Writing to his young daughter, Pte Edward Stanley offered a promise shaped by the English countryside they both knew:

“When the birds return to the hedgerows, I’ll be there too.”

It is a line full of gentleness, a father trying to reassure a child that the seasons would turn & he would come home with them.

His letter survives. He did not.

I think of Edward, of that unfinished promise & the countless families who waited for someone who never stepped off the train. This Advent, as we share a new snippet of a letter each day, sharing the voices that remind us of the human cost behind every name etched in stone.