This letter begins innocuously enough. Dart is using new stationery, illustrated with a drawing of the main building of the US Naval Hospital in Great Lakes, IL. (Back them abbreviated ILL.) He describes the 100 buildings comprising the hospital, including 60 or so that actually house patients. He talks about some of the structures being brick while others are wood. Before long, he begins to liken the whole place to a prison camp. A handful of the wards have bars on the windows, but he claims all the others may as well have, for all the freedom awarded the patients there. The entire facility is surrounded by a seven foot high fence topped with barbed wire.

He feels trapped. His mood is getting increasingly darker as the date of his hoped-for leave approaches. “I’m disgusted, bitter, sore-headed, sarcastic,” he writes. “I’ve talked and argued and griped myself almost sick today, nearly getting into the brig in the process… I haven’t been able to speak civilly to a single soul today. Really lost my grip on things.”

Claiming he’s sick and tired, he signs off abruptly, but not before telling her again that he’ll love her forever.

I wonder sometimes; years later, when these two were happily married at last, did he ever recall this dark period and remember how bleak it had looked? Was this just a blip on the radar when compared to all the experiences they shared, both good and bad, throughout their lives together?