HELIUM, June 8th, 1925
MY DEAR MR. BURROUGHS:
It was in the Fall of nineteen seventeen at an officers'
training camp
that I first became acquainted with John Carter, War Lord
of Barsoom,
through the pages of your novel "A Princess of Mars." The
story made a
profound impression upon me and while my better judgment
assured me
that it was but a highly imaginative piece of fiction, a
suggestion of
the verity of it pervaded my inner consciousness to such an
extent that
I found myself dreaming of Mars and John Carter, of Dejah
Thoris, of
Tars Tarkas and of Woola as if they had been entities of my
own
experience rather than the figments of your imagination.
It is true that in those days of strenuous preparation
there was little
time for dreaming, yet there were brief moments before
sleep claimed me
at night and these were my dreams. Such dreams! Always of
Mars, and
during my waking hours at night my eyes always sought out
the Red
Planet when he was above the horizon and clung there
seeking a solution
of the seemingly unfathomable riddle he has presented to
the Earthman
for ages.
Perhaps the thing became an obsession. I know it clung to
me all during
my training camp days, and at night, on the deck of the
transport, I
would lie on my back gazing up into the red eye of the god
of battle--
my god--and wishing that, like John Carter, I might be
drawn across
the great void to the haven of my desire.
And then came the hideous days and nights in the
trenches--the rats,
the vermin, the mud--with an occasional glorious break in
the monotony
when we were ordered over the top. I loved it then and I
loved the
bursting shells, the mad, wild chaos of the thundering
guns, but the
rats and the vermin and the mud--God! how I hated them. It
sounds like
boasting, I know, and I am sorry; but I wanted to write you
just the
truth about myself. I think you will understand.
And it may account for much that happened afterwards.
There came at last to me what had come to so many others
upon those
bloody fields. It came within the week that I had received
my first
promotion and my captaincy, of which I was greatly proud,
though humbly
so; realizing as I did my youth, the great responsibility
that it
placed upon me as well as the opportunities it offered, not
only in
service to my country but, in a personal way, to the men of
my command.
We had advanced a matter of two kilometers and with a small
detachment
I was holding a very advanced position when I received
orders to fall
back to the new line. That is the last that I remember
until I regained
consciousness after dark. A shell must have burst among us.
What became
of my men I never knew. It was cold and very dark when I
awoke and at
first, for an instant, I was quite comfortable--before I
was fully
conscious, I imagine--and then I commenced to feel pain. It
grew until
it seemed unbearable. It was in my legs. I reached down to
feel them,
but my hand recoiled from what it found, and when I tried
to move my
legs I discovered that I was dead from the waist down. Then
the moon
came out from behind a cloud and I saw that I lay within a
shell hole and that I was not alone--the dead were all about me.
It was a long time before I found the moral courage and the
physical
strength to draw myself up upon one elbow that I might view
the havoc
that had been done me.
One look was enough, I sank back in an agony of mental and
physical
anguish--my legs had been blown away from midway between
the hips and
knees. For some reason I was not bleeding excessively, yet
I know that
I had lost a great deal of blood and that I was gradually
losing enough
to put me out of my misery in a short time if I were not
soon found;
and as I lay there on my back, tortured with pain, I prayed
that they
would not come in time, for I shrank more from the thought
of going
maimed through life than I shrank from the thought of
death.
Then my eyes suddenly focussed upon the bright red eye of
Mars and
there surged through me a sudden wave of hope. I stretched
out my arms
towards Mars, I did not seem to question or to doubt for an
instant as
I prayed to the god of my vocation to reach forth and
succour me. I
knew that he would do it, my faith was complete, and yet so
great was
the mental effort that I made to throw off the hideous
bonds of my
mutilated flesh that I felt a momentary qualm of nausea and
then a
sharp click as of the snapping of a steel wire, and
suddenly I stood
naked upon two good legs looking down upon the bloody,
distorted thing
that had been I. Just for an instant did I stand thus
before I turned
my eyes aloft again to my star of destiny and with
outstretched arms
stand there in the cold of that French night--waiting.
Suddenly I felt myself drawn with the speed of thought
through the
trackless wastes of interplanetary space. There was an
instant of
extreme cold and utter darkness, then--But the rest is in
the
manuscript that, with the aid of one greater than either of
us, I have
found the means to transmit to you with this letter. You
and a few
others of the chosen will believe in it--for the rest it
matters not
as yet.
The time will come--but why tell you what you already know?
My salutations and my congratulations--the latter on your
good fortune
in having been chosen as the medium through which Earthmen
shall become
better acquainted with the manners and customs of Barsoom,
against the
time that they shall pass through space as easily as John
Carter, and
visit the scenes that he has described to them through you,
as have I.
Your sincere friend,
ULYSSES PAXTON,
Late Captain,---th Inf., U.S. Army.
