It was cloudy outside as I got up from my bed. I dressed an headed into the kitchen to make breakfast. The house was always quite an still, had been since Bill left for the war. I made a small portion; it would be a while before I got another ration book. I read the paper, but I didn’t absorb what it said. Never did, unless I was reading it before I went to bed. I’d read out loud to myself just so I could hear a voice, even if It was my own. I was saving to buy a radio, that way the house would have noise. As I sat down on the couch I noticed a crow standing on my porch.

I rested for a few minutes before heading off to work. I made parts for guns in a factory not to far from home. It was in reasonably driving distance anyways. The girls and I worked in silence, none of us wanted to mess the equipment up. Most of them had husbands and sons in the war. I just had Bill. We were planning on having a baby, but then he was drafted. The day was slow an I was tired out when I got home. Most women wanted jobs like that, but I was happy just being a wife. I thought it was great fighting for our rights, but it just wasn’t something I wanted.

A car pulled into my driver way, an I looked out the window. It was a black Ford, I wasn’t sure the model. The man dressed in black came up onto my porch and my heart stopped. I had seen this happen before, most of the time a man came to us. Well it meant that we had lost someone. I opened the door when it rang to see the man looking at me with a solemn look on his face. “Bill didn’t?” I could feel tears in my eyes.

“I’m sorry Mrs. Tomis, but your husband died in battle.” I began to shake, an my legs gave out sending me crashing to the ground. The man rubbed my back, whisper something that I suppose was meant to be comforting. But I couldn’t hear him. All I could hear and see was images of Bill lying on the battlefield.