May 21st, 1876 - Johan

My Dearest Luna

Often I wonder if you could possibly think of me as often as I do of you. As one breathes, or maintains their heart a-beating, so too are my thoughts of you. A necessity to keeps me alive. Often my mates will remark that I must have some mystic oriental power of concentration, for when we are faced with herculean challenges I often take on a dreamy, distracted air and breeze through it. The truth is that I think of you. Your lovely visage fills my mind and all troubles fall away like water off a waxed hide. 

Life continues as it has, my love. I have now finished what has been referred to as my ‘basic training’, the essential skills of soldiering which apparently consist of the ability to run for long amounts of time, dig a trench, march in formation, fire, load, and maintain a rifle, and some basic understanding of strategy. Naïvely I suspected that we were done with our training, and would be shipped off to the battlefields of mars. I was wrong though. Now we are having what has been referred to as ‘specialized training’. As far as I have been able to tell the different sorts of specialized training have been the cavalry, where they learn to fight on horseback (these chaps seem to have been destined for this, as all of the men in these squads have previous experiences with equines), artillery, where they learn to deal with cannons and howitzers, ‘Panzer’ (a German word meaning ‘armor’ apparently) who are not aloud to tell us what they are training with, and supplemental training, which appears to be more basic training. The vast majority have been alloted to supplemental training, which leads me to believe they are destined to the trenches like the bulk of Legion recruits. Of the some fifty five squads perhaps seven have been assigned to cavalry, artillery, or the mysterious ‘Panzer’ training, including my own! 

We have been proudly instructed to train with the artillery, what could be considered to be my first lucky break in my admittedly short time with the Legion. While supplemental training is more grueling drudgery and cavalry must spend hours upon hours on horseback, and the lord, in his infinite wisdom, only knows what those Panzermen get up to, we artillery men have so far had it easy. Though we have kept up a punishing routine of exercises to keep us fit, we spend huge portions of the day in the classroom, learning calculus and the physics of shell trajectory. As you know, I am no stranger to hard work, and if I had been when I arrived I certainly would not have been after the previous month, however I have always enjoyed learning and this education has stimulated my mind. We have not yet been set loose on the big guns, but I eagerly await the day when we are. 

Life continues to be hard my dearest, but I persevere. With time I have learned to survive the most arduous of difficulties, from the sadistic pleasures of our sergeant, to the nearly malicious failings of Isaac, both of which plague us daily. I hope you understand how much you help me in surviving it. 

Yours lovingly

Johan B Hackworth