This is the sixty-ninth of 87 letters exchanged during World War II between Nicholas Salvatore and Elizabeth Galloway. For more see Nicholas and Elizabeth.

Chicago_skyline

March 18, 1945
Mourning has broken

Dear Elizabeth,

Every day the allies are marching closer and closer to victory. This has to be the end. You know what we’re gonna do after this war? Everything. I’m gonna make you mine and we’re gonna do whatever we please. We’ll start running and jump, hand-in-hand, off a cliff and into the rest of our lives. There can’t be anything or anyone that will change that. To be – lost, with you, would be fantastic. There wouldn’t be anything before us but the path we make as we cut through all the nonsense of this world.

With any hope spring is going to be starting soon. Spring in Chicago is wonderful. Everyone has been hibernating since the first freezing day, coming out only for holidays. The snow melts, the ground thaws and the first blossoms start showing up on the trees. The air smells of newness. Everything becomes new. The thick skin winter put on everyone and everything is removed, layer by layer, as the sun and breeze appear. I wish you could experience it. Maybe someday you will. But then again maybe someday (soon!) you’ll get out of Arizona and head east. Do realize everything you set out when you first wrote your Aunt is coming true? You never know what can happen.

Love,

Nicholas

Next letter – March 30, 1945