The Bishop's Hand

The Bishop’s Hand
By: Nickolas Allen

When I was a young man and fighting in the war against Germany, some days were as beautiful as a poem, while others were as dreary as a vicar’s funeral.
         Some days were a little bit of both.
         During the Autumn of 1917 we were headquartered in the Sheep Alley sector of Grandchester Meadow, a relatively quiet section of the front, situated only 70 metres from the German lines, and stretching out a good mile, north and south. Since the weather was becoming a bit raw, the hostilities had calmed considerably; and thanking God for small favours, there was little work to be done with the ground growing stiffer with the ever-creeping chill. Every man, on both sides of the war, would receive several hours in the middle of the day to do as he pleased. We would write letters, sleep, play cards, talk of home; for this is when the hazy sun in the bitter sky was at its warmest—if you closed your eyes long enough, and really concentrated, you could imagine the sun’s rays coming down solely for you.
         Of course, this was not the norm for the Western front—or the War, for that matter. Nevertheless, since our defenses were so close to one another, there were really only two options for us: either blast the hell out of each other on a daily basis, or get on as well as we could. Unless there was a big push in the making, we tried to be as amiable as possible. Those who had survived this long were more than grateful (with enough sense to boot) to merely let the enemy be, lest you provoke his anger. I, for one, could not think of anything grander than to go about without my steel hat, and read a bit of the American Poet, Whitman—the little book that I had managed to keep intact during my stay in the war.
         It was very peaceful at Grandchester Meadow, Sheep Alley, where small bits of home-life could creep in and surprise you, just when you’d decided that the callouses in your mind so closely resembled those on your hands. From the German trench, if the wind was just right, you could smell pipe tobacco, hear a voice that sounded local and familiar (it is amazing how much the German language can sound like English, if you listen close enough) and, in our sector, there was a Hun who played the clarinet, so mellow and pure, that the notes would dance on your heart as dust motes in a beam of light.
         In our group we had a fine baritone, by the name of Sam Thomas, who would sing hymns from time to time, especially on Sundays.
         Sundays.
         Whether you were in a front line trench, or in support, you could always count on good ol’ Sam to remind you that there was still a God in Heaven, despite what the High Command would you lead you to believe.
         Small favours and Sundays…
         It was on one such Sunday that I witnessed a very queer episode: an event that rocked the whole of our sector; and I am sure that many men remember that moment, if they are alive now to tell it.
         As bright as any day of the previous summer, I was doing nothing but lounging about The Bishop’s Hand, a bit awed by our sudden change of good weather, and thinking about a spot of lunch for my stomach. I knew it was to be a good day; for although the wind was up and spinning through the wire, the heat of the sun far surpassed the futile attempts of Father Winter from dousing it with his various shades of frigidity.
         The Bishop’s Hand was a good place to rest; it was about as secluded as one could manage at the front—a reasonable two-man sap trench, first come-first served, jutting out in the middle of no man’s land (what little there was of it) a good 20 metres, and closing the gap between us and the Germans.
         I spent a good deal of time at The Bishop’s Hand that Autumn. God knows why they named a sap-trench “The Bishop’s Hand,” but we used to name everything back then, so it came as no surprise. (I once knew a lad that swore he had a name for every louse in his hair, on his body, and in his tunic—but I tend to doubt that because lice all look the same to me; like calling a man’s twin by his brother’s name—it is an honest mistake, and I think our louse naming lad was guilty of this more times than not.) If a fellow was the first to arrive at The Bishop’s Hand in the morning, he had pretty much secured himself a nice spot for a few hours, unless somebody was sent to scout out the Germans—for which The Bishops Hand was a perfect observation point.
         It was there, on this particular Sunday, that I heard a peculiar noise coming from the German trench. A sound like someone whistling.
         I had just put away a letter from my younger brother, Jacob, when the strange tones caught my attention. It did not sound like a song, the notes, nor a bit of a tune, and I imagine that is why I noticed it in the first place.
         Although it was not uncommon to hear a man tootle as he worked, it was still kind of odd to hear what resembled a call. And that is just how it sounded to me: like somebody begging for attention, as one would hail a pretty girl, beneath the shade of a café overhang.
         Now, in any other sector, I would never have raised my head above the sandbags to have a look—not on my life (for that’s what it really amounted to)—but, on that day, for some reason, I did. I wasn’t even wearing my helmet; it was laying beside my rifle on the firestep, as I simply poked my head upward for a quick look about. At first, I didn’t see anything, and I must have appeared strange, my head bobbing up and down like that, taking quick peeks over the top. But when the whistling transformed itself into merry laughter, I froze for a second in mid-motion, and I caught the outline of a man standing in the Boche trench, the second before my head went down again.
         Cor! How my body shuddered as I lay against the rear of the sap. My breathing was desperately rapid from the quick jolt of adrenaline, and I could a feel a warmth rise to the tops of my ears. As for the laughter, it sounded as if it were growing louder, and I instinctively reached down and flipped the safety on my rifle. Safety.
         I suppose I felt a mixed sense of anger and curiosity at the laughter—anger because I felt the German was making a fool of me or, even worse, he could have killed me; and curiosity because whoever was mocking me was standing in plain sight in their own trench.
         Killing can go both ways, you know; but lunacy often takes precedent over humanity.
         I hurriedly felt around for the periscope I knew was there, my eyes as wide as pie-plates, knocking over my rifle and a few empty cans of bully beef. Thank God I was hidden, as I tentatively raised the scope over the sandbags, bringing it to eye level. What I saw was not quite astounding by Sheep Alley standards, but it was enough to make me wonder if I had truly woken up that morning at all.
         Through the filmy lens of the periscope, I witnessed a young German leaning over the lip of his sandbagged parapet, his arms crossed at the wrists, and his hands dangling over as one’s feet would hang in a favorite fishing hole. He was looking straight in my direction, fully aware that I was gawking at him from below the sap; and even with the periscope giving off a blurry image I thought I detected a smile on his face.
         I didn’t know what to think.
         And when he raised his hand and called…
         …“Englander…!”
         …I still did not know what to think, but I knew I didn’t want to be called bloody English, damn it!
         I felt the irrepressible impulse to stand straight up and give him a piece of my mind—that I was not an English Tommy at all, but of grand Scottish pedigree, and he could go to the devil for all I cared, if he didn’t want to recognize that fact!
         For just a second I almost contained my anger. But it was useless, as always. Up I sprang—the lip of The Bishops Hand being level with my chest. I was exposed; and God help me, I didn’t even realize what I was doing until I had closed my mouth, standing there dumbfounded, as stupid as a cabbage.
          “Right, ye bleedin’ Heinie; I’ll have you shut yer hole with that English shite, if’n ye know what’s good fer ye! You’ll be knowin’ that this is pure Scots blood a runnin’ through me veins and—“
         My how he laughed! Removing his helmet, he uncovered a shock of golden blonde hair, his teeth neat little rows of white ivory. Perhaps he was no more than 17 years old. My face turned tartan red, as he threw up both hands, “Ja, ja, Scottish sind Sie. Nehmen Sie bitte meine Entschuldigungen an, Scotsman!”
         I had no idea what this young German was saying. My fists were balled up on the sandbags in front of me, about ready to throw a rock or something to shut him up.
         What an idiot he was playing me for, and here I was exposed in the open, begging to be shot, or smashed, or Lord knows what.
         “Nein, bitte, wartezeit Scotsman... ein Sekunde,” the young German’s smile wilted just a fraction as he said this. His eyes even showed slight concern, as he hesitantly looked down to his side, and spoke a few inaudible words to someone below his trench line.
         Before I could move (and I had every intention of doing so), another German popped up from under their trench, just the top of his head, wearing one of those small round skullcaps the Boche are so fond of sporting—probably just as tentative as I was, for this man’s eyes darted erratically from side to side. I was about to take the opportunity to snatch my rifle when a different voice called:
         “Wait, Scotsman!”
         I stopped and stared.
         It was the second German with the skullcap speaking to me. And in English, of all things! He had several years on the young man, and he was now standing in the open as well. The sacs below his eyes hung down in loose, sad, flaps; and he wore a large walrus moustache that covered the spot where he puffed his pipe. His cheeks were bristling with a salt-and-pepper growth that was surely a mirror image of the hair on his head.
         “Please, wait,” the aged German said. He had removed the pipe from his mouth and placed it in front of him. The first German looked on with eager eyes, still carrying the same open smile, as I simply stood there, baffled and intrigued at the same time—wondering how this might turn out, and if anybody else was watching. None of my chums were anywhere to be seen, and that was an oddity in its own right.
         The two Germans exchanged glances, and the young man nodded in consent.
         The expressionless old German turned back towards me, and raised a hand, obviously in peace (I say he was old, but he was probably no more than 50), and he said:
         “We are not fighting today, Scotsman, heh? Please, wait…” The two exchanged a few more words, and he spoke again:
         “My young friend…his name is Karl, and today is the day of his birth.”
         I waited.
         “He only wishes to…” He paused for a moment, “…and this will sound crazy—but he only wishes to make friends today, Scotsman.”
         What?
         Bloody, what?
         At this absurdity, I could not help it, but it was my turn to laugh. “You must be crazy, you and the whole lot of ye, ye know that? I’ll invite ye to me birthday party next time around, ok mate? How’s that?” I turned to leave…
         “It is a pretty day, is it not, Scotsman?” The elder said, calmly.
         “Aye.” I stopped and gazed up at the blue and white sky, the sun’s rays creating spots before my eyes. “Beautiful day or not, are ye daft to come greetin’ me like this, then?”
         “Are we ‘daft’ to be fighting this war at all, Scotsman?”
         He had a point.
         One moment—one single thought or reflection —is sometimes enough to change a dull painting into a masterpiece. In one instant, inspiration can alter a mound of lifeless clay into a sculpted beauty (something akin to God moulding the first Adam out of dirt). And of all the seconds in a day, it is perhaps a sin not to take that special moment of enlightenment and act upon its good and perfect will as the common muse dictates.
         I merely stood there for a while and sifted through the German’s words, filtering them through a three-year veteran’s mind—not fully comprehending, but believing in something, all the same.
         “And how old is he?,” I asked.
         “Zwanzig,” the young German said with a great smile.
         “What was that he said?,” I addressed the older man.
         He chuckled: “The boy said he is twenty years old today.”
         I was shocked, for he looked so bloody green.
         “Zwanzig, und wie alt, sind Sie?” The birthday lad spoke again.
         “Does he understand what I’m sayin’ to ye?”
         “I think he gets the meaning,” the aged German said, “he asks how old are you?”
         “Me…?” I had to think for a moment, although I knew I was twenty-three at the time. But when I told them my age, they laughed.
         I could not believe any of this. Do Germans always laugh, I thought.
         “And where in the hell did ye learn English then, huh?” I asked him.
         He shrugged and put his pipe back in his mouth. “Many years ago…in school…in America.”
         I have to admit that the whole conversation was a strange one. As I stood there, I began to feel dissociated from reality, yet I could distinctly experience myself standing in a trench, on a German-Birthday Sunday, and not wanting the exchange to end. It was as if the whole dialogue—the entire day, for that matter—was a mixture of contrary, warring emotions—without a shot being fired in malice.
         We talked.
         Karl, the birthday boy, was actually a two-year campaigner who had fought the French for most of his military career—somehow managing to keep his face smooth and free of battle weariness—somehow playing the child amongst a group of harder pubescents. Yet I knew that he was a killer just like the rest of us. For the masks we wear are not what we are, but merely a reflection of what we used to be—or rather want to be.
         The older Boche was just what I expected: a soldier of the old class, who felt it was his intrinsic duty to watch after his flock—a man unbreakable—and his work would not cease until all wars had ended. (We had a few gents of this order in our army as well: like Sergeant Clifford, who was made of large chunks of twisted shrapnel and wasted Mills bombs—an “Old Contemptible,” encased in brass with a soft underbelly. A good chap.)
         Liam was the second German’s name, and he had been nauseous of battle before the ancients marched around the walls of Jericho.
         And true to his nature, he was the first of us to spot something far stranger than the meeting of sworn enemies under the sun of a ridiculous garden fete.
         He saw it charging horizontally down no man’s land: a speck in the atmosphere, and as out of place as an emerald in a donkey’s arse.
         What he saw—what the three of us saw, as we followed his eyes, seemed at first to be some sort of miniature black globe, perhaps a small Napoleonic cannon ball, rolling in our direction—pausing…forward, stop, zigzagging, forward, forward, off to the side—and then at moments it appeared to split in two as it spun onward—all very fast, carrying momentum and not growing in size. The object—or what looked as if it might be two objects—bumped and gyrated across the crooked ground between us. Taking on a squint, the way old people see, I was barely able to detect something fuzzy in the bizarre objects that were now moving at a lightning pace. I never thought for a second that it could be a weapon. Even at a distance it gave the impression of something wholly organic. And just when I thought I could make it out—what it really was—it divided once again, and—
         “Jesus bloody Christ, what the hell is that!…and…and…Who the fuck are they, James?”
         My head spun in the direction of the voice, and there stood my mate, Rorry, a metre behind me, propping himself up on the sandbags with his elbows. He was motioning towards the Germans yet, when they heard him, they barely even acknowledged he was there. They simply kept staring at the weird anomaly that was coming our way.
         Rorry was topped with his steel hat and holding his rifle, looking from me, to the Germans, to the object, and to all three of us again—about as confused as a child in a game of shuffling coconuts.
         “Who the hell do they look like, Rorry,” I shouted, quite peeved. “They are the bloody Germans; but would you look at that shite, mate! Have ye ever seen anythin’ like it?”
         I don’t think anyone had ever seen anything like this! For what we were witnessing was a grand derby being performed by two of the most likeliest candidates, in one of the most unlikeliest of spots: a full sized cat, chasing an enormous rat—catching up, racing off, wrestling in a crater, and darting off again, in a symphony of fits and caterwauling seldom seen this side of a East Indian funeral.
         The Germans began to cheer; and I looked up and they had multiplied into at least a half score of Boches, lining their trench parapet like coal-scuttled magpies.
         “Looker that, James, it’s a bloody boxing match, that is,” Rorry exclaimed with a broad smile; and a few more of my mates began sticking their heads above the parapet for a look-see.
         And look I did.
         Very closely I looked.
         It is true that the two dark figures were somewhat obscured by the wire in front of us; nevertheless, the first thing I noticed was that the one being chased had white stockings for feet. I had never known a rat in my whole experience at war to be anything but a solid nasty black colour.
         Closer…
         Dear God, and the animal that was doing the chasing had a tail as slick and bald as old man McCracken’s head, from the dairy farm back home.
         These contestants were not what they seemed to be at all.
         In a flash I realized it was the bloody rat that was chasing the bleedin’ cat, and not the other way around—and the cat was really a kitten trying to escape for life’s dear life!
         The rat being the biggest, ugliest, villain of a rodent that I had ever witnessed then, or since—a red-eyed bastard the size of a small pup, probably gaining his filthy size off the bloated corpses of countless allies and foes alike. The enemy of any enemy; and chasing a defenseless kitten at that! (Lord knows how the kitten got there in the first place; nonetheless, something was not right with this scenario, no matter how unusual it might have been.)
         “Oy, why don’t yer pick on somebody yer own size you nasty bugger,” came a shout.
         The whole flock of us noticed the obscene travesty, and the fellows bellowed in disgust.
         “Bleedin’ fuck ye are! Leave a soul alone, why don’t ye!”
         “Black punch, I’ll be havin’ yer liver ye dead rat!”
         And from the other side of no man’s land:
         “Beenden Sie die Ratte, Sie krankhafter Kuppler!”
         And…
         “Schlechte Schweine, zur Hölle mit Ihnen und Ihrer Mutter!”
         There must have been close to twenty of us by then, both armies!
         We were all enraged, and it seemed almost ironic—dreadfully appropriate—that the spectacle between the pair of belligerent animals stopped right in front of our trenches. Some of us started picking up clods of cold earth and hurling them at the rat, until—
         Crack!
         All parties dipped their heads at the sound of the rifle shot, and we shouted in alarm.
         Sam Thomas, our resident baritone and storyteller, was leaning over a sandbag with his rifle. He had taken a shot at the rat, yelling various obscenities at the top of his lungs, while everybody else instinctively dove for their weapons (or cover), and—
         Crack!
         …Came another rifle shot!
         It was my young German friend, Karl, who had fired the second round, missing the rat just as Sam did—not even affecting the ebb and flow of the tiny battle in front of us—as I’m sure the poor animals were too stupid to realize that their personal space had now become a shooting gallery for a couple of odd soldiers. They simply carried on, heedless of anything outside of their wee animal kingdom.
         Sam fired again, and so did Karl—missing their shots; all the while (without even comprehending it) changing the complexion of the situation, which had now become a new spectator sport, as the respective sides cheered their champions in a race to drop a depraved rat.
         But it wasn’t a matter of who was going to be the first to slaughter the new enemy; it was more a question of who was going to do it in time to save the life of the kitten.
         Secretly, (and I never told anybody this) I was placing my faith in young Karl, and I would have bet my book of Whitman on it if I had to.
         The lads were sending up tremendous football cheers; the Heinies were in a frenzy, as both contestants let their shot fly…A miss, a miss, a near miss, miss, miss…
         Two men and their rifles: Sam steadily cursing and sweating from the sun, and Karl as pleased as Punch in Judy. I caught a glimpse of my other German acquaintance, Liam, looking so relaxed and meditative with the world going wild around him, his pipe wedged firmly under his moustache. With smiling eyes—he must have been a family man in another lifetime.
         “Bloody God, Jim-blast it…” Sam muttered. Crack! Another miss, as the targets jumped in the air and bounced off lumped mud and slime.
         The shooting began to speed faster and become more barbarous—at a blinding pace—my head ached from looking back and forth, back and forth, yells whoops crack crack crack crack moving death, heat expanded lungs watery eyes crack arms raised glinting steel, back and forth English crack German crack exhausted blood mud, smiling, looking watching sweat and muscles sun biting lips, tension tension release tension…
         Crack!
         Silence.
         The kitten sped off in an environment of perfect silence—not even the clatter of its tiny feet skating across the scorched earth made a sound.
         I found myself holding my breath…holding…and before I could release it—Eruption—!
         Once again we all discharged ourselves in applause and laughter—deafening to the ears, and reverberating in all directions.
         The trench rat had been vanquished, and though I did not see it killed, I can only imagine that it had exploded in a manner befitting no one’s birthday party.
         Sam stood up, the victor, holding his rifle on high, bearing a huge Cheshire grin; as well as Karl—who was clearly the winner for the German side. Both armies cajoled and buffed their champion with loud praises and boasts, clambering over one another in order to shake their mate’s hand: to congratulate the liberator of kittens, and to claim for their side the true marksman of the two. However, anyone that wasn’t a complete buffoon could see that there was no way of knowing who had fired the fatal shot. The whole arena had been a maelstrom of bullets and smoke, too thick and convoluted to claim a true champ. Therefore, it was simply a matter of trumped-up pride that compelled us to glorify Sam Thomas—and in the Hun’s case, to exalt young Karl. In fact, the entire episode took roughly thirty seconds, if that!
         I was feeling right smart over the whole affair; I had located an empty dixie and began drumming it with a gnarled stick I had unearthed.
         One would have thought that the bloody English Army had just won the war; and it didn’t matter to Captain Silber either, for even he was standing on top of our parapet with the rest of the lads, looking like a proud cock on Boxing Day—that is, until he realized that if he didn’t act promptly our group would turn into a ridiculous rabble that would be much harder to control if he allowed us to continue.
         “All right, all right, you lot! Get back in your holes, on the double! On the double, I say…move yer arses now ye blocks o’ peat-shite!” The Captain bellowed.
         Well, the men didn’t do anything “on the double,” but they did manage to rein themselves in after a few of the Captain’s vilest threats and hard cracks of his riding whip (I never could figure out why Captain Silber carried that damned whip with him when there was not a horse for miles around that was worth more than its weight in glue—not to mention the fact that we were the bloody infantry).
         Nevertheless, down we went—some slower than others, as the Germans did about the same, in a leisurely fashion: waving good day, laughing, smoking, still doting on Karl, just as we still flattered Sam.
         It had been a grand time in the War for us, and we were reluctant to slide back in our stinking trenches, especially since the day was still young and lit up by a friendly sun.
         Strange, but for the life of me I can’t recall Sam and Karl even looking at one another, congratulatory or otherwise. I don’t even know if either of them had fully realised the worthiness of each other’s opposition.
         I did, however.
         I languished on the lip of the Bishop’s Hand, until most of the soldiers had gone back to their dreariness. Finally all of them but Karl and I remained under a mellow Autumn afternoon.
         Karl smiled at me, and I smiled back, relieving a certain tension that soldiers often feel when they have been at war for far too long. In truth, he looked like an angel—albeit a grubby one—standing there with his rifle slung, but still having disregarded his helmet en lieu of the natural breeze around us.
         I will not lie and tell you it was a magic moment; nevertheless, it was a moment—and that is all either of us needed for the remainder of the day, at least.
         It was nothing like the infamous Christmas Truce of 1914, our adventure that day in 1917. Instead, it was more akin to an unsullied glimpse of a gentler species—simply stated, a postscript to a “quiet sector” that merely needed to spread its wings and let loose a bit. I could only imagine what the troops must have felt like on Christmas Day during the first year of that bloody war; but if they felt anything like I did on Karl’s birthday, they must have touched a civilized nerve…and a sip of hope in return.
         Something like home.
         And then it was over… sinking, once again, into the dread earth surrounding us.


It was not too long after—when old Da Winter discovered that he had lagged way behind in closing out the year—that the hostilities began to heighten once more. With the change of season, the Army, in its supreme wisdom, decided that it was about time that we won the war (for some reason); consequently, they had us doing multifarious killing tasks, and seeking out new ways to keep the Boche awake at night. But, like I said before: “Killing can go both ways;” and that it did: confounded attacks, trench raids, sniping, and a whole array of military tactics that caused the Germans a great deal of casualties, all the while sufficiently dwindling our own ranks as well.
         In deciding to write this story, I was not sure if I was going to recount one of the particular trench raids that the Germans performed on us; but since it greatly pertains to the rest of the narrative, I suppose I should continue in order to ease my soul.
         One night—I would say a good month after the crazy game of cat and rat—I was asleep in my little funk hole, when the sound of rifle and machinegun chatter slammed me out of my sleep, tossing me to the duckboard floor of the trench. Wide-awake and knowing immediately what was going on, I got to my feet and swayed under the tumult and clamour about me. It was a raid, or something of the sort; and soon the Boche would be lobbing grenades at us and thrusting bayonets in our bellies. I knew the drill, but before I could react properly, the Germans were upon us and in our trench.
         At close quarters everything is a panic; the cacophony, the mud walls; it is difficult to tell what is what, let alone who is who. You dash around, hanging on to your sanity, and praying that you don’t run into your lunatic self in the dark.
         Not knowing where my rifle was at the time, feeling around in the gloom (although there are always a few flares in the sky), I picked up the only weapon I could find: a spade, and I spied a Boche soldier with his back towards me.
         Now, a spade is not a bad weapon; but compared to bayonets and rifles, it would not be anybody’s weapon of choice if they had their druthers. However, I made do with what I had, slamming the flat portion of the shovel against the German’s back, rendering him unconscious before he hit the mud. Immediately I ran down the trench, taking a quick look behind me to make sure nobody was there, and I came upon a scuffle on the trench floor: a German and a Scottish lad were wrestling in the mud. I caught a brief glint of a bayonet amidst the flurry.
         Instinctively, and without delay, I clouted the Hun on top of his steel helmet with the wooden handle of my spade. It must have really rung his bell, for he reeled off to the side, and almost fell flat on his back.
         The Scottish lad took this as his chance and kicked the German in the chest, inadvertently pushing the Boche on top of me, as the two of us slammed into the trench wall, almost completely expelling the air from my lungs.
         Shouts and noise—all around us.
         I slung my left arm around the German’s chest, and with my right arm I drove the sharp end of the spade up through the bottom of his chin, opening his neck up like a tin of treacle syrup…and that is just what it felt like too: my hand was flooded with steaming hot blood: a coagulated syrupy mess…his head jerking back and his helmet smashing against my teeth, sending electric pain straight to my brain. Even so, the German only struggled for a few seconds more—perhaps it was a mere nerve reflex—yet out of his broken windpipe came a ghastly gurgling noise that was enough to make any soul retch.
         Opening my arms wide, the both of us went limp—his dead weight seeming like a good 18 stone, at least. I could taste my own coppery blood filling my mouth and I squirmed out from under him, throwing myself against the trench wall, exhausted.
         “All here? Count ‘em lads!” The call went up. I was having fits trying to catch my breath. Evidently we had driven them off for the night, but we had suffered. At least one bloke that I could see was sitting on one of the firesteps, leaning forward at the waist with a hole in his back the size of a man’s fist.
         I remember feeling a hand on my shoulder, and a voice asking if I was all right. I simply nodded.
         Not for anything did I want to look down at the German I had just killed, yet something in our morbid sense of curiosity always forces us to take even the smallest of glances, like a child finding foolish delight in poking a dead dog with a stick.
         My unfortunate German had his jaw pushed up nearly past his nose; his teeth spread over his face like loose diamonds in a lump of coal, and had the sudden desire to push his helmet down over his filmy eyes. I recognized those eyes and was glued to them, recalling over and over again a distant laugh and an odd, impromptu, birthday party that stretched on forever.
         Those young eyes…and laughter…


It is time that I close this story now, for I am an old man, and I cannot write for very long these days. My strength goes quickly—and that is the way it should be for the old and infirm.
         I compose a little at night, and then I shuffle off to bed.
         It is a lonely life, now that my wife has since passed and the children have moved on. In my old age I think a lot about the War—people I once knew, places I saw, and things that I witnessed.
         Getting up from my writing chair, my back creaks like an ancient windmill. I feel the cool floor beneath my bare feet, and I make for the refrigerator (a nice model that my grandchildren bought for me), to get a little milk for myself…and a bit for the only company I have these days.
         I fill the tiny saucer full of milk, careful not to spill a drop; and I know that sometime in the middle of the night—a night from which I will never wake—the little kitten that I found in my garden will come in through the screen door and lap up the humble milk-offering that I set for him. For that is the nature of cats: they come and go as they please; and that is the way it should be.
         One day, I know, my little kitten will grow to be bigger and stronger. He may even decide to up stakes and make his home elsewhere. But for now, Karl likes his milk; and that is the way it should be.

End