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between my lips, but I can’t seem to light it. I feel feeble when Charles stands up and takes my Zippo lighter from me, but I accept the help.
When I take the first full drag of the smoke, it does what I wanted it to do. I feel a little better.
I slap some money onto the polished wooden bar and stride quickly to the door. Charles is close behind. There is a certain kind of freedom that blooms within me as I step outside. My friend has brought the jacket I’d left in the place. I’m thankful to slip it on, as the temperature has begun to drop. It must be in the midforties now.
My combat unit was in Italy, where I found the weather very pleasant, but then we were in France and Germany, and it was not so pleasant. There were nights when we were bivouacked that I thought my fingers and toes would fall off from the cold.
Charles and I walk to my house, leaving my truck sitting fifty yards from the bar. We don’t speak the entire walk. When I step up, opening my screen door to my porch, Charles finally asks, “Do you want me to come in?”
I turn, looking him in the eyes. “No, thank you.”
“You look dreadful.”
I smile at him. “I feel better.”
“Liar.”
“I’m fine now, Charles. Go home or back to the bar and find someone young and fun.”
My friend gives me an expression of worry, then shifts his face into a friendly smile. “I’ll tell you all about it tomorrow.”
When he leaves, I go inside, shrug off my jacket, grab a beer from the icebox, then sit down in my living room, staring at my weapons of war. I’d smuggled the Colt .45 home. Telling the officer I’d lost it in battle seemed to work almost too well. It came home in pieces stuffed all over my duffle bag and in the clothing I wore. Same with the Luger P08 I’d taken off of a dead German near Aschaffenburg.
I’d taken my bayonet as well, but I couldn’t smuggle the M1 Garand home. I bought one two years later, just to have the complete set. I wish I could have my rifle. The one that had saved me more times than I could count. The one I staked my existence on. The one I used to kiss on the front hand guard before heading out to the unknown each day.
The dream comes again tonight, just as I knew it would.
It’s different, but the same. I’m cold. It feels like the sun is shining on me, making me sweat under the heavy combat clothes I wear, but it’s overcast. The smell hits me before the visions do. No one in my company has to ask what it is. We all just know it’s sickness and death.
What we don’t know is that it’s all manmade.
My stomach lurches, and I cover my mouth with my hand when I see the first body. Nothing more than skin stretched over knobby bones. Dirty striped uniform lying on the ground next to a boxcar.
When the urge to expel what little breakfast I’d eaten subsides, I grip my M1 tighter and push forward with my brothers. We don’t speak, but I can tell all of those around me are thinking the same thing. Where there is one body….
Only a few feet later, we discover them. Piled inside, sprawled outside. Some in prisoner uniforms, some in nothing but the stretched skin that makes my insides churn. Tears escape. I look at my combat-worn friends and see that even the strongest of them has not been left unaffected.
David is not crying, he’s raging. His feet are carrying him fast, as they do in battle. His weapon is drawn. I call out to him, hoping to remind him of our orders, but he keeps going. I’m close behind. Before I can even process it, we’re inside.
David is screaming. My cheeks are cold as the wind whisks away the moisture leaked from my eyes. Everyone else is in shock. Maybe I’m in shock.
Some of us have weapons pointed at the German soldiers, whose hands are raised high above their heads. Others are staring, open mouthed, at the rotting corpses. There are too many to count. Some are piled high. Others are scattered, as if they just dropped dead as they walked.
Men in the same striped uniforms approach us.