These are the letters from the second day of the 2014 Grading War. If you landed here by accident and don’t know what you’re reading, click here for the backstory.
Day Four, 11:22am
Dear Charles,
I post this report on my station during a brief tho welcome respite. Forgive my wretched penmanship. I write quickly & without doubt I shall be summoned back to the front ere long.
You may recall Josiah, that feckless and Thick-headed mail-boy of whom I spoke during the last Grading War campaign. I regret to report that Josiah is enlisted among our ranks now, where his inborn vices of Gossip, Drunkenness & Scandalmongering have found fertile soil. But to the point. Josiah spreads Rumor in our camp that several nearby Divisions just yesterday declared victory (God bless them if so!) and are at this very moment returning home.
Could this be true, dear Charles? Our Company does observe ever shrinking numbers among the Opposition day by day in fact. But still they continue to appear each morn, ready for battle. I cannot help myself but to count them again each battle—such Torture those counts! why do I still count?—and my own records confirm they ARE diminishing, a number of Souls fewer each time we meet them.
Woe to me if I am indulging false hope! If it is so and I am tangled in a web of Lies woven by Josiah’s forked tongue once again, I shall surely die of humiliation before I die of despair, for in my Soul I know that he is not to be trusted.
Send a True report, post haste, dear Charles. I await such in solidarity, in Friendship and as ever
Yours in Cautious Hope,
Leigh M. Johnson