Sentence:  The night after reading her letter about her surgeon uncle - it must have <WSD>been</WSD> late in September - I had a vision of myself returned in ragged uniform from The Front , nearly dying , my head bandaged and bloody , and Jessica bending over me , the power of her love bringing me back to life . 
Meaning of the word marked with <WSD> tags:  have the quality of being; (copula, used with an adjective or a predicate noun)