Home again I went into the study with my coat still on, sat down beside a box. 1943. I had written the date in big letters, probably sometime in the fifties. Suddenly, like the day a few years ago when I drove to to a small town near the coast, looking for the remains of the antiaircraft installation and the house where we lived, I was no longer afraid of opening the box.

Nobody who writes about me remembers Luke or asks about Luke. Is it because I never mention him or because one dead soldier is considered of no consequence?

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