TDTLBU Chapter Thirty-Seven

It was hard to believe that it was quiet again. The battle was still raging out there… but they had been pulled back from the front lines after countless hours of heavy fighting. They sat around the fire almost listlessly, ears still ringing with the sounds of shelling and gunfire, faces black with soot and dirt, streaked with trails of sweat and tears, bloody bandages wrapped around hastily-cared for wounds. Jimmy was smoking his first cigarette, with nerveless, trembling fingers. Ralph stared vacantly at the coffee turning stone-cold in his mug. Andy traced mindless shapes in the sand with the toe of his boot. Sandy sat silently with his head in his hands. It was Ken who first broke the silence.

“Well, we made it,” he muttered, tossing a cigarette butt into the dancing flames of the campfire. 

“Most of us,” Mac grit his teeth, twisting the strap of his helmet around his fingers. 

"Boy, am I glad that's over." Sandy groaned without lifting his head. "You try spending three days in a foxhole with Torpedo."

“We none of us thought it would be like that, did we?” Sam ran his hands through his hair with a heavy sigh. At this point, his hair was more black than red.

“I didn’t think we were gonna get through,” Ralph grinned weakly. “As is, we’re only half-alive. Even Josh is quiet.”

Josh glanced up at the sound of his name, shrugged half-heartedly, and dropped his head again. 

“Sarge is gone,” Ronnie spoke in a low voice. He gripped his right wrist with his left hand, his fingers crusted over with dried blood. “And has anyone found out where Stan is?”

“One of the field hospitals, I guess,” Dan answered. “At least I hope so. We’ll need him more than ever.”

“Well, we’ve got Chief if Stan doesn’t come back,” Ken lit another cigarette… one he had traded from Mac for two days’ worth of chewing gum. He had already gone above his daily rations. “We wouldn’t a’ made it out there without you, bud.”

“Yeah, you would’ve.” Ronnie grimaced at his wrist as he began to slowly unwrap the filthy bandages. “Any of you would’ve done it, if you had to.”

“I move you be instantly promoted,” Sam put in. “Sergeant Stewart, eh? We need another sarge.”

“That’s Stan’s place.” Ronnie stood abruptly, kicking the cardboard remains of his k-ration into the fire. “I’m going to find a medic.”

“Now I feel rotten for putting glue on Sarge’s toothbrush,” Josh sighed. 

“You did what?” Ken stared at him, eyes wide.

“Well, it was my third time doing KP in a row and I got sick of peeling potatoes,” Josh protested. “It was Mac’s fault anyway. And I got him too.”

“So. You’re the one who glued my toothbrush,” Mac narrowed his eyes. “I should’ve known. Putting the glue under Sandy’s cot was a smooth move, you eejit. You’d better be watching your back now… I was scraping bristles off my teeth for days.”

“Touch me and you’ll get coffee in your tea for a week,” Josh snapped. “I’ve had enough of enough. And enough is too much and too much is… aw, dammit. G’night.” 

✯✯✯

Ronnie slipped off into the dark, listening to the hundreds of quiet voices around campfires. He could see the medic station, not more than a hundred yards from where he stood… but he didn’t move that way. He kept walking in the opposite direction, wrapping the stiff bandages around his wrist again. 

A row of desert tanks, painted a drab tan to blend in with the sand, were lined up in a jagged row just beyond the camp. Ronnie dropped to the ground, leaning against a tank as he stared back at the rows of tents just ahead of him. He lifted his face to the starry skies above, but for the first time since he had arrived in Africa, he didn’t marvel at the sparkling canopy splashed across the heavens. It was a cold and silent depth that night. Never before had God felt so far away.

Scenes from that day’s battles kept scurrying across his mind, flashing before his eyes as if the battle was still raging. Gunfire spilling out across the desert, bringing death and pain in its wake. Waves of men falling to the ground… columns of sand shooting high into the air as the hidden land mines exploded. Screams of the dying and wounded echoed in his ears, mingled with the thunderous crash of bombs and hand-grenades. 

“How can people do this?” he muttered aloud, staring unseeingly into the darkness. “How can I do this? To go on killing…” he shuddered, feeling as if the icy fingers of death… cold and unfeeling… were resting on his shoulder. If he could just throw off this feeling of horror… but he couldn’t shake the images from his mind.

A single soldier… a young German… couldn’t have been older than eighteen. Blue-eyed and pink-cheeked beneath the steel helmet and the thick coat of grime. Just a boy. He had come close… closer than most of the enemy soldiers. Close enough for his eyes to meet Ronnie’s. He had been scared… Ronnie could see the fear written plainly on his face. A childish fear, full of innocence and surprise. He had stood still, not far from where Ronnie crouched with his finger already on the trigger, rifle already aimed. The boy lifted his own rifle slowly, his hands shaking. He had looked at Ronnie as he moved his finger toward the trigger, round blue eyes filling suddenly with tears. His lips had moved, but his words were lost in the noise of the battle. 

This is the enemy. The words had run through Ronnie’s mind even as he pulled the trigger. The boy had stumbled backwards, still staring straight at Ronnie in plaintive shock. His lips moved again and this time, Ronnie caught the movement and the word the boy was saying struck him harder than a bullet through the heart.

Mama. He was calling for his mother.

Overwhelmed by the horror and the memory of the boy falling lifelessly to the ground, Ronnie buried his face in his hands and wept. Never before in his young life had he imagined he could ever feel this way. 

Murderer.