces, there is no additional heating. We sleep with all our clothes on at night, or try to, for the front is close and we hear the shelling constantly through the night. Yet for all the discomfort (of which I told very little to our parents) I would not change it for the world, and in comparison to the poor men in the trenches or even at the evacuation hospital we live in absolute luxury. 

To be fair, I do not believe I could tell you with any accuracy the conditions under which these men live. You would simply not believe me. No amount of reading or imagination prepares one for the sight of wounded from the front. One cannot describe it; one must see it to feel it. Apart from the suffering, one's principal impression is that one has never seen so much mud caked on to human beings! And then one wonders at their great, enduring patience. The hospital is nothing more than a tent with a few heaters that might burn the entire thing down at any moment. We are not nearly enough nurses, and everything is in short supply, and all we can do is pray for a quick spring, so that at least the cold will not kill our patients. 

I think you would sicken with fright if you could see the operations that we are called upon to perform-the putting in of drains, the washing of wounds so huge and ghastly as to make one marvel at the endurance that is man's, the digging about for bits of shrapnel. Yet for all the cruelty and suffering there is no where in the world I would rather be. Just sitting around a fire in the freezing cold eating mushroom soup for the third day in a row since no new supplies has arrived, fires my blood like iron. I'm not going to miss this for anything in the world, and neither starvation nor cholera nor anything else will drive me away. I can't imagine how any nurse can sit by when she is so badly needed over here. 

Keep me in your thoughts, and I will keep you in mine here. That way we will never be far from each other. 

Your loving sister, 

Anna