Doris’s son, Bob, was sent on a secret mission. She fully believed he would return, but when two military officers knocked on her door, her whole world fell apart. She was given Bob’s farewell letter and couldn’t believe her eyes. She had to see for herself if what she read was true.  But when she dug up his grave, she couldn’t believe her eyes… “Keep digging. We’re almost there!” It was midnight, and the graveyard was pitch-black. They only had their flashlights to guide them. “This is it,” Doris thought. “The truth will finally come out.” When they finally heard the unmistakable sound of their shovels hitting wood, they knew they had reached Bob’s final resting place. And they could only pray that they would find the answers they were looking for here… She watched with a mix of horror and excitement as they pulled up his coffin. She started to get second thoughts. Was this the right thing to do? They lifted the lid, and Doris couldn’t believe her eyes. “I knew it.” But what did Doris see when they opened up the coffin?  For Bob it had always been clear that he was going to join the army. Ever since he could remember, he wanted to serve his country, and from his twenties on, be a role model for younger boys. His mother, Doris, was not very pleased with the idea of her son going off to dangerous and foreign wars, but what could she do? In the beginning Doris still thought that her son would grow out of the idea, but he stuck by his dream. In his free time Bob watched movies and documentaries about modern battlefields or tactical missions, if he wasn’t reading about the newest weapons that were in development. Nothing could stop him from joining the army. On his first moment possible, the day that he turned 18, he signed up for military school in the early morning. It wouldn’t be easy, Bob thought, but from this day onward he would be prepared to do anything to achieve his goal. With difficulty Doris succeeded in accepting this faith. Not long after Bob started, it became clear that the boy was very talented. He was already fit from the beginning, resulting in him excelling in all of his classes and training sessions. Then, something happened that only a handful of people had done before him at this military school: graduating early. Even Doris was somewhat proud and stood behind his son. The thought that her son promoting would decrease his chance of dying on the battlefield gave her comfort. Everything seemed to be going great, and Bob worked his way up and get promoted to corporal. But then, the corporal was sent away to fight. Before Bob departed, he had to write a farewell letter. These were mandatory procedures just in case something lethal would happen during a designated mission. Some soldiers deal with this letter lightly, but Bob was remarkably secret about his writings. No one of his army friends was allowed to read it. Something about this mission did not sit entirely right with Bob. He was selected for this program in a procedure that was sort of new to him, in which he had no influence on the selection. This resulted in his team consisting of guys that were relatively unknown to Bob, which gave him a strange feeling. He went on the mission, since part of his job was that he had no choice but to obey his orders. The following days were rough, and his mother was devastated. He could not even tell her when he would be home again, as it regarded a mission with a high secrecy level. Everything, at this point, was uncertain. At the moment of departure, Bob was not even sure where they were going to deploy him. That was also part of the secret. The young corporal thought all of these new procedures were due to clues of espionage higher up in the ranks. Bob and his team were blindfolded and put on an airplane. In the days that followed, the things that Bob and his team were about to see were absolutely horrible. The men could not believe their eyes. while Bob was not even sure in what territory he was being dropped, he was very certain this looked nothing like those movies and documentaries that he knew. Bob started to regret going on this dreadful mission. But what choice did he have? Thought of doubt regarding his career path were running through his mind. What was he about to see here? And more importantly, was he ever going to hug his beloved mother again in his lifetime? Then, the next day, when they were driving towards their base camp for a well-deserved intermission of their objective, they heard a loud bang. The car abruptly stopped, creating a great shock being felt for Bob and his team, while dust clouded the windows. Before they could realize it, they were being ambushed. Bob felt a sharp pain in his back and everything turned black. He heard his men scream around him, making the man realize that his team was in need of help. When the corporal tried to get up, all of a sudden he couldn’t anymore. This was the last moment of Bob’s consciousness… A couple of days later, a doorbell rang. Bob’s mother, Doris, saw two military officers with grim expressions on their faces. Doris had dreamt of and feared this scenario over and over in her mind. Everyone with a son or daughter in the military knew what such a visit meant. Her young Bob was gone. She opened the door and was greeted by the officers. They gave her a moment to process this shocking news, and they were invited into the mother’s home. One of the men took out a letter and gave it to Doris. She said to the two that right now, she couldn’t bare to read it. The letter was put in her bedside drawer. Three days after, the military held a funeral for the lost men. It was supposed to happen already two days after the event had happened, but it was postponed. When Doris found out about this, she thought it to be very strange. She could not contact the military about this, however, and had to wait for them to call her instead. Doris became more and more suspicious, and at the end of the day, she decided that she had to read her son’s farewell letter. That evening she went upstairs and locked the door behind her. The woman grabbed the letter and looked at it before opening it up. Was this a good idea? Doris began to read her son’s final written-down words, but she couldn’t believe what they were. This was not the kind of message that I was expecting at all! Quickly, after having gone through it a couple of times, the letter was folded up again. Doris hid it under her pillow, as she was the only one who could know about this. Doris lost all faith in the military after reading that letter. From that day onwards, all of her respect for her national defense force vanished. The next day the saddened mother went to the funeral, but she held her head up high. She could not believe that the things she’d read were actually happening! She looked the two military officers that had delivered the letter to her in their eyes. They looked on edge, even more so than you would expect from a man in their position. Would they have read the letter? The paper was well sealed, but it could not be ruled out that the envelope had been swapped, of course. The service, despite all sadness and concerns, was truly beautiful. Doris was Bob’s closest relative, and he never started a family himself. She was the point of attention, and everyone told the mother how badly her son would be missed. Apparently, he was considered to be a great man in service as well as way too young to die. Doris couldn’t deny this. When the funeral was over, almost every guest that had been present said their goodbyes to Doris. Yet, the woman noticed that the two military officers that had been ‘looking on edge’ did not make any contact with her. She wondered why this was and whether this had anything to do with the fact that they might be hiding something. Even though she was amazed by all the unexpected support at the funeral, due to these two officers she went home with gnawing emotions. It gave her the feeling as if she was alone, standing still, while everything around her just kept moving. Something had to be done, although Doris couldn’t do it alone. Even though she was not always thoroughly engaged with her siblings, she needed her brothers now and therefore asked them to come over. On the phone she did not tell them much yet, only to meet her the next afternoon, because of her fear that some military team was eavesdropping on her conversations. The next day, the three met in her oldest brother’s house, after which Doris started to tell them all about her son’s final letter. Both her brothers could not believe what they were hearing and they requested to read the letter themselves. Their sister had seen this coming, so she had brought the letter with her. She gave them half an hour to read, analyze and process the letter. After having read it at least five times over, both of them were still quite skeptical. Why on earth would Bob write this in his final letter before his death? The three of them knew that there was only one way to find this out, if they were actually going to pursue this. Then Doris finally suggested what seemed to be the elephant in the room. She was afraid to say it but it had to be done, according to her. They had to dig up Bob’s coffin. At first, her brothers were horrified by the thought, but they knew it was the only way to find out the truth. But they had to be very careful. Digging up a grave was illegal, even if it was done by the dead person’s own family members. Especially if it was a military grave, high penalties could be the result. They could only dig during the night, and it had to be a one-night job, they decided. If the grave wasn’t back to normal by morning, they would probably get caught. The rest of the day the three prepared for this crazy mission; they gathered all the tools they needed and a time schedule was thought out. Already the next evening they went to the graveyard. Doris’s heart pounded in her chest, due to her fear of anyone spotting them. Her brothers reassured her. This was way out of character for Doris, so she had to take a lot of breaks. During their journey to the grave, she cried a couple of times and felt conflicted within herself about whether they were making a mistake or not. The whole night appeared to be a rollercoaster of emotions. But, when they were halfhalf through digging up of the grave, All Doris’s doubts disappeared. Suddenly she felt confident in her findings. She had piece with the current state of affairs. She looked contentedly at her two digging brothers. “This is it.” she thought. “The truth will finally come out.” When, after four full hours of digging, they finally heard the unmistakable sound of their shovels hitting something solid, they knew that Bob’s coffin was reached. Doris could see the lacquered wood of her son’s coffin reflecting the light of full moon. Would they find the answers that they were looking for here? One of Doris’s brothers wiped all the dirt off the lid, while the other brother and her dug up the final bits of sand around the coffin’s edges. They pried it open with a crowbar, after which a loud sound followed. The splitting of the wood was louder than they anticipated, so Doris looked around with worry in her eyes. But luckily for them, no one was around close enough to hear the opening of Bob’s coffin. They watched with a mix of horror and excitement as they pulled off the wooden lid. Doris got second thoughts again. Was this the right thing to do? Her brothers, luckily, were already fully convinced that they should continue. When the lid was lifted, Doris could not believe her eyes. “I knew it,” she said, with a surprisingly calm voice. But after she’s said those words, a tear rolled down her cheek. Both her brothers stood there, frozen, while looking in disbelief. How is this possible? They closed the lid again and buried it for a second time.  They finished just in time to be away from the property before the sun rose above the horizon. They climbed over the fence with the ladder that they brought and hurried to the car that was parked at the end of a dead end road. As the three siblings drove off, they could see a suspicious black-tinted car driving towards the graveyard.  Doris was dropped off home and said goodbye to her brothers. She was very thankful for what they had done for her. When the woman closed the front door, she rushed to her office room to write down her findings. Doris feared that something would happen to her, so she had to make sure that the world would find out the truth, at least. After writing it all down, Doris decided to do something drastic. She printed a copy of the paper with the whole story on it and emailed this to a large nearby newspaper company. This was her way of letting the military know that they were not getting away with what they had done to her! Within two days, her story was printed and scattered throughout town. Doris was as much satisfied as she was scared of what would happen after. Before she knew it, the military showed up on her doorstep the very same day to take her in. She complied, but not without something up her sleeve. Two officers that Doris had never seen before brought her into a military interrogation room, where she was questioned about the story that was going on around town. She had sent in the letter anonymously, so officially no one was sure that it had been Doris who tipped the newspaper. Doris therefore denied it, saying that she had no idea what they were talking about. But, after about 15 minutes of questions, she decided to play her move. The woman took the letter Bob had written to her from her inner pocket and placed it on the table. The officers looked confused. “Read it,” she told them. The officers read the letter a few times, and after a while they were too stunned to speak. “Ma’am, we…” one officer said, but Doris interrupted him. “You will do everything in your power to bring my son back to the United States.” Neither of the officers had been in a similar situation before, so they just sat there silently. Doris was sent home without receiving a lot of information. As she had already guessed beforehand, all he could do now was to wait. Wait for the police to show up and take her in for digging up her son’s grave, wait for the military to show up with his actual body, or wait for any living sign of her son. When waiting for days turned into weeks, Doris had given up hope of waiting for that third option. She would probably never see her son alive again. Then, the next day, she suddenly received a letter from the military. They told her that they had located her son but that they weren’t sure if he was alive or not. Doris’s whole body shook from excitement and relief. Not because she gained much hope to see Bob alive again, but because she finally got some answers. She spent the next few days looking out her windows. The anticipation almost got too much when a familiar black car stopped in front of her house. Could this be…? And to Doris’s complete shock, she saw Bob stepping out of the car and walking towards her door. His mother screamed his name out loud and openen her front door. She ran to him and hugged her son tightly. However, Bob pushed her away softly. Auch,” he said with a smile on his face. They went inside and sat down on the couch. Bob told her everything, in full detail, from the moment that he was sent off to the day he was captured to the moment that he stepped foot on home ground again. They had beaten and burned him, yet he had never given up hope. He trusted his mother to continue the search until she would find him, dead, or far better, alive.