their breath shaken and cold by the fear of never again meeting their mothers or eat blatant and bare supper with their dependent wives, being awoke by the blinding sun on the morrow. Oh, I feel so deeply of the fear, for the war and the lives lost due to the great battles in my lovely home, Germany. Mama’s friends tend to gossip while they smoke, the rich smell of Tabaco and smoke always sways to my bedroom. My sisters and I always sleuth amongst the stairs to listen in on the news the soldier’s wives speak of. We’d sit still at the table with them, sipping tea and smelling the smoke, but alas mother does not allow children of my age to listen, she claims it will frighten us, yet we are tough as well, we grow whilst the ground beneath us shakes, our beds shake with the gunfire, we’ve begun to expect the shouts of men attempting to run from the great war, their body broken and bruised from the constant slipping in the trenches, we have imagined what it must sound like when a bullet hits the metal roof of the

roof of the trench, or to feel the smooth wooden ends of the long guns, the metallic, barrel, as my brother calls it. The amber shot of the bullet ringing like the bell in the kitchen, feeding hungry children, feeding hungry soldiers. The men protecting our land can’t even fill their stomachs with the starchiest of potato’s, we will suffer a great deal due to the men that died the men run our country, the women can’t mess a great deal, what happens if all the men can’t work, from the shock of seeing their best friends dead on

the pavement roads, them being to hungry, they get injured, or killed? What is to happen if no one is there to run our land. Oh, Millian dear, what are you going to do, you’re just a meek child. Well for now, I will just listen to mama’s friends’ gossip. Maybe when I turn twelve, and my honey brown hair darkens mama will think of me differently. Once I no longer must where bow in my hair, then I will understand how, all sudden once the men are hurt, they just now want the women to work.

August 10, 1915. Russia Oh, dear Elliot, father is angry again. I didn’t mean to hurt the man, it was an accident, it’s just been oh so hard to control my urges ever since the coppers left to fight in the army. Oh the tragedy, how I oh so wish to get the young men from that bar, they steal bread from father’s bakery, alas Father sees it unfit to get justice “I am still young so they will not suspect me of anything,” I tell him, he ought to listen one day, never the less I will carry out with my plans. I will always be here for Father, he doesn’t seem to understand that the army will not draft him, for he is missing his arm, and cannot hold the mighty guns.

Oh, how much I would pay for the army to quit drafting Father’s. Russia is much too large for small children and women to be alone. We may have come from Italy but that does not mean I am any less Russian. The boys in the school yard pick fun of me for my brown and blue eyes, freckled, and my almond gold skin, but what they fail to understand is, with their blonde hair, blue, eyes, and large height, they’ll stick out like an old lady’s diamond ring in the middle of summertime. I apologize for leading astray from what was the original topic at hand, but you do know me I do often get distracted.

Father says I am mirror image of my mother; she is away in the war. Mother heels the fallen men, she’s the human embodiment of a Guardian angel, shielding the men from the sick twist of fate one calls death, protecting them from deathly sickness that plagues the battle field, the type of infection when the bullet meets the skin and chews its way into the body of men. Father says it does not pay much, seeing as it is done by a woman, he sees that fair, if that were to be true, then why is it that the men don’t place themselves in the role of nursing?

Quite perplexing is it not? Well I do suppose it would be because the men are spending their fleeting little lives firing weapons made by children and women alike oh dear how ungrateful! Not allowing women to fight alongside the men, why don’t you think that they’d know more about a handheld cannon than anyone else? After all they did make it. Hell, we’d all quite alright seeing as The German Army wouldn’t think of ever harming one of our fair women.

Oh, it’s just as my cousin speaks of her younger sister as, we do send letter’s don’t you know, Elizabeth says that Millian is confused and vexed as to way all of a sudden they wish to have the women work, but she wishes her father could come home, I never had a great deal of respect for uncle William, he’s quite the coward, say he never chose to go into the army, he was drafted, he never wanted to run about his hands shake so terribly whilst holding a pen, how is William supposed to even carry a gun? Oh dear he is such a selfish man, how could he endure, Idlily mind you, while people he knew trot off to protect their wives and children, no, no, no, he’d rather just watch and not say word by it.

I’d join if were aged enough, but I suppose street wars like squabbling with bread thieves and expostulate with boys on the school yard will have to do for now.

TA-DA

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