My love, I write you from our battered front lines in the Motherland, on Napoleon’s great and not-at-all-ill-begot Russian campaign. I have given my all to find you a nesting doll with a little white dog on it as you requested, but thus far we have only been party to wreckage and peeing in strange places.
War is not as glamorous as our fables and poems would have you believe. It is mostly itchy. I have been in the same clothes now for 3 weeks. Oh how I long for the sweet-scented embrace of your bosom. I freely admit to you that at times I gaze across our battlefields, aroused by even the slightest contour in the land. And all I have at day’s end are visions of mucus-clumped beards of the Guard to pepper my imagination as it wanders.
The enemy is always near, and we are always on the retreat. Our lines are constantly probed by troupes of Cossack dancers squat kicking around with large grins and rosy cheeks. We would fire on them but our commander reflects the general consensus that they are too adorable. Our downfall is thus at hand. We shan’t survive the winter.
Oh my love, how I miss strolling with you on Bordeaux’s cobbled streets, smirking at the lower classes and stalking our echoing laughter down alleys too dangerous to be walking but which offer optimal privacy to make whoopee outside our conservative homes. Do you recall when that cat meowed at our slapping buttocks until a passing mendicant told us we were doing it wrong? Oh we were young then and time is indeed fleeting–but I cherish those days and carry them with me on this lonely toiling endeavor.
All I have to sing me to sleep at night are the sounds of war which accompany our regiment. Still, in roundabout ways they remind me of home. A baying war horse recently bullet-brazed at the croup recalls your Aunt Sillard tweaked on too much Laudanum upset at the air. Whistling missiles overhead bring the memory of song-birds, and the resultant explosions remind of pulling you into my Dutch Oven after Sunday morning gruyere and Pont l’Eveque–you do recall the rancid virility of my anus, dear? Good times, my love. The goodest.
My captain is calling for mail. I wish I could write more. Perhaps in some distant future we’ll have little tweeting blue birds to deliver our messages at will. Can you imagine the beauty of a world connected so? War would be a thing of the past, as there would be greater understanding among humanity.
How I miss you, my darling. Though I am not keen on rekindling amicability with your young brother, who seems to me a twat, I shall indulge you because I love you. I must go. Today we retreat across the snowdrifts back toward my beloved country. I shall see you soon.
Signed with affection,
Your loving cousin Pierre
