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common enough story. He had come home from Papua to attend his beloved mother’s funeral and met Annie at the wake. A short and passionate swirl of events led to a night in the woolshed. Love promised cheaply for the sake of her body and the unappreciated responsibility that followed. But then he had left his pregnant bride immediately after their honeymoon in Adelaide and returned to Papua. When war broke out he enlisted in Sydney and was shipped out immediately. The news that he was a father reached him in France.
    Jack sat up and reached for his duffel bag beside the bed. Old army habits died hard and his immediate personal property was always near at hand. He rummaged through the bag until he found the pile of letters. They still had the stains of war. He undid the ribbon that bound them and searched for the small photograph. She caught his eye as she always did. Hers was a noble face with high cheekbones and a thick mass of dark hair tied back and accentuating her deep and enigmatic eyes. ‘Erika,’ he said as he stared at the photo of the woman who had written the passionate letters to her lover. ‘I wonder what you are doing right now.’
    Erika Mann was the sister of the German major Jack had met on the Western Front only weeks before the war finally ended. In the turmoil of organising his company for a further advance Jack had forgotten to hand over the letters to the intelligence section. He had later read them out of curiosity and the beauty of the young German woman’s words had entranced him. Having decided that the letters had no significance to military matters, he kept them.
    At the time he had wondered more about the young German woman than he had about his own wife. Even now he felt the guilt return. Annie was dead but their son remained in his life as a reminder. She was in the little boy’s eyes – and in his sad smile. He wanted to love his son, as he knew she had, but for now they were still strangers.
    He carefully placed the photograph inside a letter and returned them to the duffel bag.
    That night Harry and Mary woke in the early hours of the morning to the sound of Jack’s whimpering and his shouted commands to soldiers long dead. But Jack was hardly aware of the commotion. He was in a sleep filled with nightmares of exploding shells and men screaming as they died in a sea of blood.
    Neither Harry nor Mary made mention of Jack’s disturbing behaviour during the night. They had heard stories from friends of men who had served on the front acting that way in their sleep. Shell-shock, some called it. Mary hoped that Jack’s nightmares would fade with time and the happy young brother she remembered from their childhood would return. What she saw now was a man haunted by his immediate past. It was as if he fought to control his very body at times. His hands sometimes shook and he often seemed to be teetering on the edge of an explosion.
    ‘What do you have planned for today, Jack?’ Mary asked as she spread jam on bread for Lukas, who was sitting quietly beside her at the kitchen table. He seemed to be avoiding his father who had terrified him one night on the train trip when he started yelling when he looked as if he were asleep. He’d been yelling things about ‘fix bayonets’ and warning invisible people to ‘look out for the bombs’.
    ‘I had planned to see some of the blokes in town,’ he replied, sipping a cup of tea. ‘You think you could look after Lukas for me?’
    ‘It would be my pleasure,’ she said, placing her hand on the boy’s shoulder. ‘Give us a chance to do things around the house together.’
    Jack glanced up at his sister. ‘I think he would like that,’ he said. ‘I think a woman’s company is what he needs right now considering everything that has happened.’
    ‘Don’t you worry about a thing, Jack,’ Mary said with a wan smile. ‘Just want to know if you will be home for dinner with us.’
    ‘I don’t know. Depends on how things go with the