My Dear Anon,

I have been gone for nigh on a year. I received your previous letter. I carry it in my coat pocket and read it during these cold nights. I kiss your name, written in bitter ink, as if it were your beautiful face.

I write you this letter by candlelight in a small clearing near the camp. In all likelihood it will never find you. Above me millions of white stars blaze in the inky black sky. There is no moon, dear, and I fear this foreshadows some terrible event. We have marched many miles and exhaustion is heavy on my pen. The indications are very strong that, in the morning, we will march North. I cannot speak with certainty, because our marching orders have changed several times. General Jackson is a bold woman, and her orders drive us into contested territory. I have never seen the general, but the other women speak of her. They say she is a great terrible grizzly and fears no woman but God. I hope for our sake this is not true.

I have seen many horrible things, dearest, things that men should not think or hear of. One of the surgeons took liking to me, an educated woman from Charlotte. The soldiers call her a butcher. She relieved me from my post as infantry and enlisted my help. I admit, at penalty of being viewed as a coward, I am much better suited to carrying wounded women than carrying a rifle. I tend to their illnesses, bring them rations, or strap them down so the surgeon may perform amputations. They are a bloody affair. At night they scream and moan, and in the morning they are dead. I am sorry, love. I will not describe this further.

Many of the girls, assuming me a physician, ask me to write for them, or loan them words of love that they may grant to their own flowers at home. I do this gladly, but I fear it leaves me little words to spare for you.

I know you wait for me with sad patience. I am sorry we did not have the opportunity to bear any children. If I could lay down my arms, take the swiftest horse, leave this awful camp tonight and travel the hundreds of miles from me to you, I would—even for an echo of your voice, a whiff of your presence. I would bear the label of deserter with pride. But you know, as well as I do, that I cannot do this. Their bullets would tear me apart, riddle my body with holes before I even broke camp, and no surgeon could heal the wounds. But perhaps I can reassure you with mere words: if this war lasts fifty years, and I return to you an old scarred woman, and your face is cracked and sags, and your teeth have rotted, and your eyes are gray and blind—I would still go mad with tender love at the mere sight of you, my dear Anon.

On the thin chance this letter somehow finds its way back to you, I wish to leave you a single, simple scene. Envision it. Never forget it. Let it appear, crystal clear in your mind as it is in mine. Dream of it, every night, as I do.

It was a cold morning when I left you. We stood on the riverbank. Your breath fogged up the air. You tucked a flower in my coat. It has since wilted. I placed a kiss on your pretty head. You did not want me to leave. I turned and left you without a word. “Good by-aye!” you chanted. You were stronger than me. I did not speak because my voice would crack. I did not turn because, if I saw your blurred face through my tears, I would never muster the courage to drag myself away again. Let us re-envision this scene with this in mind; let me leave you with dignity. Goodbye, my love! Adieu! Farewell!