As the mail was dug from the big mail pouch and handed to the nurses, happy exclamations went up. One by one the girls went to their own quarters to enjoy their letters in the privacy of their cots. Nancy kicked off her muddy shoes, and discarded her dirty, painted coveralls and sat cross-legged under her mosquito net. She ripped open her mother’s oldest letter. She couldn’t keep back the tears as she read the brave words, written while her own heart must have been so heavy.
“We must not let ourselves think for a moment that our Tommy is dead,” her mother wrote. “If he is a prisoner of the Japs he will need all the prayers and helpful thoughts we can send him. Only last week at church Philip Brinkley, who was shot down over Germany and made a prisoner, told us a little about his escape. But the thing that impressed me most was what he said about our prayers. He said he could actually feel the prayers we sent up for him at our mid-week meeting. You know that’s when we especially hold thoughts for those who have gone over. We must make Tommy feel our support and God’s that way, too, darling.”
Tears were swimming in Nancy’s eyes when she finished the letter, not because she feared Tommy was really dead, but for the beautiful bravery of her mother’s letter. She dried her eyes finally and picked up the rest of her mail. Two were from girl friends back home, another from an old beau.
Then her heart skipped a beat when she saw the last was from Australia. It wasn’t Tommy’s writing, though the script was slightly familiar. When she ripped open the letter she saw it was from her mother’s friend, Miss Anna Darien, in Sydney. Miss Anna and her mother had been in college together. Instead of marrying, Miss Anna had specialized in philosophy and was now a lecturer of international repute. The war had caught her in Australia, and there she must stay for the duration.
When Nancy read the prized letter she called across to Mabel on the next cot, “Say, listen to this—Miss Anna Darien, a friend of ours in Australia, saw Tommy recently.”
“Not really! What does she say about him?” Mabel asked, dropping her own letters to listen to Nancy.
“Here—I’ll read it to you. She says, ‘You can imagine my surprise when Tommy, on a brief furlough, came to call on me. It was hard to believe that anyone could mature so fast in three years, since I saw him back in the states.’”
“When was that written?” asked Mabel.
Nancy glanced at the date. “Oh my goodness—two months ago. Took a long time to come. They used to reach us in a month.”
“Quite a while before your brother took that fatal flight.”