Last Christmas in Paris

by Hazel Gaynor

Miss Brontë’s words. I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.

War makes equals of us all.

“If I should die, think only this of me: That there’s some corner of a foreign field That is for ever England.” —Rupert Brooke, “The Soldier”

And I found these lines from “Love’s Secret,” underlined. “Never seek to tell thy love, Love that never told can be; For the gentle wind does move, Silently, invisibly.” I wonder whose unrequited love I was lamenting at the time.

reading such sentimental lines gives me hope that love and kindness will conquer in the end.

You command your own destiny. Not the enemy. Only you.

No matter what I truly think of this war, I cannot stop it.

I must believe in the inherent good within people. Not in the evil that drives them to war.

Now I’m alone again, among all these soldiers, medical workers, and volunteers. Alone because each of us walks our own path towards death; no one can do it for us. Lately, as I face each day, that path is all I can think about.

feel a sense of duty to make sure the letters are safely delivered. It gives me purpose, and purpose gives me hope.

what if he loses his soul to war?

And we are, after all, still human beings, even when we are in this hell.

Financial gain is one thing. To tell the truth is a far nobler prospect.

If nothing else, war must make us value life, with all its frustrations and disagreements.

I have never understood the choices Fate made on the battlefields.

I suppose everyone finds their true calling in times of war.

“In Flanders fields the poppies blow Between the crosses, row on row, That mark our place; and in the sky The larks, still bravely singing, fly Scarce heard amid the guns below.” —John McCrae, “In Flanders Fields”

It is in the simplest things we find the greatest treasures sometimes, is it not.

there is another weapon our men must confront, a weapon as deadly as any other: despair.

These men suffer in an entirely different way. They suffer in their minds. The horrors they have seen and the endless sounds they have endured night after night stay with them, so that they can no longer function as normal men. Some have lost the power of speech, such is the extent to their distress.

While I am no medical expert and cannot fully explain the symptoms, what I do know is that this is not an affliction that can be treated with a bandage and good bedside manner. This goes far beyond the reaches of normal medical knowledge. Just as our men were not trained to deal with the new weaponry they face at the Front, so our doctors are not trained to deal with this new “disease.”

wives, sisters and friends, how can we help the men who don’t return to us with broken limbs, but who return to us with broken minds?

Perhaps we can do nothing other than to listen when they are able to talk, to hold their hand when it cannot stop shaking, to understand that the sound of a passing train or a distant rumble of thunder may be nothing more than an everyday occurrence to us, but for them is a reminder of everything they fear and takes them back to the trenches in an instant.

Let them know that, whatever happens, to you they will never be lacking in anything. Let them know that, to the people who matter the most, they will always be the best kind of hero.

One must always have adventure in life, or the promise of it, at least.

In your letter, you asked what we are fighting for, what we are trying to save. My dear girl, we’re trying to save you. And every woman, child, relative, and friend that mean something in this world. Protect our home and what is ours, defend our interests, our way of life.

But I am here to save you—just as you have saved me.

The arrogance of youth takes everything for granted. Everything, that is, until you find yourself at war, pushing your bayonet into the enemy’s chest before he pushes his into yours.

these words from Miss Brontë’s Jane Eyre: “I am no bird; and no net ensnares me: I am a free human being with an independent will.”

That’s the only beauty in all of this bloodshed. The ranks and classes of yesterday are falling away like dead leaves. Now, we’re all in this together.

“I love you not only for what you are, but for what I am when I am with you.” —Elizabeth Barrett Browning

November 11, 1918 at 11:00 A.M. Armistice Day “At eleven o’clock this morning came to an end the cruellest and most terrible War that has ever scourged mankind. I hope we may say that thus, this fateful morning, came to an end all wars.” —Prime Minister David Lloyd George