All's Fair in Love and War

[Peg Herring]

The life of a GI is pretty lonely over here. A guy gets to thinking of a girl at home, one who is true to him, who waits patiently for the day he comes back so they can get married and start a family. Unfortunately, I didn't have a girl like that. But Bill, the guy in the next bunk, had Sue.

Sue wrote to Bill every day, and he seemed to get stronger as soon as that envelope was in his hand. I would ask him to read the letters aloud, and as he read, I imagined Sue writing those things to me. I would look at the picture Bill kept taped to his bunk and think, "Why can't I have a girl like that?" I memorized the way she said things, the way she called him Billy and the way she dotted her i's with little hearts and wrote all swirly and girl-like. I guess you could say I was jealous and a bit obsessed with my friend's girl. I wanted Sue to be mine.

Last month Sue's letters stopped coming. After two weeks, Bill was frantic. We were in the field, Charlies all around us, and there was no way to call home. He kept asking me if I thought Sue was all right, and I'd say sure, she was probably just busy with something real important. I didn't sound convincing, and Bill was not convinced.

Then the letter came. I watched as Bill opened it, hands shaking. He read the first paragraph and his face froze. As he finished, tears he didn't even notice leaked from his eyes and made tracks in the dust on his face.

We sat behind a wall of sandbags. Before I realized what was happening, Bill crushed the letter in his hands and took up his M16. He was over the wall in a heartbeat, running away from safety, shouting nonsense and shooting blindly into the jungle. Bullets answered from half a dozen directions, and Bill was dead when the medic got to him.

I'm back in the States now, going to Bill's hometown to see the family, to tell them that Bill died a hero. I won't tell them what caused him to make that mad rush into danger. I won't mention that I stole Sue's letters for two weeks and then slipped my own version of Sue's final note into one of the envelopes she'd sent faithfully every day. What I will do is be there to console Sue in the loss of her Billy. He died of a broken heart, but I plan to help Sue mend hers.