My Dearest Alice,

Again, I have waited too long to write you. I hope you will forgive me again. I have started so many letters that I never got finished that I began to think I would never get one off. About the time I would get started, something always came up. So tonight, I am on duty all night and I decided that I would get this one off, if I have to spend the entire night on it. Already I have destroyed one letter that I have started and been interrupted on this one so much that I hardly know just what I am doing.

Just because I do not write so often, does not mean that I do not care anymore. Far from that, I care more and more and still more as time goes on. I do not expect you to understand all of this and so you will either just have to trust me or forget me and please, My Love, don’t do the latter. Without your love to guide me now, what would happen? The fellows here keep receiving the letters, one by one, that the time we have been gone is too long to wait. In their disillusioned state, they try to laugh at me for having faith in you. But let them, for I will go right on believing in you. So whatever happens, do not believe that I have forgotten or ceased to care for you. It would be easy to get such ideas in your mind, but they will be completely unfounded. Sometime, when I can tell you the real facts, you will be amazed, but all I can say now, is that I will not forget.

I got some pictures developed and am enclosing some of them. I also have given one to the fellow to enlarge and tint for you. I do not know just when it will be finished, but I suppose it will not be over a day or two.

Soon now, you will be twenty two years old and I often sit and think of the time you told me I would have to wait until you were twenty one. That is almost a year ago since my life would have been completed had not Tojo and Hitler interfered. Was it months, years or centuries ago that you told me that? And, oh how long the days since we last stood under the old oak tree and made useless and idle talk, neither one saying the things that we wanted to say! But now, there is no moon, no oak, and no you. Only your picture to remind me that all is not yet lost. That is a life ahead for us as beautiful as the picture that stands in the red frame on my table. Darling, if you only knew the thoughts that go through my mind in the course of just one day, you would be absolutely sure of my affection or think I was crazy, I don’t know just which. But I do know that in the palm of your hand is held the destiny of my future. My heart is not even mine anymore.

My Dear, please excuse the short letter, I must close for now. But I promise, again, to write you a longer letter soon.

With all my love,

Shorty

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