Letter No. 5 — Taken

Location unknown
Tuesday, 20 October, late

Dear Margaret,

Don't panic. Read the whole letter first.

I'm a prisoner. A guard who likes card games agreed to carry this out if I teach him to count chips. I said yes faster than I should have.

It happened at the ceremony. You know the one. The inspection had already gone bad that morning. Nothing shipped by 0800. The General called it. I owned it. But they went ahead with the promotion anyway, out on the parade ground, because the General said a man should be pinned even on a bad day.

The band was halfway through the second song when the first shell hit the motor pool. Then the fence came down. Then smoke everywhere. The eagles were still in the little velvet box in the General's hand. I never got them on.

The last thing I saw before the hood went over my head was the new board on the HQ wall. One line per soldier. One task each. Still standing. Somebody had already rolled it into the bunker.

So here's the thing, honey. I can't give orders from here. I can't check anybody's work. I can't send runners. And for the first time I find out if what I built is any good. If the army only worked because I was yelling at it, it's going to stop. If the board works, it'll keep going without me. Every soldier knows their one job. Every finished job goes to the General. Every pass puts the next job on their line.

I'm told the guards here laugh at my paperwork habit. I made a list of the cracks in my cell wall on the first night. Old habits.

I'm eating. I'm sleeping some. I'm thinking a lot, which the General always said counts as work.

Tell the kids their father is fine and is coming home with a very good story. Tell the General, if you somehow see him, that I'm sorry about the inspection and I'm not sorry about the board.

Your loving husband,
Pip
COL E. FitzWalden (unpinned)
Prisoner, somewhere off the leonlink.net front

P.S. If this letter has a card stain on it, that's the guard. He's losing.