Fifteenth October, Year of Our Lord Two-Thousand-Seventeen

Dearest Shelley,

I write you from the considerable comfort of my defeated enemy’s drawing room. In defeat, that gentleman-soldier General Michael Riley has proved a most gracious host. Last night he treated me and my most senior officers to a sumptuous banquet of a strange relative of the sandwich called “runza” as well as raisin pies and some truly excellent walnut brittle. In the midst of a charming game of charades with Riley and his family, I asked him why he was seemingly unfazed by the destruction of his army.

“Oh well, these things happen,” he said, before going on with the game.

Early last evening our forces descended upon the positions of the Army of Nebraska encamped around Lincoln. Last week on these same plains they’d been dealt a severe blow by General Chryst’s Grand Army of Wisconsin, and the ravages of that recent battle were still very much in evidence. They had not filled in the many gaps in their embankments created by Chryst’s artillery, nor had they found adequate replacements for the numerous dead and wounded. Splitting my forces into three columns, I led the main column for a direct frontal assault on their headquarters along with Captain Barrett (who I must say may have had the finest night of his career as a soldier in many years), while Colonel Wilson and his adjutant Sergeant Dobbins took a second column to attack their weaker left flank, and I deployed a third, smaller column under the command of Major Coombs to harry their rearguard.

This trident strategy worked to perfection, and between these three sharp points Riley’s forces were pinned down and utterly eviscerated. By the late goings of the battle we had captured so many Nebraskan soldiers that we found ourselves overwhelmed by the logistics of herding this human river. It was after the main brunt of the battle had expired that we suffered our worst losses, with Sergeants Campbell and Holmes both suffering unwholesome injuries, while that stalwart man-mountain artilleryman Sergeant Jones was also shaken up by the accidental detonation of an exploding shell. While our physicians and field surgeons look them over, I can only hope they will be once more in fighting shape for the next battle to come.

Soon I will be with you again, and I think we may yet enjoy a long and blissful few weeks of each other’s tender company. But as with anything, it will not last forever. That perfidious General Franklin of Nittany Mountain has designs on our territory, and I durst not speculate what crude and underhanded strategies such a brazen and uncouth character might employ against our brave soldiers. So today I march back to Columbus, where we will have ample time to prepare our defenses.

Until we see each other again, my love to you,

Yours Forever,

General Urban Francis Meyer

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