A Letter Home

Dear Mother,

I'm glad I got this chance to sit down and write. There's not much quiet time in the trenches. It comes and goes, and can disappear at any moment. You never know when the artillery will start up again, or when the next enemy infantry charge will come. The machine guns always start up when it happens, theirs and ours. It gets so loud you can hardly hear your own voice, even if you shout.

But please don't worry about me. I keep my head down when it gets rough and I'm as good a shot with our M1910 Tredegar as anybody in the regiment. It cocks on close, the bolt action is fast, and it holds ten bullets to the Yankee Springfield's five. The Yankees are all terrible shots anyway. It is hard to believe they've pushed us back this far.

Yankee prisoners we take seem sure that their side is winning. It's too bad they're not going any farther. We'll stop them here, Mother. Then we will drive them back like General Lee did. I didn't leave Mississippi, go to VMI, and join the Army so I could let the damn Yankees take Richmond now.

I know it must be worrying, hearing the stories of the new weapons both sides are now using. I'm sure you've already heard more than you wanted to. There isn't much I can say to make any of that better. I can only promise that I'll be careful.

Don't believe the stories about those armored machines the Yankees are starting to use; they call them barrels. The Yankees may have used them to break the lines in Tennessee and take Nashville, but that only happened because some damn fool trusted that stretch of the line to the newly-raised nigger regiments. Had proper soldiers, white men, been there instead, Nashville would yet be ours. But it doesn't matter, Mother. The damned Yankees may throw their toys and inventions at us all they like. They've come as far South as they ever will.

I have to go speak to my platoon now. It's almost time to go. The men's spirits may be down, but mine aren't. I'll tell it to them, fix them up right. An Institute man is just who they need to lead them forward, and I'm the man to do it. God willing, the next letter any man in the 16th Mississippi writes home will be from Philadelphia.

We will win this war. It's only a matter of time.

Your son,

Morgan A. Calabas, Third Lieutenant, C.S. Army

Army of Northern Virginia

6-12-1917

A/N: The 10-shot Tredegar rifle referred to is the CSA's copy of the British Lee-Enfield. The M1903 Springfield is the main service rifle of the US Army and Marine Corps in the Southern Victory series' alternate World War I, just as it was in our timeline. Tanks are more commonly referred to as "barrels" in the USA. The OC writing this letter has been in the Confederate Army for about one month, and is a graduate of Virginia Military Institute's Class of 1917. His name, Morgan Arturro Calabas, is borrowed from canon StarCraft universe details on the Old Families of the Terran Confederacy.