A Soldier’s Story

By Lou Mindar

 

 

Author’s Note

Throughout his life, my dad, Louie Mindar, rarely spoke about his time in the Army during World War II. We knew that he had served in the troops that liberated the Buchenwald and Dachau concentration camps, but we didn’t know any of the specifics. And I had heard bits and pieces about a story that involved German fighter planes strafing a hillside while he ran, trying to stay ahead of the bullets, but the facts were murky and he didn’t seem to want to clarify them. I’d occasionally ask, but he was never very forthcoming.

Then, in 2016, when Dad was 90 years old, I decided to ask again about his experience fighting in Europe. He had just received a newsletter from his old unit—the Rolling W—in the mail, and I used the stories in the newsletter to prompt our conversation. To my surprise and utter joy, Dad began talking about his time in the Army.

As you might imagine, his recollections were not as detailed as they might have been years earlier, but he still remembered enough for me to take notes and to bring up other questions. When we were done, I had a timeline of his experiences, and enough details to lead to further research.

Even so, I had no idea what I was going to do with the information. I kept telling myself that someday, I’d write Dad’s story. Initially, I thought it would be while he was still alive. But sadly, he passed away in December 2019 at the age of 93, and I still hadn’t done anything with the information that he and my research had provided. In fact, I still wasn’t sure what to do with the information.

Several years went by, and I continued to think about writing Dad’s story, but that’s all I did, lots of thinking but no writing. Initially, I thought I might write a  biography of Dad’s war years, but there were still a lot of blanks in his story, and if I was going to write a biography, I wanted it to be accurate. And if I’m being honest, I wasn’t sure I was up to the task. I’m a fiction writer, and nonfiction is a muscle I haven’t trained.

Finally, I decided to write Dad’s story as fiction, but I wanted to make it as realistic and accurate as possible. I finally put pen to paper (or fingers to keyboard) in early 2025, the 80^th anniversary of the Allied victory in World War II, as well as 80 years since Dad fought, along with thousands of other brave souls, across Europe and against fascism. My goal was to have the story—which turned into a novella—done by Veterans Day 2025.

I’m proud of my dad’s service in World War II, and I view him as a hero. But I have to admit that Dad’s experience wasn’t much different than the nearly 16 million other Americans who served in the military during that time. They are all heroes and the world owes them a debt of gratitude we can never fully repay. As journalist Tom Brokaw said, theirs is the greatest generation.

As I mention in the story, Dad was the fourth of four brothers to serve their country during World War II. His brothers Emil and Alex served in the Pacific, and Dan served in Europe. All four brothers served with distinction, and by the grace of God, all four returned home after the war. I want to say they returned home no worse for wear, but that’s not true. They brought home scars none of us could see, and they hid them pretty well. But no one can go through what they went through, and see what they saw, and not be impacted. They lived the rest of their years as productive citizens, but I can only imagine the toll the war took on them.

It is because of their sacrifice, and the sacrifice of millions of others, that we live free today. We should always remember their sacrifice, and we can best honor it by making sure that future generations do not have to endure what they endured. For them and for future generations, we must remain vigilant in our defense of our country, our constitution, and our democracy. We owe them at least that much.

With a full and grateful heart,

Lou Mindar
November 2025

 

 

Dedication

For Dad, my hero.

 

 

Chapter 1

The metal chains that held the swing seat to the bar above were cold in Louie’s hands. He pumped his legs until the seat lifted and the world tilted, the ground rolling up to meet him and slipping away again. Beyond the narrow strip of grass, the street was quiet except for an Oberweis Dairy truck that rattled by and kept going down High Street.

Pigeon Hill Park was no bigger than a postage stamp, two swings, a paint-flaked bench, and a bald patch where kids wore the grass to dirt. It was late spring. Buds had gone to leaves, and the snow that had made a gray crust of everything just a few weeks earlier was now just a memory.

Louie’s sister, Florence, sat on the bench with her knees together and her hands folded over her purse, watching him like she always had, counting the beats of his swinging the way a mother counts the breaths of a child when they sleep. She was only four years older than him, but since their mother died when Louie was just four, she’d been his guardian, a kind of hybrid sister-mother. Louie dragged his rubber soles and let the swing slow until it creaked to a stop. He eased himself off, his face cold from the small wind he’d made.

“I wondered if you’d come out today.” He shoved his hands in his jacket pockets, his feet toeing at the dirt. “It’s kind of cold.”

“Better than sitting in the house.” Florence gave a small smile. “What are you up to today, Louie?”

He glanced across the street. Laundry flapped from a backyard line, a man watered a stoop with a tin can. The neighborhood was the same as ever: Romanian and Hungarian voices; church bells on Sundays from St. Michael’s, St. George’s, or St. Joseph’s; old men playing cards and rolling their own cigarettes.

Their parents had come to the United States on a boat in 1904, she a girl of ten and he a boy of sixteen, strangers standing on the same deck and not yet knowing each other. Ellis Island first, then a hopscotch west to Michigan, and finally to Aurora, Illinois, where the factory chewed up daylight and spit out pay envelopes on Fridays. In 1915, they married at St. Michael’s and immediately started a family. Nine kids in all, seven that made it to adulthood.

He swallowed. “I can’t just sit around anymore.”

“You’re always so restless.” Florence’s voice stayed gentle. “Emil, Alex, and Dan are already in the war. Isn’t that enough?”

Louie rubbed a thumb along the seam of his jacket pocket, his brother’s names seeming to change his focus. “Dan sent a letter last week,” he said. “Said the mud smells the same everywhere and the coffee’s never hot by the time it gets to you. Can you imagine that? Dan complaining about coffee.” He gave a quick laugh that sounded like the scrape of a match, then he returned his focus to what was eating at him. “Dan’s in Europe. Emil and Alex in the Pacific. Everyone’s doing something, except me. I’m stuck here in this park.”

“You’re just seventeen,” she said. “You know you can’t join until you’re eighteen.

“I’m almost eighteen,” he said. It wasn’t true, not even in the way a boy convinces himself time can be hurried along. His birthday was months off. The Army didn’t care about “almost.”

“There’s boys I know…Tommy Popp, he went down to Chicago last month and they shipped him out. He’s not any older than me. Well, not by much.”

“He’s eighteen and his mother cries every day.” Florence looked down at her hands, then out at the street. “And some boys don’t come back. You know that.”

He did know it. He knew it from the silence after the mailman passed a door, from the way windows went dark at dinnertime on houses where they used to laugh loud. He knew it from the radio. He knew it from the way their father sat in the kitchen after work, not looking anyone in the eye, the newspaper folded and refolded until the print smudged his fingers.

“I can help,” Louie said. “I want to help. I can’t stand…” He gestured at the smallness of the park, of their neighborhood, of his life. “…not doing anything.”

Florence studied him for a long moment. She had their father’s steadiness when she looked hard at a thing. It made Louie want to keep talking, to fill the quiet with reasons.

“They won’t take you at seventeen,” she said. “No matter how bored you are or how much you want to help.”

“I know.” He pulled a folded paper from his jacket. He’d smoothed it so many times the edges had gone soft. “But they will at eighteen. If I had a signed affidavit. If Pa signed…”

“Pa won’t,” Florence interrupted. She didn’t say it cruelly. She said it the way a person says there’s a wall where the yard ends, certain, final.

Louie nodded. He knew his father’s hands, cracked from the factory, and how they shook when he drank coffee. He knew the way his father looked at the photograph of Ma, of the kids that didn’t live to build lives of their own, then looked away again. Asking him was like asking for rain. Louie took a breath and looked Florence in the eye, trying to make his voice sound brave.

“You could sign it,” he said. He tried to say it lightly, like it was only an idea that had dropped from the elm above them. “Just write his name. It’s not like he’d stop me if he thought about it. He knows I’m going to go eventually.”

Florence’s mouth tightened. She looked, for the first time, like she might stand up and walk away. “No.”

“It’s just—” He held up the paper and then dropped his hand. “It’s just ink.”

“It’s not just ink.” She met his eyes. “It’s you.”

He wanted to argue about ink, about paper, about the way men signed things to make them true and right and concrete. He wanted to say how wrong it felt that the war could be everything in the world and he could be nothing to it. He saw Dan’s handwriting in his head, the way he looped his Ds in the letters he wrote home. He imagined the ship decks, the helmets, the mud Dan said smelled like the Fox River in March. He said instead, soft, “Flo, I miss them.”

Florence’s face changed. She was still for a moment, then she reached out and put her hand on his sleeve. “I know. I miss them too.”

“And I feel stupid here,” he said, the words tumbling now. “I go by the factory and see the men coming off shift and I think I could be one of them, just work a dirty job and bide my time, but then I think of Dan, and Emil, and Alex. And I can’t…I can’t just keep hanging around here.” He motioned toward the park. “Or waiting for the mail because maybe, just maybe, one of them will write a letter. I feel like if I wait, it’ll be too late, and I’ll be stuck for good.”

A breeze went through the park, just strong enough to lift a scrap of newspaper by the bench. Florence watched it slide across the path and catch on the grass. She pulled her hand back and folded it with the other.

“You’re asking me to lie,” she said. “To forge Pa’s signature.”

She’s such a goody two shoes, he thought. Maybe he should have asked Helen to sign the paper instead. But as soon as he thought it, he felt guilty. Florence was who she was, and she had never been anything but good to him.

“I’m asking you to help me tell the truth about who I am,” he said, surprised to hear himself say it so cleanly. “If Emil and Alex and Dan are man enough to fight in the war, then so am I.”

Florence let out a breath. She closed her eyes, and when she opened them there was a shine there. “You sound like Dad when he talks about the day he left Romania. He says he wasn’t a man until he stepped off that boat and had nobody but himself. No money, no prospects, couldn’t speak the language.”

“And he was only sixteen,” he said.

Florence’s gaze slid to the swing set, to the bare metal scuffed clean by hundreds of hands. “He’ll never forgive me,” she said.

“He will.” Louie felt the heat rise in his chest, like the feeling when you run downhill and the ground can’t quite keep up with you.

“And if you don’t come back?”

Louie looked down at his shoes, a small crescent-shaped nick in the leather at the toe. He shrugged.

The park grew quiet, the only sounds off in the distance: the hum of the factory, a train whistle on the other side of town, a woman calling a child in Romanian from a porch. Florence stood, and the bench gave a tired groan.

“Where’s the paper?” she asked.

He fumbled the affidavit back out, the lines crisp, the spot for a parent’s signature a blank wide as a field. She didn’t take it yet. She held out her hand for the pen. Louie hadn’t brought one. He hadn’t thought that far ahead. Florence sighed and dug in her purse. She clicked the cap off a pen and held it for a second like it had weight. Then she thought better of it.

“Not here,” she said. “Let me think about it.” She capped the pen and dropped it back into her purse. “After supper. If I’m going to sign it, I’ll do it at the table, after Pa goes to bed.”

Louie felt the ground right itself under him. The swing set made a tiny sound as the chains shifted in the breeze. He nodded. “After supper.”

Florence stepped close and touched his cheek with her knuckles, an old habit from when he was small. “Don’t tell anyone about this,” she said. “Not even Dan.”

He swallowed. “I won’t.”

“Louie,” she added, and there was something fierce under the softness now. “If Dad finds out, I’ll say I did it. You don’t defend me. Don’t say anything.”

“I won’t let you get in trouble.”

“You just do what you’re going to do,” she said. “And then come home.”

He wanted to hug her but didn’t know how. They weren’t little kids anymore. He settled for a nod that felt too stiff and then, because something inside told him he ought to, he sat back on the swing and pushed off once, slow. “Thank you,” he said.

*

They waited for their father to go to bed, then she signed it with a pen he had brought with him. The kitchen was small, a square of light in a quiet house. The wooden table had a scar on one side where someone had set a pot too hot. Florence set the affidavit on a cutting board to make the surface smooth. She wrote their father’s name, which seemed strange because in all his time in the country, he hadn’t learned to either read or write English, using a simple “X” as a signature. When she was done, they both stared at it, as if a thing could change shape once it had a name attached.

“That’s all,” she said at last. “Go to bed. Sleep.” She folded the paper along the crease and slid it back to him. “If you can.”

He tucked it into the inside pocket of his jacket, where he’d carried it for more than two weeks. “Thank you,” he said again.

Florence reached for the dishcloth, then didn’t. “You’ll write me letters,” she said, making a statement, not a request. “I’ll make sure Pa sees them first.”

“I will.”

“And you’ll be careful.”

“I will,” he said again, knowing careful had very little to do with anything.

She walked next to him as he left the kitchen. They stopped at the doorway. The house smelled faintly of onions and garlic and soap. At the threshold, she put her hands on his shoulders and kissed his cheek. It embarrassed him, which made him feel small, but made him feel loved. He smiled, then went to bed, just like she had told him to do.

*

Three mornings later they rode the bus together to the train station. Florence wore her blue coat, the hem brushed clean. Louie carried nothing but the affidavit and a small, packed bag with an extra shirt and a razor he barely needed and rarely used. The bus windows smeared the town into a slow-moving picture: the brick schools, the steeples, the factory chimneys notched against the sky. Couples stood in doorways, a man with a broom swept the sidewalk, life went on as if there was no war. Every corner of Aurora looked like it always did and like he’d never see it again.

At the station the floor was a checkerboard scuffed dull by a thousand shoes. A poster of Uncle Sam pointed and encouraged him to defend his country. Men in hats read newspapers and didn’t look up. Somewhere a baby cried and stopped. Louie and Florence stood close, and what they had to say had already been said. The loudspeaker cracked and swallowed its own words. But he understood the only part that mattered: Chicago.

“You can still change your mind,” Florence said, hoping he suddenly would.

He shook his head. “It’s time to go.”

She blinked fast and then stopped, because tears didn’t help and sometimes made everything worse. She took his hand and held it like they were crossing a street. “When you get where you’re going, write and let me know. I’ll check the mail every day.”

“I will.”

The train pulled in, steel on steel, a long shiver running down the platform and through his legs. People stood. Florence let go of his hand and then grabbed it again. “If you see any of the boys, tell them…No, don’t tell them anything. I’ll tell them myself when they come home.”

He nodded. He wasn’t used to seeing his sister so nervous, so emotional. He could feel the paper against his ribs, but he reached in and touched it just to make sure. He wanted to say something good and final. He wanted to say, “I’ll be a soldier before supper” or “I’ll make you proud” or “I’ll write my name on something that matters.” What came out was small, but truer.

“Thank you, Flo,” he said.

Florence leaned in and hugged him quick, hard, like pulling a stitch tight. “Go,” she said into his shoulder.

He climbed the steps and found a seat by the window. She stood on the platform where he could see her, one hand up, the other on her purse as if it held all the secrets of the world. The train jerked and then moved, the platform sliding like a slow tide. Louie lifted his hand, palm flat to the glass, and watched Florence grow small and then smaller and then gone.

Chicago was an hour away. The Army was farther. He touched the affidavit in his pocket again and, for a moment, felt older than his seventeen years. The car rocked, and the town gave way to fields, and the track carried him toward the thing he’d asked for, toward uniforms and orders and men who would call him by his last name, toward a world that had been waiting for him with its mouth open and its hands out, toward a life he knew he’d have to grow into. He was on his way.

 

 

Chapter 2

The train rolled into Chicago under a sky that looked too big for the city. Smoke from the yards hung low, and the rails curved through a forest of brick and steel. Louie pressed his face close to the window, trying to take it all in, the switch engines, the long black stacks, the blur of people moving fast. Aurora had noise, sure—factory whistles, kids in the street—but this was something else. Chicago didn’t hum. It roared.

When he stepped onto the platform, the air hit him like heat from an open oven. The station swarmed with soldiers in olive drab, women in dresses bright as flags, and porters hauling stacks of bags taller than he was. Announcements crackled from somewhere up in the rafters, and pigeons flitted through the haze of light above the trains. For a moment, Louie just stood there with his bag slung over his shoulder, feeling small in a way he hadn’t felt since he was a kid, which, if he was being honest, wasn’t that long ago.

The recruitment office was six blocks away, a squat brick building with an American flag out front and a sandwich board that said “ENLIST TODAY—YOUR COUNTRY NEEDS YOU.” Inside, it smelled like ink and sweat and the faint sweetness of floor wax. A man in a brown uniform with a coffee stain on his sleeve sat behind a desk, stamping forms and barking names. Louie’s hands went damp around the affidavit in his pocket.

When the recruiter looked up, his eyes had the dull shine of someone who’d seen too many boys that day. “Next.”

Louie stepped forward. “Sir, I’d like to volunteer.”

“Name?”

“Louis Mindar, sir.”

“Age?”

“Eighteen,” Louie said, trying to make his voice sound deeper.

The recruiter held out his hand without looking up. “Got any proof of your age?”

Louie passed over the paper. The man glanced at the signature, barely long enough to read it, then tossed it onto a pile thick as a phone book. “Fine. Congratulations, son. Welcome to the United States Army.” He slid a form toward Louie and pointed with his pen. “Sign that, then go down the hall. They’ll take you through your physical, get you a haircut, a uniform, and a bunk for the night. Ship out in the morning.”

Louie blinked. That was it? Months of waiting, a forged name, all that worry, and it came down to a quick speech and a half glance. “That’s it?” he asked before he could stop himself.

The recruiter’s smile was thin. “What’d you expect, a parade? The war’s not gonna win itself. Next!”

Louie signed where the pen pointed and walked down the hall, the sound of his own footsteps echoing off the tile.

*

The physical was a blur of cold stethoscopes, rubber hammers, and men in white coats barking numbers. They measured his height—five-foot-five—and his weight—one hundred ten—and made a note. One doctor squinted at him and said, “You eat, soldier?” Louie nodded, not sure if it was a joke. Another doctor jabbed a needle into his arm, and before the sting faded, they were pushing him toward the barber.

He sat in a metal chair while clumps of dark hair slid down his neck and pooled on the floor. In the next chair, a boy with a hayseed accent grinned through the mirror. “First time in a big city?”

Louie nodded. “You?”

“Never been farther than Des Moines.” The boy’s grin widened. “Name’s Mickey. They said we might get sent to Europe. I can’t wait to start killin’ Nazis.”

Louie gave a weak laugh. Mickey said it easy, like it was a sport. Louie wasn’t sure what to say. Killing hadn’t seemed real before, just words in the newspaper or stories on the radio. Now, sitting under a buzzing light while a stranger scraped a blade across the back of his neck, the idea settled heavy in his stomach. He thought of Emil and Alex and Dan, somewhere far across the Pacific or Atlantic, and wondered if any of his brothers felt that same weight before they shipped out.

When they were done, they handed him a uniform folded so tight it could have stood up on its own. It smelled of cotton and wool and a chemical smell he couldn’t place. The sleeves were a little long, but when he buttoned it, something in his chest straightened. He looked at his reflection in a grimy window, cropped hair, stiff collar, eyes he hardly recognized. He looked like someone who belonged to something bigger.

That night, he lay on his bunk in a row of men who coughed, snored, and shifted in their sleep. The lights buzzed overhead. He thought of Florence and the park swing moving back and forth in the wind, and of his father at the kitchen table, steam rising from his cup of coffee. He tried to picture himself in Europe, wearing the uniform for real. But every image ended the same way, with someone falling, or smoke rising, or silence. He told himself he was ready. And when he didn’t believe what he was saying, he told himself again.

*

Fort Sheridan sat on a bluff above Lake Michigan, the water a strip of cold gray under the June sun. The bus rolled past neat brick buildings and open drill fields. Louie sat stiff in his seat, clutching his duffel, the uniform collar itching at his neck. When the doors opened, the smell of the lake mixed with something metallic and sharp, like oil and gun cleaner.

A sergeant with a voice like gravel introduced himself as Everett. “You’re the new meat,” he said. “Listen close. You’ll be fed three squares a day, you’ll be issued a bed, and you’ll keep yourselves out of trouble. Two days from now, most of you ship out to  basic training. Until then, you follow orders, you don’t wander, and you sure as hell don’t get smart. Any questions?” Before anyone could respond, he said, “Dismissed.”

The men shuffled toward the barracks, all elbows and noise. Louie trailed behind, the duffel bumping his leg. The building smelled of sweat and disinfectant. Rows of bunks stretched from wall to wall, and the air was thick with talk: hometowns, girlfriends, guesses about where they’d end up. Louie found an empty bunk near the window and sat down, trying to look like he’d done it all before.

That night after dinner, when the others were filing out, Sergeant Everett called, “Mindar.”

Louie froze. “Sir?”

The sergeant eyed him up and down. “I’m a sergeant, not an officer.,” he said. “You refer to me as sergeant, not sir.”

“Yes sir, uh, sergeant.”

Everett shook his head “How old are you, son?”

“Eighteen, sergeant.”

Everett’s eyebrow lifted. “That so? You don’t look a day over fifteen.”

“I’m eighteen, sargeant.” His throat was dry.

“What’s your birth date?”

Louie’s mind went blank. The question was simple—just add a year—but panic made numbers slippery. “January twenty-first, nineteen twenty-seven,” he said.

Everett frowned. “That makes you sixteen, not eighteen.”

Louie’s heart thumped hard. “I mean—seventeen. I’m seventeen.”

The words were out before he could stop them. He dropped his eyes to the floor, feeling the heat crawl up his neck.

Everett didn’t shout. He just sighed, long and slow. “You think you’re the first to try this? I’ve sent three home this month already. You’ve got two options, Mindar. I can put you on a train back home, and you can wait till you’re eighteen. Or you can stay here at Fort Sheridan. We’ll put you to work, and when you’re not working, you’ll be confined to barracks until your next birthday rolls around. You’ll be property of the United States Army. You’ll peel potatoes, scrub latrines, and learn what Army life smells like. You cause trouble, I’ll stick you in the stockade till you’re old enough to shave. Understood?”

Louie’s head jerked up. “I can stay?”

Everett nodded once. “If that’s what you want.”

Louie hesitated only a second. “I’ll stay.”

The sergeant’s expression softened a little. “Then report to the mess in the morning. Tell Corporal Green you’re on potato duty.”

“Yes, sir, I mean, sergeant”

Everett started to walk away, then stopped. “Mindar,” he said over his shoulder. “You’re small, but I’ve seen smaller make it through. Don’t waste the chance.”

When the sergeant was gone, Louie sat on his bunk. The barracks were quiet now except for the low hum of the lights. His stomach still twisted with shame, but under it was relief. He wasn’t being sent home. He’d made it in, barely, but in. The Army hadn’t thrown him out, it had just given him time.

Outside, the lake wind slipped through the window, smelling of cold, deep water and far off places. Louie pulled the blanket over his shoulders and closed his eyes. Tomorrow, he’d peel potatoes. Someday he’d cross the ocean. For now, he was here, wearing the uniform, learning how to wait.

 

 

Chapter 3

By January, the wind off Lake Michigan was strong and cold enough to be lethal. The snow at Fort Sheridan had turned to a dirty brown crust that crunched under boots and never quite melted. Louie stood in the mess hall, sleeves rolled past his elbows, a mountain of potatoes on one side of the sink and a growing pile of peeled ones on the other. Steam fogged the windows. His hands were puckered white from the cold water.

Sgt. Everett came in shaking the snow from his cap. “Mindar,” he said.

Louie straightened. “Yes, sergeant?”

“Happy birthday, soldier. You’re finally eighteen and old enough to fight in this man’s army.” The sergeant’s grin was small but real. “Pack your gear tonight. You ship out tomorrow morning. Fort McClellan, Alabama.”

Louie almost dropped the potato in his hand. “Really?”

“Really. Basic training, infantry. After that, they’ll figure what to make of you. Maybe you’ll get lucky and stay stateside. But knowing your luck, you’ll be halfway to Europe by summer.”

That sounded just fine to Louie. He wanted to go to Europe, to get into the thick of the fight.

The sergeant turned to go, then stopped at the door. “Enjoy the rest of your big day.”

Louie looked at the bucket of potatoes. “Yes, sergeant,” he said. When the door swung shut, his face broke into a big smile. The mess hall suddenly didn’t seem so cold. Tomorrow he’d trade the knife for a rifle. Tomorrow he’d stop peeling potatoes for other men and start earning his place among them.

*

The first breath of Alabama air hit him like soup, thick and warm and smelling of pine. Fort McClellan spread out under a wide sky: red dirt, long barracks, and drill fields that seemed to stretch forever. After eight months by the frozen lake, it felt like another planet.

Basic training started before dawn. Reveille at 0430, lines by 0500, coffee black enough to float a horseshoe. They ran until the sun came up and then ran some more. They drilled with rifles until their shoulders burned. They learned to march, to shoot, to crawl through mud with their faces inches from barbed wire. The first week, half the company blistered their feet raw. The second week, they learned not to care.

Somewhere between push-ups and mess duty, Louie met Billy Romano, a wiry kid from Brooklyn who talked as fast as he marched, and Tim Sanderson, a quiet Nebraskan with shoulders like a plow horse. Billy called Louie “Short Stack” at first, but by the second week it was “Little Louie,” and the name stuck. Billy became “Brooklyn Billy,” to tell him apart from “Colorado Billy,” who had a habit of singing cowboy songs off key. Sanderson became “Sandy,” a high school nickname that fit as naturally as the dust on his boots.

They sweated through calisthenics, fired their M-1s at paper silhouettes, and wrote home on Sundays when they weren’t too tired to lift a pencil. Nights, they’d lie on their bunks trading stories. Billy talked about stoop ball and the Dodgers. Sandy told stories about the smell of harvest wheat and a ride he took on his uncle’s tractor. Louie talked about the Fox River and the way the ice cracked in the winter. They were from three different corners of America, but by March they were finishing each other’s sentences.

Training hardened them. They learned to fieldstrip a rifle blindfolded, to march twelve miles on half a canteen, and to dig a foxhole in forty-minutes flat. They learned that the drill sergeant’s voice could be heard a mile away and that mess-hall eggs bounced if you dropped them.

By late April, when orders came down assigning them to Combat Engineer training at Fort Butner, the three of them whooped loud enough to wake the barracks. Engineers built bridges and cleared mines. It was dangerous work, but it meant they were trusted to think as well as fight. More than that, it meant the three of them would stay together a little longer.

*

North Carolina was green and wet, the air smelling of rain even when it didn’t fall. At Fort Butner they joined a new company and met Theodore Prescott Beck of Athol, Massachusetts, a pale, skinny fellow with a nervous laugh and a name that sounded too long for his frame.

“Prescott Beck?” Brooklyn Billy said the first night. “You gotta be from money.”

“Some,” Theo admitted. “My father’s in textiles.”

“Textiles,” Sandy repeated. “Ain’t that a fancy word for cloth?”

Billy grinned. “We could just call you Athol, but that seems downright rude. Let’s go with Boston.”

Theo—now “Boston”—smiled for the first time that night, grateful for the nickname and the company.

Combat engineer school was a mix of brains and brawn. They learned to lay explosives, build Bailey bridges, string wire, and patch roads. They waded rivers in full packs and practiced driving stakes under simulated artillery fire. Every day was sweat and noise and the smell of cordite.

When the day finally ended, the four of them found ways to keep busy: cards, letters home, tall tales, and, lately, a game called mumbly peg. Someone had scrounged up a hunting knife with a chipped handle, and the rules were simple: flip the blade from your hand, see how close it sticks to your boot without hitting flesh.

“Just don’t stick it in yourself,” Sandy warned the first night.

“Relax,” Billy said. “Little Louie’s got cat-like reflexes.”

Louie laughed and flicked the knife. It landed half an inch from his toe, quivering upright.

“See?” Billy crowed. “Cat-like.”

Two weeks later, after dinner, they were at it again, the barracks half-dark, rain tapping the roof. Louie felt lucky, loose, the knife an extension of his hand. He flipped it once, twice—thunk, thunk—each throw a little closer.

“Careful, Louie,” Boston said.

“One more,” Louie said. He flicked his wrist. The blade came down true and disappeared into leather.

For a second, no one moved. Then pain flashed white.

“Jesus, Louie!” Billy shouted.

Louie stared at the handle jutting from the top of his boot. Blood welled around the edges and drained from his face. “I think I got too close.”

They half-carried him to the infirmary, where a medic yanked the knife free and wrapped his foot tight. “Lucky it didn’t hit bone,” the man said. “You’ll live. Stay off it a week.”

Sgt. Bianchi heard about the mishap the next morning. He stormed into the barracks, the muscles around his jaw tight. “Mindar!”

Louie limped to attention. “Yes, sergeant.”

Bianchi looked him over, five-foot-five, bandaged foot, sheepish face. “You trying to win the war one toe at a time?”

“No, sergeant.”

“You ruin government property—those boots—and stab yourself, and now you’re gonna sit on your backside while the rest of the men work?” The sergeant shook his head. “You’ll do KP till that foot’s healed. And don’t think for a second that little scratch keeps you out of my training. You finish with your class, or I’ll have your hide.”

“Yes, sergeant.”

“And Mindar,” Bianchi added, his voice dropping. “Try not to kill yourself before the Germans get a chance.”

That night, the guys snuck him a piece of pie from the mess hall. “To Little Louie,” Billy toasted, “the bravest idiot in the Army.” Louie laughed until his bandaged foot throbbed.

*

By the end of April, the foot had healed, and the drills were done. One evening, Bianchi called Louie to the front of the barracks. The men gathered, curious. The sergeant held a small box in one hand.

“Private Mindar,” he said. “For injuries sustained in service to his country—self-inflicted though they may be—the United States Army awards you the Purple Heart.”

Laughter rippled through the ranks. Bianchi pinned the ribbon to Louie’s chest, the corner of his mouth twitching. “Don’t do anything stupid in Europe,” he said.

Louie saluted, cheeks burning, but he couldn’t help smiling. For a boy who’d lied his way in, peeled mountains of potatoes, and stabbed his own foot, a medal—any medal—felt like a victory.

The next morning, buses lined the road, engines idling. The four friends slung their duffels aboard and climbed in. Brooklyn Billy, Sandy, Boston, and Little Louie were on their way to Fort Meade, Maryland, then Europe.

The windows fogged as the bus pulled away. Outside, the trees blurred green, the sky stretched wide, and the road unspooled eastward toward the war that waited for them all.

 

 

Chapter 4

Fort Meade was a mess of mud and motion. Trucks idled in long lines, MPs barked commands no one seemed to hear, and everywhere they looked, men were waiting for orders, for transport, for something to happen. The 89th Infantry Division had been ordered to hold until further notice, and that “further notice” stretched through the first cold weeks of December 1944 like an unbroken cloud.

The Rolling W—the nickname of Louie’s unit—spent their days drilling, cleaning rifles, and trying not to freeze. At night they found their way into town, a handful of underage soldiers in search of warmth and whiskey.

The bar they favored was a low-ceilinged joint with a jukebox that played the same three songs. The bartender was a big woman named Ruby who didn’t bother checking IDs so long as you paid in cash and didn’t bleed on the floor.

Billy liked to sit near the jukebox, nursing a shot of rye and pretending he’d seen it all before. Sandy preferred beer and quiet corners. Boston drank slowly, like he was afraid someone would notice and take it away. Louie just drank because it was something to do that made him feel older than he was.

The locals were friendly enough until the second drink. After that, everything was a contest: who was tougher, who could sing louder, who’d had it worse. Twice, Louie and the others ended up in shoving matches, once with a pair of steelworkers, once with some soldiers from Kentucky. Each time it blew over before the MPs arrived, but they spent enough nights limping back to the barracks with bruised knuckles and blackened eyes to make it a routine.

“Least we’re getting our practice in,” Billy said one night, holding a rag to his split lip.

“Yeah?” Sandy grinned. “You gonna punch your way through Europe?”

“Why not? Krauts got jaws same as anybody.”

Louie laughed, but when the laughter faded, he thought of Dan, the toughest guy he knew, and wished his brother was there with him.

On January 4, orders finally came. They packed their duffels, loaded onto buses, and rode north through the snow to Boston. The men sang songs half-remembered from home, their breath fogging the windows. Louie sat by the glass, watching the dark fields slip by. He felt something in his chest, a kind of humming excitement that wouldn’t quiet down.

When they reached the port, the SS Uruguay loomed ahead, a converted Grace Line passenger ship now painted dull gray and reeking of diesel. She looked too big to float and too small to carry them all. The men filed aboard in the cold dawn of January 9, 1945. Louie paused at the gangway, touched the rail, and told himself this was it. This was the start of the real thing.

*

The Atlantic was a living thing that didn’t care about men or wars. Waves slapped the hull hard enough to make dishes jump in the galley. Below decks, the air was thick with sweat and diesel and the sick-sour smell of men who hadn’t found their sea legs.

Louie spent the first two days hunched over a bucket, swearing he’d never eat again. By the third day he managed crackers and coffee, and by the fourth he could stand on deck long enough to feel the salt spray sting his face.

The Uruguay moved in a slow, crooked line across the ocean, zig-zagging to throw off German submarines. Sometimes the engines throttled down to a near-crawl, the whole ship groaning like it might stop dead. The men played cards, wrote letters, and tried not to think about what could be moving beneath them.

Billy started a poker game that lasted three days straight. Sandy lost all his pay in one hand and laughed about it. Boston read a pocket Bible and tried not to look green. Louie wrote to Florence but couldn’t find much to say. We’re on our way was all he managed. He didn’t want her to picture him like this, sick, cold, and scared.

At night the lights stayed dim, and you could hear the sea hitting the hull, slow and steady. Sometimes the whole ship tilted just enough to make everyone grab for the nearest handhold. Once, late in the crossing, Louie woke to the alarm bells clanging—“Submarine sighted!”—and for fifteen long minutes he waited in the dark for the explosion that didn’t come. When the all-clear finally sounded, no one spoke. The silence was thicker than the fear.

Twelve days they rode that steel coffin, the weather worse every mile. When the engines finally eased and someone shouted “England!” men crowded the railings, craning for a glimpse of land. Low cliffs, gray sky, smoke drifting inland. It was the most beautiful sight Louie had ever seen.

But they didn’t dock. Orders changed. The ship anchored in the English Channel, part of a growing convoy waiting for assignment. Two days they sat there, restless, the men pacing the deck and staring at the shore they couldn’t touch. Then came new orders—La Havre, France.

Louie felt his chest tighten. Europe. The word finally applying to something real, something he could almost touch.

It was still dark when the convoy formed up, the water choppy under an overcast sky. The Uruguay was supposed to lead the line, but an officer shouted new instructions through a bullhorn. Another liberty ship took the point, her decks crowded with men waving and joking to hide their nerves.

“Guess we’re second,” Billy said. “That’s okay with me.”

The wind whipped across the deck, cold and sharp. Louie gripped the railing and watched as the lead ship moved toward the harbor. Somewhere beneath those gray waves, mines waited, and everyone knew it. You could see it in the way the officers stared too long at the water.

Then came the explosion.

It wasn’t a sound at first, it was a flash, a rising bloom of fire and smoke that swallowed the front half of the ship that had gone before them. A second later the sound hit them, a deep, ripping crack that made Louie’s chest seize. The ship seemed to fold in on itself, bow rising, stern vanishing under the waves.

“Christ Almighty,” Sandy whispered.

Men on deck yelled orders no one could hear. Boats dropped into the water. The sea boiled with debris. Louie could make out figures in the surf, some waving, some not moving at all. The smell of burning oil rolled over them.

For a long time, no one spoke. Then Billy said, “That could’ve been us.”

Louie nodded, his throat tight. He couldn’t stop staring at the place where the other ship had been. A thin line. That was all it was. Just luck and timing, one ship out front instead of another.

*

They reached La Havre at noon under a sky the color of tin. The harbor was chaos—half-sunken ships, cranes bent at odd angles, docks torn apart by bombs. The Uruguay couldn’t get close enough to land, so the men went over the side on rope ladders, one after another, clutching their rifles as the ship pitched beneath them.

When Louie’s boots hit the landing craft, his legs shook from more than the waves. The boat rocked toward shore, salt spray cutting his face. Behind them, the wreck still burned. Ahead lay a gray stretch of sand and the war waiting beyond it.

The sky was low, the air cold and wet, and for the first time, he understood how narrow the margin really was between standing and falling, between living and dying.

 

 

Chapter 5

They had prepared for gunfire. There was none.

No Germans, no mortars, not even a stray shot from the hills. Just wind, gulls, and the sound of waves breaking against the same sand where men had bled six months before. Louie stepped off the ramp expecting war and found only quiet. He felt the crunch of France beneath his feet. It was his nineteenth birthday.

He didn’t think about cake or candles. He looked out at the dark water and thought about the men whose lives had ended out there, about how close he’d come to being one of them.

Sandy clapped him on the shoulder. “Happy birthday, Little Louie.”

Louie nodded, the wind stinging his eyes. “Yeah,” he said. “Some birthday.”

They formed up on the beach, rifles slung, boots sinking in wet sand. Smoke still hung in the air from distant fires, the remains of wrecked ships half-buried along the shore. All around, the ghosts of D-Day lingered: rusted tanks, twisted metal, helmets half-covered in sand.

Billy kicked at a spent shell casing. “Guess we missed the party,” he said.

Sandy spat into the surf. “I’m not complaining.”

They spent the night on the beach, huddled under thin blankets, the cold working its way through every layer of clothing. When he finally drifted to sleep, it was to the sound of the sea breathing in and out like something alive.

Morning came gray and wet, a thick mist hanging in the air. The order was simple: march inland to Camp Lucky Strike. Fifty miles, give or take.

They started walking, rifles on their shoulders, duffels bouncing against their hips. The road wound through villages that had been fought over and abandoned, roofs blown off, walls pocked with shrapnel. Children watched from doorways. A few waved. Most just stared, hollow-eyed.

The first night they camped in a field where German artillery had once been. The second night, in a barn that smelled of hay and smoke. The third day, as they crested a low ridge, they saw the rows of tents and Quonset huts of Camp Lucky Strike stretched out in the valley below like a small city.

“Looks like home,” Sandy said.

“Home smells better,” Billy responded.

Camp Lucky Strike was one of several “cigarette camps” named after popular brands — Lucky Strike, Chesterfield, Pall Mall — staging areas for men coming in and out of the European theater. It buzzed with trucks, jeeps, and men shouting orders in a dozen accents. Mud was everywhere. The camp’s sign — a rough board nailed to two posts — leaned sideways in the wind.

They were barely there two days before Louie and Billy’s names went up on the bulletin board. They were to report for a special detail: drive to a supply depot outside Paris and retrieve trucks for Company B.

“Paris,” Billy said, eyes bright. “Now we’re talking.”

“Don’t get your hopes up,” Sandy said. “You’ll see more mud than mademoiselles.”

“Don’t the Germans hold Paris?” Louie asked.

Billy shrugged, unconcerned.

“No,” Sandy said. “Paris was liberated last year.

“If there are any Germans, maybe we’ll get to do some fighting,” Billy said.

Now it was Louie’s turn to shrug.

The drive took four hours in the back of a rattling troop transport, bouncing over roads cratered by shellfire and patched with gravel. Louie watched the countryside roll by: burned-out tanks rusting in ditches, farmhouses rebuilt with scrap metal, fields still scarred from trenches. Every few miles, they passed graves marked with simple wooden crosses.

By the time they reached the depot, the sun was low. The trucks waited in neat rows, engines cold, canvas tops streaked with grime. A corporal handed them the paperwork and said, “They’re all yours. Try not to put ‘em in a ditch.”

The return trip was easier. Eight men, eight trucks, engines rumbling in line down the dark road. Louie drove the last one, alert for road signs and shadows that looked wrong. They passed close enough to Paris to see the faint glow of city lights on the horizon, a city still half under curfew, its streets filled with rumors of German patrols and black-market traders.

When they rolled into Lucky Strike near midnight, mud splattering the fenders, Sgt. Hoagland clapped them on the shoulders. “Didn’t lose a single truck? Not bad for a bunch of amateurs.”

Louie grinned, exhausted. “We aim to please, sergeant.”

Louie’s wisecrack cost him. Two days later, new orders came down. Louie and Billy were being sent north to Belgium — a six-hour drive — to collect tar paper for the roofs of the new barracks. “I’m going to have to learn to keep my mouth shut,” he said.

“It’s not all bad,” Billy said. “It’s better that being stuck in camp.”

“You remember that if we run into any krauts.”

They left before dawn, the sky still heavy with fog. The roads were worse now, rutted and half-washed out by winter rains. Bomb craters pocked the shoulders, and bridges had been hastily rebuilt with planks that groaned under their tires. Louie drove, Billy navigated with a folded map that barely held together.

They talked to fill the silence. Billy told stories about Brooklyn, about the stoop where he used to sit with his brothers, about the smell of bread from the bakery downstairs. Louie told him about Aurora, about the orphanage where he and Dan had lived for a time after his mother’s death, about Florence forging their father’s name.

When the stories ran out, they talked about girls, the ones they knew, the ones they didn’t. Most of it was lies, the kind of boasting that made the miles go faster.

“This ain’t what I pictured Europe to be like.” Billy said, shifting in his seat. “Feels like I’m back home, making deliveries for my uncle.”

Louie nodded. “Yeah. I thought we’d be fighting by now.”

“We will,” Billy said. “Give it time. They’ll find a way to get us shot at soon enough.”

By the time they reached the depot near Brussels, the sun was high and the mud deep enough to swallow their boots. They loaded the tar paper, lashed it down, and turned back for Lucky Strike.

The road home was long and rough. Louie’s eyes burned from the strain, the steady thrum of the engine lulling him. He told himself he’d stay awake, just a few more miles. The next thing he knew, the truck jolted, the tires bumping off the road and into a field.

Billy shouted, “Louie! Jesus! Wake up!”

Louie slammed the brake. The truck slid to a stop, the engine coughing.

“You asleep at the wheel?” Billy asked, heart pounding.

“Guess so.” Louie rubbed his eyes, then looked around. “We hit anything?”

Billy chuckled. “No. We were lucky.”

Louie slowly drove the truck back onto the road, the engine growling with the effort. That’s when he saw the sign.

A white board, half-crooked, words in black paint: DANGER! MINE FIELD! DO NOT ENTER!

Below, in smaller letters: Champ de Mines! Entrée Interdite!

Louie swallowed. Billy stared at the sign, then at the field they’d just driven through.

“Damn,” Billy whispered.

For a long moment they just sat there, the engine idling, both listening to the quiet.

Then Billy said, “Think we oughta get back before we find any more surprises?”

“Yeah,” Louie said, shifting into gear. “I’m wide awake now.”

They drove the rest of the way without a word, the ruts hammering the truck, the sign still burned into their minds.

When they rolled back into Camp Lucky Strike that night, headlights cutting through the mist, Louie looked out at the tents, the mud, the tired faces of men waiting for orders. It wasn’t the kind of war he’d imagined, but it was war all the same, the kind that killed you quiet, when you weren’t paying attention.

 

 

Chapter 6

Word came down one gray morning that the 89th Infantry Division was being reassigned to the XII Corps of General Patton’s Third Army. The news tore through Camp Lucky Strike like the flu: fast, contagious, and hard to ignore.

Every man in camp knew what that meant. Patton didn’t sit still. If you were under his command, you were headed for the front.

Some of the men cheered. Others went quiet. The rest kept packing their gear in silence, pretending not to think about what they’d heard.

“Patton,” Sandy said, shaking his head. “Guess we’re in it now.”

“Could be worse,” Billy said. “Could be stuck guarding warehouses.”

Boston smiled faintly. “I’d take a warehouse over a foxhole any day.”

Louie cinched the strap on his pack. “Doesn’t much matter what we’d take,” he said. “Orders are orders.”

That night, the camp buzzed with rumors: how far they’d march, what towns they’d pass, whether the Germans were on the run or just waiting. Nobody knew. You could feel it in the air, the way men talked softer, laughed less, cleaned their rifles twice for no reason at all.

Two mornings later, the bugle called them to move out. The line of soldiers stretched for miles, a gray-green snake winding its way out of Camp Lucky Strike and east toward the front.

They walked through France like ghosts.

The roads were narrow, the fields wide and brown from winter. Every mile or so they passed a wreck, an overturned truck, a half-buried tank, the bones of a farmhouse. Crows perched on chimneys with no roofs. Farmers stood by fences and watched them pass, nodding once, eyes flat with exhaustion.

The march was steady, hour after hour, the weight of their packs dragging at their shoulders. They stopped only to eat, to rest their blistered feet, or to let the trucks pass.

By the second night they’d reached Blangy, a village small enough to fit in the palm of a hand. They camped in the ruins of a barn, the air heavy with smoke and manure. Rain pattered on the broken roof.

Billy tossed his helmet onto the straw. “So, this is France,” he said. “Doesn’t look much like the postcards.”

“Smells worse too,” Sandy said, stretching out on his bedroll.

Boston sat near the door, reading a letter by the light of a candle stub. “My mother writes like I’m still twelve,” he said. “She keeps telling me to eat well and get plenty of sleep.”

Billy laughed. “You tell her the cooks feed us mud and call it stew?”

“Didn’t have the heart.”

Louie leaned against the wall, boots unlaced, and watched the candle flicker. “My sister used to write me like that,” he said. “Told me to be careful. Like you can be careful in a war.”

For a while they just listened to the rain. Then Sandy said, “You ever think about what we’re doing? I mean really think about it?”

Billy looked up. “You mean besides walking and freezing?”

“No, I mean… killing people. Germans. They’re trying to kill us, sure, but still.”

Nobody spoke for a long time. The fire popped.

Finally, Louie said, “I try not to think about it. I just think about doing what I’m told.”

Boston closed the letter and folded it neatly. “Maybe that’s the only way to do it.”

Billy shrugged. “I figure I’ll think about it when it happens. No point worrying till then.”

Sandy nodded, his eyes locked on the floor.

They left Blangy the next morning under a pale sky that threatened snow. The road curved through open country, frost on the grass, air sharp enough to bite. Louie fell in step beside his friends, the steady rhythm of boots on dirt becoming a kind of heartbeat.

They passed a river, its surface frozen at the edges. Someone up front started singing softly, an old, half-forgotten tune. Before long others joined in, their voices rough but steady.

Louie didn’t sing. He just listened and thought about how strange it was, this feeling of belonging to something so big and so fragile at the same time.

By the end of the third day they’d crossed the border into Belgium, though the line was more on a map than on the land. The towns grew smaller, the hills steeper. In some places, the only signs of life were the smoke from a chimney or the prints of wagons in the mud.

On March 4 they crossed into Luxembourg. The air was colder, the sky the color of chalk. By the next day they reached Mersch, a small town of stone houses and narrow streets. The people watched them pass with wary eyes, their faces pinched from years of occupation.

The men bivouacked in a field outside town, cooking their rations over small fires. Someone found a radio and coaxed it to life; the music came thin and crackling, but it was music all the same.

Billy leaned back against his pack, eyes half-closed. “When this is over, I’m gonna open a bar,” he said. “Nothing fancy. Just cold beer and no sergeants.”

Sandy chuckled. “You’d drink all your profits.”

“Then I’ll need a partner.” Billy grinned. “You in?”

Sandy shrugged. “Why not? Nebraska’s got enough corn to make whiskey.”

Boston poked at the fire. “My father wants me to take over the mill. I never wanted it. Maybe I won’t go back.”

“What would you do instead?” Louie asked.

Boston thought for a moment. “I don’t know. Something where I don’t have to wear a tie.”

They all laughed. It felt good to laugh.

Louie stared into the flames. “When I get home,” he said quietly, “I’m gonna sit on the swing at Pigeon Hill Park and not move for a week.”

“Swing?” Sandy said. “Are you ten years old?

Louie laughed at Sandy’s question.

Billy looked at him. “That the place you told me about? The park with the bench?”

Louie nodded. “Yeah. It’s by my house, where my brothers and sisters go to get away from the old man. Feels like a lifetime ago.”

“It was,” Boston said. “Everything before this feels like another life.”

The fire crackled. Someone passed around a canteen. The radio faded to static, then silence.

Louie looked at the three faces around him, Billy’s grin, Sandy’s calm eyes, Boston’s quiet uncertainty, and felt a kind of buzzing in his chest. They weren’t just friends now. They were like his brothers. True, they weren’t Emil, Alex, or Dan, but his feelings toward them were similar. He trusted them and knew he’d have their back when things got rough. Whatever waited ahead, they’d face it together.

He stretched out under his blanket, the cold seeping through the ground. Above them, the stars were sharp as nails. Somewhere east, the guns were waiting. But for that night, in that field in Luxembourg, there was warmth in the laughter, and the war felt far away.

 

 

Chapter 7

They left Mersch under sunny skies, boots sinking into the soft thawing mud of early March. Word had it there were German troops somewhere ahead, but no one knew exactly where. The men of The Rolling W just kept marching east, rifles slung and eyes on the horizon.

For five days they saw ruined towns, the occasional farmer moving through the fields like a ghost, but no enemy. The road wound through Junglister, a village of white stone houses and church steeples that seemed to reach into the clouds..

That’s where they hit their first resistance.

A burst of machine-gun fire split the stillness, bullets chewing the dirt at their feet. The men dove for cover behind a stone wall. “Barn!” someone shouted. “They’re in the barn!”

Louie’s hands shook as he pulled the pin from a grenade, just like they’d practiced. He tossed it through the open door. The explosion made the roof jump, the shock wave slamming against his chest. When the smoke cleared, a handful of German soldiers stumbled out, faces pale and hands raised.

“Jesus,” Billy said, exhaling. “That’s it?”

But it wasn’t quite. A single gunner was still on top of a commercial building at the edge of town, spraying bullets wild and high. A corporal from another platoon crawled up behind a rubble pile, took aim, and dropped him with one shot. Then it was quiet again. No sound but the incongruous chirping of birds returning to the trees as if nothing had happened.

The following day they passed through Betsdorf. The resistance there came from a factory, half its roof missing, windows blown out. The Germans inside fired a few rounds before realizing they were surrounded. When they raised a white flag made from a torn shirt, the men of Company B exhaled in relief.

“Easiest surrender I ever saw,” Sandy said.

“Don’t get used to it,” Billy said. “Next time, they’ll fight harder.”

He was right.

The next morning, the slate gray sky returned and the wind carried the smell of wood smoke. They were approaching Trier, an old city on the Moselle River. Word was that German forces were retreating through the area, falling back toward the Rhine, but not fast enough.

As they crested a hill overlooking the valley, they could see the city below: church spires, rooftops, a web of narrow streets. And movement. Lots of it.

“Company B,” Sgt. Hoagland called. “Lock and load.”

The first exchange came at the edge of town, short, chaotic bursts of fire, shouting in English and German. The Germans were desperate, disorganized, but there were more of them than anyone expected. Louie could hear the ricochet of bullets off stone, smell the cordite, feel the ground tremble under the tank treads rolling in behind them.

He ducked behind a wall, heart pounding. A mortar shell landed fifty yards away, the blast sucking the air from his lungs. Billy grabbed his shoulder. “You alright, Little Louie?”

“Yeah,” Louie said, though his ears were ringing. He worked his jaw trying to clear them.

The soldiers moved in short bursts, leapfrogging through streets littered with rubble. German soldiers fired from windows, ducked, and disappeared. The engineers returned fire, cautious but steady, inching forward.

When the fighting finally eased, the streets were slick with mud and something darker. Smoke hung low, mixing with the smell of burned wood and gunpowder. Louie stepped over a fallen rifle, then saw the man it belonged to, a German boy no older than himself, eyes wide open, a thin line of blood tracing his cheek.

He stopped. The noise around him seemed to fade. The boy’s hand still gripped a photo, half-torn, showing a woman and a little girl. Louie crouched, stared for a moment, then turned away.

He’d wanted to fight the Germans. He’d pictured it a thousand times. But now, standing here, it didn’t feel like fighting. It felt like something else, something hollow.

They regrouped near a stone bridge at the edge of town, sitting in the mud, catching their breath. The sky had started to drop snowflakes on them, delicate and soft. The men paid no attention. Billy smoked in silence. Boston cleaned his rifle with mechanical precision. Sandy couldn’t sit still.

“Did you see that guy in the square?” Sandy said. “The one by the fountain? His leg was gone. Jesus, I thought—”

“Enough,” Billy snapped.

“I’m just saying—”

“I said enough.” Billy turned, eyes hard. “This is war. You kill or you get killed. Your only job is to stay alive. You get me?”

Sandy’s mouth opened, then closed. He had never heard Billy talk like that before. None of them had. The wisecracking New Yorker was suddenly somber, serious. Sandy nodded once, staring at the ground. Louie saw the shine of tears in his eyes.

Louie stood and walked away. He couldn’t listen anymore, not to Sandy’s fear, not to Billy’s anger. He found a quiet corner of the ruined street, leaned against a wall, and tried to catch his breath.

He thought about home, about his family and familiar things like the park, the river, his little neighborhood. He thought about how proud he’d been to wear the uniform, to fight for his country. Now all he could think about was how the Germans they’d killed had faces like his, hands like his. Like him, they were young, they loved their families and their country, they had plans for the future and just wanted to go home.

He rubbed his hands together, trying to warm them, though it wasn’t the cold that made him shake. He stared up into the sky, the snow falling harder now. He kept his face raised and allowed the snow to land and melt, clearing his mind and cleansing his soul.

Footsteps approached. It was Boston.

“You alright?” he asked quietly.

Louie lowered his head, his face wet from the snow, and nodded. But before he could answer, Sgt. Hoagland’s voice echoed down the street.

“Fall in! The war’s still on and there are more Krauts to fight. Let’s move!”

Louie stood, slinging his rifle over his shoulder. “We’d better go,” he said, stepping past Theo.

The sergeant’s whistle cut the air, and the men fell back into line, boots splashing through puddles of melted snow and ash.

Behind them, Trier smoldered. Ahead of them, the road wound east toward the Moselle River. The sound of faint gunfire echoed like distant thunder, beckoning them to mount up and rejoin the fray.

 

 

Chapter 8

After Trier, no one said much. Not that there was much to say.

The four of them—Louie, Billy, Sandy, and Theo—marched in silence, rifles slung, boots cutting through mud. The road curved along the river valley, past vineyards stripped bare by winter and fields chewed to ruts by tank treads. The sky had turned brown from the fires that still burned from the previous day, the air heavy with the smell of rain and smoke.

They’d had their first taste of war, and it hadn’t been what any of them expected. It wasn’t heroic. It wasn’t noble. There’d been no music, no glory, no grand speeches. Just noise, confusion, and the dull finality of the dead.

Billy walked with his hands shoved into his jacket pockets, head down. Sandy chewed on a piece of hard candy someone had handed him days earlier, the sound loud in the quiet. Theo trailed behind, his eyes on the ground as if afraid to look up and see more than he could stand.

Louie didn’t think. Thinking led him places he didn’t want to go. He focused on the next step, then the next.

By the time they reached Alf, the company was bone-tired. The town sat on the western bank of the Moselle River, its stone houses pressed close together like they were huddling for warmth. Across the water, the village of Bullay sat on the opposite bank, tucked into a curve of the river like the bottom of a bowl. The slopes on both sides rose steep and wooded, the kind of country where a man could hide and you’d never know it until he fired.

They’d made it this far only to find their way blocked by the river. The Germans had blown every bridge within miles during their retreat.

The 314th Engineer Battalion, Company B—Louie’s outfit—got the order just before dawn: build a new bridge. A Class 40 Bailey Bridge strong enough to carry tanks.

It was the kind of work they knew how to do: hard, dirty, and blessedly clear. No guessing, no killing. Just building.

They started as the sun came up. Steel panels clanged, hammers rang, men shouted measurements over the roar of the river. Mud sucked at their boots, and the cold bit at their fingers. Louie worked alongside Billy and Sandy, passing pins and girders, tightening bolts until his knuckles bled.

The sound of their labor echoed off the hillsides. It was steady, rhythmic, almost soothing. The smell of oil and wet earth mixed with the sharp tang of sweat.

By late afternoon, the bridge began to take shape, thick steel trusses reaching out over the water, the sections locking together like puzzle pieces.

“Looks solid,” Billy said..

“Better be,” Sandy said. “Don’t want to go swimming.”

Louie grinned despite himself. “That’d be one way to wash your socks.”

The bridge was almost finished when the tanks arrived. They could hear them before they could see them, deep, mechanical grunts that rolled through the valley and rattled in each soldier’s chest. The men stopped their hammering and craned their necks as a column of Shermans crested the rise, sunlight glinting off their turrets. The tanks looked impossibly heavy, like iron beasts on treads, and the soldiers who had been sweating over the Class 40 bridge couldn’t help but glance at one another, silently hoping their handiwork would hold.

“Guess we’ll find out soon enough,” Billy said, wiping his forehead with his sleeve.

When the last bolt was tightened and the final plank set, the engineers stepped back and admired their work; forty tons of steel and timber stretched across the Moselle, strong enough to carry those beasts east. Sgt. Hoagland told them they’d done well, that they’d earned a few hours’ rest before they’d be called back for guard duty after dark.

“Get some chow,” he said. “You’ll need it.”

Louie, Billy, and Sandy followed the smell of coffee and stew to the makeshift mess hall, a big canvas tent pitched beside the road. Inside, the air was thick with cigarette smoke and talk. Soldiers were lined up with mess kits, joking, cursing, trading stories. Louie was halfway through the line when he heard a voice he hadn’t heard in nearly two years.

He froze.

“Louie?”

He turned, and there was Dan, older, leaner, in a tanker’s jacket stained with grease and road dust, but unmistakably his brother. For a moment, the noise in the tent faded away. Louie broke into a grin.

“Dan!” he said, and they clapped each other on the shoulder in that awkward half-embrace men use when they want to hug but don’t know how.

Dan laughed. “Didn’t think I’d run into you this side of the Atlantic.”

“Guess the world’s smaller than it looks.”

They sat together on a crate with their trays balanced on their knees, talking in short bursts between bites of stew. Louie wanted to tell Dan everything—about the long march through France, the barn at Mersch, the dead German soldier at Trier—but the words wouldn’t come. Instead, they traded news from home. Florence had written that spring had come early to Aurora. Emil was still somewhere in the Pacific, Alex too. Annie had gotten engaged. Helen was working nights at the factory. It was small talk, nothing important, but it filled the air the way family talk always did, simple and familiar.

At one point, Dan struggled with a jar of preserves someone had  scrounged from a local farmhouse. He wrapped one meaty hand around the jar, one around the lid  and tried to twist, his face tightening. Then he did the thing Louie remembered from every Sunday dinner and every backyard chore. They’d be fixing a fence or tightening a bolt and Dan would stick out his tongue and gently bite it, just a little, as if that helped him focus. He did it now, exactly the same way.

Louie watched him and smiled. For a second, the war fell away. He was a kid again, standing beside his brother in the driveway on Mountain Street, holding a flashlight while Dan worked on a neighbor’s old Chevy. He could almost smell the oil and hear the laughter from the kitchen window. It all came back in a rush so strong it made his chest ache.

The jar lid finally popped open. “Still got it,” Dan said with a grin, handing the jar to one of his fellow soldiers.

Their time together was short. Too short. After fifteen, maybe twenty minutes, Dan checked his watch and stood. “We’ve gotta move out. Orders are to cross that bridge of yours and head east before dark.”

Louie stood too. They shook hands, firm and quick.

“If I don’t see you before,” Dan said, “I’ll see you at home.”

Louie nodded, throat tight.

“Be sure you make it back in one piece,” Dan added, stepping backward toward the tank column.

“I will,” Louie said softly. “You too.”

Dan gave him a quick salute and climbed onto his tank. The engine coughed to life, belching smoke. Louie stood there and watched as the line of Shermans rolled toward the river, one after another, clanking onto the new bridge the engineers had built with their own hands.

The bridge held.

A few hours later, when the sun had dipped below the hills and the shadows had grown long over the Moselle, Louie, Billy, and Sandy reported for guard duty. The air was cool and still, the surface of the river catching the last orange light of day. Louie stood at the eastern end of the bridge, watching the tanks’ tracks fade into the distance, thinking about his brother and the words he hadn’t said.

He told himself he’d say them when they were both home.

“Feels good, doesn’t it?” Billy said.

“What does?” Louie asked.

“Doing something that isn’t killing people.” Billy pointed at the bridge.

Sandy nodded. “Yeah, we built something that’ll help win this war. Maybe even help some of us get home.”

They stood in silence for a moment, listening to the hum of engines and the steady slap of water against the pilings. The hills on both sides of the river were dark, the stars faint behind a thin haze.

After a while, Sandy said, “You ever think about what happens after?”

“After the war?” Louie asked.

“Yeah.”

Billy chuckled. “Sure. I’m gonna sleep for a week, find a girl who can cook, and never wear boots again.”

“Not me,” Sandy said. “I think I’ll miss it. Not the fighting, but… this. The guys. The way it all means something.”

Louie didn’t answer, although he understood. For all the fear and filth, there was a strange simplicity to it, each day boiled down to one goal: stay alive.

They passed a canteen back and forth. The trucks kept coming, headlights cutting white lines through the fog. Somewhere a dog barked.

Then, faint at first, came another sound: the low hum of engines high above.

Louie froze, listening.

“Planes?” Billy asked in a whisper.

“Sounds like it,” Louie said.

Sandy tilted his head, squinting into the dark. “You think they’re ours?”

No one answered right away. The sound grew louder, deepening to a distant drone that rolled across the valley like thunder.

Louie’s stomach tightened. “Better hope so,” he said quietly.

The three of them scanned the sky, hearts beating in time with the rising noise. Somewhere up there, shapes moved against the stars, too high to see, too far to recognize.

Billy whispered, “Could be supply planes.”

“Could be,” Louie said.

The noise swelled, then seemed to circle, the engines shifting pitch as the planes banked over the river. Louie felt the hair rise on his arms.

“Should we take cover?” Sandy asked.

Louie hesitated. “I’m not sure.”

They stood there, staring up into the black sky, the new bridge gleaming faintly behind them, solid, proud, and helpless.

Then one of the planes let out a stuttering growl, a sound that made Louie’s blood run cold.

“Aw, hell,” Billy said.

The night held its breath.

Louie gripped his rifle tight. “Get ready,” he said.

And then the first searchlight swept across the hills.

 

 

Chapter 9

The sound had came low at first, a faint hum like the river catching its breath. Then it rose, sharp and fast, and by the time Louie could make out the silhouettes of planes in the darkness, the sky was alive with movement.

“Planes!” someone shouted.

From the west, dark shapes dove steep and fast—German fighters—streaking out of the night like hawks.

The first burst of machine-gun fire tore into the Alf side of the bridge. Sparks leapt from the steel beams, bullets ricocheting into the darkness. Louie felt his stomach drop.

“Take cover!” he yelled.

The men ran across the road and up the eastern hill toward the trees that lined the top. The incline was steep and slick, the ground soft. Packs that had felt light hours ago now dragged at their shoulders like anchors.

Louie ran hard, legs pumping, lungs burning. He was the smallest of the three, but fast, faster than Billy, faster than Sandy. His boots slipped on the wet slope, but he didn’t stop.

The planes came screaming down again, tracers cutting red lines through the darkness. The sound of the guns was deafening, sharp, metallic, relentless. Bullets clanged against the bridge, ringing out like hammer blows, then shifted to a duller sound, the thud of rounds biting into the hillside.

“Move!” Billy shouted somewhere behind him.

Louie didn’t look back. The air itself seemed to hum with fury. He could feel it on his skin, in his teeth, in the pounding of his heart. The smell of burning oil and gunpowder rolled up from below.

He was almost to the tree line when he heard a scream, raw, sudden, and close. He couldn’t tell who it came from. Billy? Sandy? Someone else? The sound tore through him.

He turned his head just enough to look over his shoulder—just a glimpse—and that was enough. His boot caught on a root and he went down hard, face-first into the soft dirt. The impact knocking the air from his lungs.

Bullets tore into the ground behind him, spitting mud as they hit. Louie pressed himself flat, heart slamming. The sound was everywhere, the rip of engines, the chatter of guns, the earth exploding inches away.

This is it, he thought. This is how I die.

He squeezed his eyes shut, bracing for the hit.

Then, suddenly, the pitch of the engines changed. The planes roared past overhead, pulling up sharply and banking hard to the left, disappearing into the night. The gunfire faded, replaced by shouting and the faint, broken cries of men calling for help.

Louie stayed where he was, belly down, struggling to fill his lungs with air, afraid to move. His breath came in short, shaky bursts.

When he finally opened his eyes, the world seemed tilted. He could see the trees just ahead. He’d almost made it. Behind him, the bridge still smoked faintly in the dark.

He rolled onto his side, blinking through the haze, trying to see. Shapes moved in the gloom, men running, others lying still.

He pushed himself to his knees, dazed. The world felt far away, muffled, as if he were underwater.

“Billy!” he called. “Sandy!”

His voice vanished in the chaos. He called again, louder, but no answer came.

Down by the bridge, medics were already climbing the hill, carrying stretchers. Their voices cut through the dark, calm and urgent all at once.

A medic ran up to Louie, flashlight beam slicing across his face. “You hit?”

Louie shook his head. “Where’s Billy?”

“Soldier,” the medic said firmly. “Are you hit?”

“No,” Louie said, voice cracking. “I’m fine.”

The medic nodded once and ran on.

Louie stood, legs trembling. He started down the slope, eyes scanning the ground. The shadows were thick, the bodies darker. He passed one man face-down, another curled against a rock. He couldn’t bring himself to look too closely.

“Billy!” he shouted again.

Still nothing.

Then he saw it, a dark shape ten yards ahead, half in shadow. Something in him knew before he reached it. He dropped to his knees beside the body and rolled it gently onto its back.

Billy’s arm slipped free and fell to the ground with a soft thud. His eyes were closed, mouth slightly open, as if he’d been about to say something important and never got the chance.

Louie sat down hard beside him. The noise of the world faded until all he could hear was his own breathing.

“Why Billy?” he whispered.

His chest ached. He felt the tears come and fought them back. He told himself not to cry. If he cried for everyone who died, he’d never stop.

He cleared his throat, the sound rough in the cold air. “I’m sorry,” he said quietly, not sure why he was apologizing.

After a while, he stood and started walking again, the ground uneven beneath his boots.

Further down the hill, two corpsmen were lifting another body onto a stretcher. Their movements were slow and deliberate, no urgency, just grim routine.

Something in Louie’s gut twisted. He knew. Even before he saw the shape of the face, he knew.

“Stop,” he called.

The corpsmen turned, surprised. “What is it?” one asked.

Louie moved closer, his legs shaking as he walked. He reached down and turned the man’s head gently toward him.

Sandy.

The freckles, the square jaw, the soft brown hair matted with blood and dirt.

Louie stood there a long moment, staring down at his friend. Then, with a shaking hand, he reached out and closed Sandy’s eyes.

“Damn it,” he whispered.

The corpsmen waited, saying nothing. When Louie stepped back, they lifted the stretcher again and started down toward the bridge.

Louie followed slowly, the smell of oil and smoke heavy in the air, the bridge ahead lit by the flicker of burning debris. He felt hollow, like something had been scooped out of him and left there on the hillside, empty and echoing.

Behind him, the sky was quiet again, but he knew better than to trust the silence.

The war had come to an end for Billy and Sandy, but he was still here. He was still alive. And the war carried on.

 

 

Chapter 10

Bullay was quiet. The fires had burned down, the bridge stood scarred but intact, and the river ran black beneath it, reflecting an image of the ruined town that seemed designed to break hearts.

The men of the the Rolling W had secured the town, but there was no celebrating. Too many stretchers had gone down the hill that night. Too many bunks were empty in the morning.

Louie moved through the wreckage of the camp like a man underwater. He did what he was told—ate when told, slept when told, cleaned his rifle when told—but it all felt distant, automatic. The air smelled of smoke and wet earth, and when he caught himself listening for Billy’s laugh or Sandy’s steady voice, he’d force his mind blank again.

He hadn’t spoken more than a handful of words since the air attack. He didn’t want to. Every conversation risked opening a wound that hadn’t even started to close.

Theo found him the next afternoon sitting on a broken crate near the bridge, staring at the river.

“Louie!” Theo called, relief plain in his voice. “You’re alive! I couldn’t find you after the attack. I thought—”

Louie turned. “I made it,” he said, though there was no excitement or relief in his tone.

Theo grinned, out of breath from running. “Where are Billy and Sandy? They getting some chow?”

Louie looked back at the river, the current pulling pieces of driftwood downstream. “They’re dead.”

Theo blinked, not understanding. “What?”

“They’re dead,” Louie said again, his tone flat, dispassionate. “The German planes shot them.” He brushed his hands on his trousers as if that settled it.

Theo stood there a moment, waiting for something more, a detail, a memory, anything. “How?” he asked softly. “What happened?”

Louie shook his head. “I told you what happened. They were shot. End of story.”

Theo frowned, hurt flickering across his face. “What’s wrong with you? They were your friends.”

Louie didn’t have an answer. The words wouldn’t come. He knew he was being a jerk, knew Theo didn’t deserve this treatment, but talking meant remembering, and remembering meant feeling, and he couldn’t risk that, not yet.

He shrugged instead, stood up, and walked away.

Theo’s voice followed him. “You don’t have to act like it doesn’t matter!”

Louie didn’t look back.

*

They stayed in Bullay for three more days, repairing the bridge and waiting for new orders. The nights were long and cold. Louie lay awake listening to the wind whistle through the ruined houses, each gust sounding like a whisper of names he didn’t want to hear.

When the word finally came, it was what they’d all expected: move east. Patton’s army was pushing toward the Rhine.

The march from Bullay was steady and silent. The road wound through valleys still marked by battle, burned-out tanks, twisted rails, trees split by shells. Every town they passed seemed half-dead. The civilians who remained watched them with wary eyes, uncertain whether to fear or welcome them.

By the time they reached St. Goarshausen, the Rhine River filled the world before them, wide, cold, fast-moving. Across the water, German positions dotted the cliffs. Machine-gun nests, 20 mm cannons, snipers hidden in church towers. The opposite bank looked like a row of dark teeth waiting to bite.

Louie stood on the west bank with the others, staring across at the enemy. “We really gonna cross in boats?” someone asked.

“Unless you can walk on water,” Sgt. Hoagland said.

At dawn, the first assault boats were shoved into the current. The river swallowed them quick, the little craft rocking under the weight of men and rifles. Artillery boomed from the west bank, laying smoke and thunder across the cliffs, but the German guns answered in kind.

Louie gripped the gunwale as his boat pushed off, the water slapping hard against the sides. The current pulled them downstream, the oarsmen fighting to keep straight. Machine-gun fire stitched across the river, bright flashes in the smoke.

To his left, a boat caught a burst of fire and disintegrated, men flung into the water like rag dolls, rifles spinning away. To his right, another boat took a direct hit and vanished in spray.

Louie ducked low, the cold mist biting his face. He could hear bullets cutting through the air, the whine of them, the heavy thump when they hit flesh or wood. Someone screamed, then another, and then it was drowned out by the roar of the river and the endless pounding of guns.

He forced his eyes forward. One thought only: get across.

Two hundred fifty yards of open water felt like a lifetime.

When the prow finally scraped the far bank, Louie leapt out, boots sinking in the mud. He turned instinctively, scanning the other boats. Theo’s was somewhere behind, lost in the smoke. Louie started to look, then stopped himself. He couldn’t—wouldn’t—go through that again.

“Move!” Sgt. Hoagland shouted. “Get off the beach!”

They scrambled up the slope, firing at the cliffs above where Germans were dug in, firing down. The fight was close and brutal, grenades, rifles, shouting in two languages. Louie’s ears rang with the noise, his throat raw from yelling.

By noon, five battalions had made it across the river. By midafternoon, the cliffs were theirs. The surviving Germans were on the run. The Rhine, that proud barrier, was broken.

Louie’s unit moved into the town behind the cliffs, clearing buildings house by house. Some doors opened to frightened civilians; others hid men with pistols or grenades. Every corner a potential death sentence.

Louie kicked open a door and found Theo in the next room, rifle raised. For a heartbeat, they just looked at each other. Theo was filthy, eyes wide, and mercifully alive. Louie felt a jolt of relief so sharp it hurt, but he didn’t say anything. He nodded once, and Theo nodded back. Then Louie moved on.

They stayed in St. Goarshausen several days, securing the area and waiting for new orders. The town smelled of woodsmoke and river mud, the streets filled with debris. Louie helped repair a church wall that had taken shellfire, his hands moving automatically.

Theo passed by a few times, offering a cautious smile, but Louie avoided conversation. He didn’t know what to say.

At night, he lay awake staring at the beams above his cot. The faces came back anyway: Billy’s crooked grin, Sandy’s freckles, the sound of their laughter by the fire. He clenched his jaw until it hurt, forcing the memories down.

He told himself it was better this way. No friends, no pain.

He’d seen what friendship cost. He wasn’t willing to pay that price again.

 

 

Chapter 11

For days after the fight at St. Goarshausen, the river seemed to hum in Louie’s ears even when he wasn’t near it. He’d stand on the bank and stare across the water, watching the current catch the light. On the far side, the cliffs they’d fought to take rose like dark walls, quiet now, their silence heavier than the gunfire that had filled them.

The Rolling W had cleared the town, house by house, room by room. A few snipers had been flushed out, a few sympathizers rounded up. After that, there wasn’t much left to do.

The days bled together.

They cleaned weapons that were already clean. They shaved, played cards, swapped rations. Some men wandered the narrow streets, poking through the ruins for souvenirs: helmets, badges, old coins. Others found spots near the river and sat for hours without saying a word.

Theo had taken to sitting near the church, patching holes in his uniform. Louie avoided him. Not because of anger anymore, but because he didn’t know how to be near someone and not lose him.

At night, the men gathered in small groups, passing around cigarettes and stories. The laughter always sounded forced, like something remembered rather than felt.

The quiet of the town made the war feel far away, like a rumor they’d once believed in. But everyone knew it wouldn’t stay that way.

On April 1, the orders came: move east.

They left St. Goarshausen at dawn, the river fading behind them. The sky was clear, the air cold enough to bite. Trucks rumbled along the road, their engines echoing off the hills.

Two days later, they reached Bad Hersfeld, a small German town tucked in a shallow valley, red-tiled roofs and church spires rising above the trees. It looked peaceful, almost untouched. But the scouts came back with news: German troops were dug in ahead.

Rifle fire crackled before noon, distant but steady. The men dropped into ditches and behind low stone walls, trading shots with enemies they couldn’t see. The bullets snapped through branches, thudding into the dirt.

Louie crouched behind a wall beside Theo, the mortar crews setting up a few yards back. “Feels like target practice,” Theo said quietly.

“Yeah,” Louie answered. “Except the targets shoot back.”

The first American mortars whooshed overhead and landed somewhere beyond a farmhouse. Smoke curled up, slow and lazy. A few seconds later, the German mortars answered. The shells landed wide, throwing up fountains of dirt that rained down on the road.

It went on like that for hours, fire, reload, wait, repeat.

“Hell of a war,” someone said. “Can’t even see who we’re fighting.”

Orders came down not to advance. They were to hold position until the tanks from the 37th Armored arrived. So, they waited, half-buried in mud and boredom. Some men joked, some smoked, others stared at the hills, their minds already a thousand miles away.

Louie wiped the grit from his rifle and thought about how strange it was that war could be so dull. After Bullay and the Rhine, he’d expected chaos, terror, adrenaline. But this was like watching a storm roll in that refused to break.

By mid-afternoon, the tanks arrived.

Louie could feel them before he saw them, the ground trembling, the air vibrating with the deep metallic growl. Then they appeared over the ridge, olive-drab monsters rolling forward in a line, barrels glinting in the sun.

“All right,” Sgt. Hoagland shouted. “Let’s move!”

The tanks fired first. The sound was so loud it seemed to punch the air out of Louie’s chest. Shells tore into the German positions, exploding through rooftops and stone walls. Dust and smoke swallowed half the town.

The infantry followed, advancing through the haze, rifles ready. Louie moved with them, the world narrowing to the street ahead, the smell of powder and burning wood thick in the air.

A German machine gun opened up from a second-story window, but one of the tanks swung its barrel and fired once. The building vanished in a roar and a shower of bricks.

After that, it was over fast. The Germans were outmatched, outgunned, outnumbered, out of time. Some ran, others dropped their weapons and lifted their hands.

By sunset, Bad Hersfeld belonged to the Americans.

Louie leaned against the wall of a damaged building, breathing hard, his ears still ringing. Theo came up beside him, streaked with soot.

“That was it?” Theo said, half-smiling, half-dazed. “All that noise for nothing.”

Louie nodded. “I guess that’s war,” he said. “Mostly waiting. Then too much all at once.” His words were forced, still not comfortable talking to Theo. There was a fight going on inside him between the desire to talk to his friend and the need to not have a friend. The result was clipped sentences, strained words, awkward moments.

They spent the night clearing houses, though they found little resistance. The streets were littered with shell casings and shattered glass. The church bell had fallen from its tower and lay cracked in the square.

When the sun came up, the town was quiet again. Smoke drifted from the ruins, the tanks already moving east toward the next fight.

Louie watched them go, the engines rumbling low and steady. He thought of Dan, somewhere in another tank, rumbling through the countryside, silently praying for his safety. He wondered how many more towns there’d be, how many more days of waiting for something he no longer wanted to be a part of.

The Americans had routed the Germans at Bad Hersfeld, but he didn’t feel like a conqueror. Just a man caught in the long, grinding rhythm of a war that refused to end.

 

 

Chapter 12

The march east from Bad Hersfeld was quiet. The men didn’t talk much anymore. The towns began to look the same, gray stone, black smoke, faces peering from behind half-closed shutters. Rumors drifted down the line that there was a camp ahead, some kind of German supply depot, maybe a prisoner camp. Nobody knew for sure.

They reached the outskirts of Ohrdruf on the morning of April 4. The air was cold and heavy, carrying a sour, chemical smell none of them could place. Louie walked with his rifle slung low, boots scuffing through dirt. The road narrowed between two low hills, leading to a line of wire fencing and a gate that hung crooked on its hinges. They’d found the camp.

There was no gunfire. No guards. No sound at all except the wind.

The first thing Louie noticed was the stillness. The kind of stillness that feels wrong, like the day is holding its breath. Then he saw the piles.

At first, his mind refused to make sense of what his eyes were seeing. A mound of shapes stacked neatly, covered in a thin layer of white dust. Lumber, he thought. Or sacks. But as they got closer, the truth hit like a blow.

They weren’t sacks. They were bodies. Dozens of them. Naked, emaciated, their skin gray and tight against bone. The lime that covered them had crusted into the folds of their flesh, dulling the color, masking the smell just enough to let it sneak up slow.

A private ahead of Louie gagged and doubled over. Another one muttered something that sounded like a prayer.

“Jesus Christ,” someone whispered.

The gates stood open. Beyond them, the camp stretched out, a cluster of wooden barracks, the roofs half-collapsed, the ground churned into mud and ash. The stench was everywhere now, heavy and clinging. It filled the throat, the lungs, the soul.

Louie stepped through the gate and stopped dead.

Inside the yard, corpses were stacked like cordwood against a wall, their limbs tangled together, their faces frozen in expressions that no living man could hold. Some were missing eyes. Others were little more than skeletons with skin draped over them like old rags.

He tried to breathe through his mouth, but the air still carried the taste of death, sweet and metallic.

Near the far fence, a row of railroad ties had been arranged into a kind of pyre. The bodies piled on top were blackened and half-burned, frozen in grotesque shapes where the fire had failed to finish its work. A hand reached up from the heap as if still begging for help. The smell of scorched flesh mixed with lime and smoke, something no man could ever forget once he’d smelled it.

Theo came up beside him, his face pale. “What the hell is this place?”

Louie didn’t answer. He couldn’t. He just shook his head.

A few soldiers moved forward, rifles raised, as if expecting an ambush. But there was no one left to fight. No movement. No sound of orders or boots or life.

One man, a corporal Louie didn’t know, turned in a slow circle and said hoarsely, “What are we supposed to do?”

No one answered.

Louie walked silently toward one of the barracks. The door hung open, hinges squeaking in the wind. Inside, rows of wooden bunks ran wall to wall, stacked three high. Straw covered the boards, but it was matted down with filth and streaked with blood. On one bunk, a body still lay where it had died, thin, hairless, the head turned toward the wall as if embarrassed to be seen.

A tin cup sat on the floor, half-full of some putrid gray liquid. A scrap of cloth hung from a nail above the bed. That was all.

Louie stepped back outside and pulled the collar of his jacket over his nose. The world seemed distant, unreal.

From somewhere near the gate, an officer’s voice broke the silence. “Get HQ on the horn,” he said to his radioman. His voice cracked halfway through. “They need to see this shit for themselves.”

The radioman didn’t answer, just bent over his set, his hands shaking.

Louie walked without direction, his boots crunching over the stiff but thawing mud. He passed more bodies, some lying where they’d fallen, others lined up beside the fences. A few had tags pinned to their chests, the words scrawled in German, the ink blurred by rain.

He stopped near the pyre again and stared at the fire’s remains. The faces were gone, burned away, but the shapes of the bodies were still there: arched backs, twisted limbs, the outlines of fingers clinging to one another.

Behind him, someone was crying softly. Another soldier swore, over and over, the same words—”God Damn it. God Damn it.”—like it might fill the emptiness or provide some answers.

Louie wanted to feel something—anger, grief, rage—but all he felt was hollow. Like the part of him that could process what he was seeing had shut down to survive.

Theo’s voice came from somewhere behind him, quiet but steady. “They said there were camps,” he said. “Rumors. But I didn’t believe them.”

Louie didn’t turn. “Me either.”

A crow landed on the fence, its wings black against the pale sky. It cocked its head, looked down, then took off again.

In the distance, the church bell from the town began to ring, a single, clear note that echoed through the valley. It sounded out of place here, like something from a world that still made sense.

Louie stood without moving until the ringing faded. Then he turned away from the piles and the smoke, walked to the gate, and looked out over the road they’d come in on.

He’d seen men die. He’d seen his friends killed. But this was different. This wasn’t war. This was something else entirely.

And for the first time since he’d joined the Army, he wondered if humanity itself was worth saving.

 

 

Chapter 13

They left Ohrdruf behind, but the experience remained with them.

No one spoke much on the march north. When they did, it was in half-whispers, short phrases that trailed off before they reached their end.

Word spread that the camp they’d found was just one of many — a subcamp, they said — and that there was another, larger one up ahead, near a town called Weimar. The name meant nothing to most of them, but one of the officers muttered that it was the birthplace of German art and music, of Goethe and culture and reason. Nobody replied. The idea of culture felt obscene after what they had witnessed in Ohrdruf.

They reached the gates of Buchenwald under a low sky that promised rain. The camp was built on a hill, ringed by fences and watchtowers. The gates hung open, the SS long gone.

“Stay sharp,” Sgt. Hoagland said. “There could still be Krauts inside.”

The men raised their rifles and moved through the gates.

What waited inside was beyond anything Louie had imagined.

The camp was bigger than Ohrdruf, sprawling rows of barracks and workshops, a tangle of wire and mud and silence. But it wasn’t empty.

Shapes moved between the buildings, slow, staggering shapes that didn’t seem human at first. They were too thin, too broken, their movements jerky and unsure.

Then one of them lifted his head.

Louie froze.

The man’s face was hollow, his eyes huge and sunken, his lips cracked and bleeding. His body was barely covered by what looked like rags. He reached out a trembling hand toward Louie and said something in a language Louie didn’t understand, the words rasping like dry paper.

Another man appeared beside him, then another, until a small crowd of them shuffled closer. They reached for the Americans with thin, shaky hands, some smiling, some crying, some just staring in disbelief.

Louie took a step back. He wanted to help, wanted to feel the relief they must have felt, but what he saw made his stomach twist. These people looked like something out of one of the horror movies he and Dan used to sneak into when they were kids, just skeletons with skin stretched thin over bone. Their eyes were wild, their smell—of sickness, rot, and filth—was overwhelming.

“Jesus,” someone whispered behind him. “They ain’t even human.”

Louie flinched at the words, but part of him understood what the man meant. What his mind knew and what his heart could bear were two different things. He told himself these were human beings, that they had names and families and lives before this. But standing there, face-to-face with them, it felt like looking at ghosts that hadn’t decided whether or not they were alive.

One of the prisoners reached for Louie’s hand, his fingers little more than sticks. Louie hesitated, then let him touch his sleeve. The man began to cry, great silent sobs that shook his whole body. Louie couldn’t move.

Across the yard, other soldiers were handing out rations, crackers, chocolate, canned meat. The prisoners devoured them, clawing at the food, shoving handfuls into their mouths. Then an officer saw what was happening.

“Stop!” he shouted. “Stop! Don’t feed them!”

The soldiers froze.

“They’ll die if you give them that,” the officer said, his voice breaking. “They can’t handle it. Their stomachs. Jesus, just stop.”

The yard went still again, the prisoners watching with confusion, crumbs still clutched in their hands. One of them began to retch. Another collapsed.

“Get the medics,” the officer called out.

Louie was sent to help set up a hospital. The medics needed somewhere to work, somewhere with light and air. But every building they entered was the same: dark, foul, crawling with lice, the stench of human waste thick enough to choke on.

Finally, they gave up and set up triage outside, under the open sky. Blankets were laid on the ground. The medics moved from one to the next, giving water, checking pulses, writing numbers on tags.

Louie carried buckets of water, blankets, whatever they needed. He kept his eyes down, but it didn’t help. The images stayed anyway, faces, ribs, hands that trembled when they tried to hold a cup.

He heard the translators working nearby, their voices flat and professional. They were talking to prisoners who were still lucid enough to speak. Louie drifted closer, drawn by a curiosity that both energized and repulsed him.

One man spoke German softly, his voice a whisper of exhaustion. The translator turned to a soldier who was taking notes as the translator spoke. “He’s from Weimar,” the translator said. “His wife and children were taken to another camp. He doesn’t know if they’re alive.”

Another prisoner said he’d worked in a stone quarry. “They beat us,” the translator explained, his tone tight. “Anyone who fell was shot.”

A third man, frail and trembling, tried to describe the experiments. The translator’s face went pale. “Doctors,” he said. “They used prisoners for experiments. Injections, poisons. Typhus vaccines. Most didn’t survive.”

No one spoke after that. There was nothing to say.

The sun sank behind the trees, leaving the camp in shadow. The wind carried the smell of burning wood and sickness. The prisoners huddled under blankets, too weak to move. Some of the soldiers built small fires outside the fence, though no one seemed to feel the warmth.

That night, Louie lay on the cold ground just beyond the camp, staring at the stars through the smoke. Sleep came in fits. When it did, it brought nightmares, faces without eyes, hands reaching from the ground, the sound of weeping that turned into maniacal laughter.

Twice he woke to the sound of other men screaming in their sleep. The third time he woke only to discover that the scream was his. After that, he didn’t bother closing his eyes again.

He sat up and looked toward the camp. The sky above it was faintly lit by the fires the medics kept burning for light. The smell still reached him, even here, outside the camp.

He thought about the people inside, what they’d seen, what they’d endured, how they were somehow still alive.

He’d thought death was the worst thing war could show him. He knew better now. These people had endured torture, deprivation, and unimaginable cruelty. Death was mercy.

 

 

Chapter 14

Ohrdruf. Buchenwald. The names clung to the men like soot, something they couldn’t wash off. Nobody talked about what they’d seen. They just moved. One foot in front of the other, rifles on their shoulders, haunted eyes staring ahead.

Louie found it hard to pray anymore, not because he didn’t believe in God, but because he didn’t know what kind of God he’d be talking to. The God he had grown up believing in wouldn’t have allowed what he’d witnessed over the past few days. If the God of his youth wasn’t who he believed him to be, who was he and why had he allowed this unspeakable cruelty to happen? He had no answers.

They marched south toward Saxony, toward another river, another bridgehead, another name to add to the list of places they’d taken. Orders kept coming, and war didn’t pause for broken hearts or troubled minds.

On the road, they passed through a dozen small towns, clusters of stone houses, barns, and empty streets. Some villages offered brief resistance, shots cracking from upper windows or behind hedgerows, but most didn’t. German soldiers emerged from cellars with their hands raised, their faces blank with exhaustion.

It wasn’t surrender so much as relief.

In some places, they found civilians waiting with white sheets tied to broom handles. In others, nothing but silence and the faint smell of smoke.

For five days, they pushed east and south, through towns whose names blurred together. Rain fell, stopped, and fell again. The ground turned to mud. The trucks rumbled forward, the infantry followed, and Louie felt as though they were all part of some great, slow-moving machine that no longer needed to think to keep running.

When they reached the Zwickauer-Mulde River, the world erupted again.

German artillery, positioned high in the hills above Greiz and Reichenbach, began shelling the advancing columns. The first shells landed far off, but each one crept closer, the whistle sound slicing through the sky.

“Eighty-eights!” someone shouted.

Louie took up position behind the wall of a bombed out building. An explosion tore through a farmhouse ahead, sending smoke and timbers flying. The air stank of gunpowder and masonry dust.

For hours, they returned fire from the fields below—mortars, machine guns, rifles—anything to hold the Germans in place. When the tanks from the 37th Armored rolled up, their arrival felt like salvation.

The big Shermans moved forward in a line, their barrels turning toward the hills. One by one, they fired, the sound enormous, rolling across the valley in waves. They could feel it in their chests as much as they could hear it.

The shells hit their marks. Trees snapped like matchsticks. German guns went silent. Smoke rose thick and black.

By the next morning, they controlled Zwickau. But the fight wasn’t done quite yet. The Germans regrouped on the outskirts of the city, remnants of the Wehrmacht, SS, and Volkssturm militia. They dug in with tanks and machine guns, desperate and cornered.

The Rolling W was spared the direct assault. Instead, Louie and a dozen others were sent into the heart of Zwickau with a specific mission: locate and secure two bridges before the Germans could blow them.

They moved fast, guided by two British paratroopers who’d escaped from a nearby POW camp. The Brits looked gaunt and filthy, but their eyes burned with focus.

“Follow us,” one of them said. “We know where they’ll be guarding the charges.”

The city was chaos, streets blocked with rubble, windows shattered, the echo of sporadic gunfire bouncing between the buildings. Louie’s heart thudded in his chest, the sound of his own breathing loud inside his helmet.

When they reached the first bridge, they found what they’d feared: German engineers had wired it for demolition. A handful of soldiers stood guard near the charges.

“Take ‘em out,” Sgt. Hoagland barked.

The Americans opened fire. The fight was sharp and sudden, a burst of gunfire, shouting, smoke. Louie hugged the ground and fired across the road. A German machine gun rattled, but Theo and another soldier flanked it, silencing the nest with grenades.

Within minutes, the defenders were down or running. The demolition experts crawled beneath the bridge, cutting wires and yanking detonators loose. One of them shouted, “Clear! She’s safe!”

The second bridge was harder. It was farther in, near the industrial center, surrounded by half-collapsed warehouses. When they reached it, the Germans were waiting, twice as many this time, dug in tight.

Louie fired until his rifle jammed, then ducked behind a burned-out car to clear the weapon and reload. A tank round exploded near the bridge, showering the men with dirt and glass.

When it was over, the Germans were gone, and the bridges were still standing.

The following morning, the British guides led the Americans to the camp they’d escaped from, a former POW facility hidden in a wooded valley outside town. The guards there didn’t put up much of a fight. Most dropped their weapons as soon as they saw the Americans.

Inside, thousands of prisoners waited — Americans, Brits, Canadians, French — men in tattered uniforms, some too weak to stand.

When the gates opened, the crowd erupted. Cheers, laughter, sobs, all mixing together in a sound that made Louie’s heart race. Men who hadn’t smiled in years were grinning through tears, clutching one another, shouting names and hometowns.

Louie stood near the fence, watching the reunion unfold. The prisoners clapped him on the shoulder, shook his hand, thanked him. One of them — a kid no older than himself, pale and filthy — hugged him tight and wouldn’t let go.

Louie didn’t know what to do or say.

After everything he’d seen — the dead at Ohrdruf, the dying at Buchenwald — he hadn’t expected joy to exist anymore. But here it was, ragged and exhausted, but real.

For the first time in weeks, he felt something stir inside him that wasn’t despair.

He thought of Billy, of Sandy, of all the faces that wouldn’t make it home. He thought of the prisoners and the way they’d cheered when the gates opened.

Maybe this was why he was still here. Not for revenge. Not for glory. But for this, to keep people alive. To make sure what he’d seen in those camps would never happen again.

That night, as the men built fires along the river and the liberated prisoners sang softly in the distance, Louie sat alone and stared into the flames.

The war wasn’t over yet. But for the first time in a long while, he believed that someday it would be, and that when it was, there might still be something worth saving on the other side.

 

 

Chapter 15

They told him in a few dry sentences that made no sense that the 89^th Infantry Division was moving from VIII Corps to First Army. Some kind of paper shuffling that he didn’t understand. Then, almost in the same breath, they peeled the Rolling W off the 89th and transferred them into the 42nd Infantry—the Rainbow Division—Seventh Army. The 42nd had been chewed up and needed bodies. That was the reason. It was always the reason.

They met the 42nd near Nuremberg and were swallowed whole by its momentum. The column pushed south as if the road itself were a current, sweeping them through Eichstätt, Ingolstadt, Wolnzach. Towns blurred by in a routine of checkpoints and quick contacts, white flags out of windows, SS dead in ditches, cellar doors opening onto faces that wanted the day to pass without the sound of guns or family members crying. Louie loaded, unloaded, cleared rooms, moved on. The sky in late April had the thin blue of a sheet washed too many times.

The rumor came like a cold draft through the ranks: another camp ahead.

He didn’t want it to be true, but by then, Louie had learned that the things you didn’t want were the only things that kept happening.

The first thing he saw when they arrived at the camp called Dachau was the train.

It sat at a siding just beyond the wire, its cars open to the sun. At first he thought the dark shapes inside were cargo, sacks, perhaps, or lumber. Then the wind shifted and he knew better.

He climbed the iron rung of a ladder and looked down. What filled the car was a tangle of human bodies; some sprawled, some folded, some piled as if sleep had hardened into shape. Many were black with rot, faces collapsed into a kind of blank map. Flies lifted in a single dark wing when the shadow of his helmet crossed them, then settled back. The stench—rotting meat, ammonia, fecal matter, a heat-sick perfume—climbed up and took his throat in its fist.

Theo gagged behind him and climbed down. Louie stayed one breath longer, because he thought he owed them that, then he followed.

“They came from somewhere up north,” a lieutenant said, voice flat, eyes not leaving the car. “Took weeks. No water. No…” He didn’t finish.

Inside the wire, the camp sprawled under a pale sun: rows of barracks, administrative blocks, a low building with showers that weren’t showers at all. The gates were open. Most of the guards were gone, but a few remained, unable or unwilling to leave before the Americans arrived. The prisoners were still there.

At Buchenwald, the living had looked like ghosts. Here, the living looked like prophecy. Louie had heard there were twenty or thirty thousand prisoners still alive, skeletal humans with eyes too large for their faces, driftwood bodies in striped rags, lice moving like dust over a thousand shoulders. Some prisoners shivered in the warmth, hands held out as if the sun was fire. Others moved without direction, bumping gently into one another, touching the sleeves of the Americans, their mouths moving in a motion that might once have been the word thank you.

A private stepped forward with a C-ration tin and a chocolate bar, pressing them into a man’s hands. The prisoner tore at the food, pushed too much into his mouth. Two more did the same. An officer’s shout ripped across the yard.

“Stop! Stop it right now!”

Louie had seen this movie. Buchenwald was playing over again.

The officer ran, grabbed wrists, knocked tins from hands. “You’ll kill them,” he barked. “Water first. Broth. Nothing solid. Medics only.” His voice cracked and he bit it back. “Do not feed them.”

All across the yard, soldiers froze, shame and confusion flashing through their faces.

“Set up triage.” The order snapped the air back into motion.

They tried the barracks first, but each door opened on the same low hell: boards slick with filth, blankets alive with lice, tin slop buckets tipped and crusted, the air heavy with the sweet-sour of typhus and waste. A medic stepped inside, stopped, then turned and said simply, “Outside.”

They spread blankets on packed dirt under a washed-out sky. The medics moved from body to body with cups of water, spoons, strips of cloth, hands gentle and quick. A corpsman with a pencil wrote numbers on tags and tied them to wrists, triage in arithmetic: who might make it to evening, who might make it through the night, who wouldn’t make it at all. Louie hauled water and blankets, fetched more cups, more strips, more of anything. He kept his eyes on hands, not faces.

Near the wire, a knot of prisoners had cornered two SS men, uniforms stripped of insignia, hair clipped, but still SS in the set of their mouths and in the eyes of the prisoners. Soldiers separated them, shouting, then gave in, allowing the prisoners to have their way. There was a pause—a human breath in which no one in the circle was a soldier or a prisoner but simply a person who had been handed a moment—and then the air filled with shouts and anger and retribution. They attacked one guard, who folded as if his bones had been taken away. The other tried to run but was stopped by two soldiers and held long enough for the prisoners to reach him.

Louie didn’t feel much. He marked the place in his mind where he thought his compassion should be and found only exhaustion and emptiness. He told himself that was wrong, but his admonition didn’t change anything. He walked over and picked up the dead guard’s sidearm, a neat little pistol with a black grip and a smell of oil beneath the copper tang. He slid it into his pack like a man putting away a photograph and hated himself for the calm with which he did it.

He told himself: You should be shaking. You should be sick. You should be on your knees. His hands were steady. The steadiness frightened him more than the prisoner’s fury had.

They found the gas chamber in a low concrete building marked by a word in German that someone said meant “cleaning.” A row of nozzles studded the ceiling like the mouths of metal flowers. A lieutenant stared at them for a long time, lips moving without words. In the next room, a drain widened toward a grate, the concrete stained dark and foreboding

Outside, a trench gave up its dead where the dirt had slumped. Limbs tangled in a way that made the earth look like it had grown bones of its own. Beside the trench, there were piles—always the piles—this time half-covered, tarps blown back in the light breeze, a lace of flies stitching the edges together.

A sergeant moved through it all saying, “No contact. No contact,” like a prayer. “Lice. Typhus.” Men nodded and disobeyed, touching shoulders, the backs of hands, hair light as reeds. An MP cuffed a private who hugged a prisoner and then helped him wash his arms to the elbows with DDT powder until the skin went pink.

Louie stood, then moved, then stood again, working until the day slid sideways into evening. The sun went down with no ceremony. The medics lit lanterns and fires. The light made every face a skull.

An old man in stripes took Louie’s sleeve. His fingers were bird bones; his breath smelled of sickness and decay. He spoke five words Louie didn’t understand and then one he did. “Danke,” the man whispered. Louie nodded once and backed away.

He would have given anything to feel outrage, grief like a wave, the sharp clarity that had struck him dumb at Buchenwald. Instead he felt the thing he feared most: a terrible calm, like a window that had been left open too long and now would never shut.

This is becoming ordinary, a voice inside him said. This is becoming routine. The knowledge put a weight on his chest that had nothing to do with fatigue.

He hated it. He hated himself for surviving in that way.

Night came, laid across the camp like a sheet. The prisoners’ fires guttered. Somewhere, a man sang a few notes of a familiar song, then stopped. Beyond the wire, the Americans bivouacked under the stunted trees, ordered to keep a perimeter and keep their nightmares to themselves.

Louie lay on his back, helmet under his head, watching a sliver moon drag itself through a thin net of clouds. The wind carried the camp to him, smoke, rot, excrement, the mineral tang of lime. Twice, men nearby jolted awake with animal sounds in their throats. No one made mention of it. No one asked if they were all right. The answers were obvious and useless.

He thought of Florence and the bench at Pigeon Hill Park. He tried to remember the exact shade of green the grass took on in June and could only summon up the gray-green of uniforms that had become omnipresent since he’d taken the train to Chicago

He told himself there was still good here. There had to be. The helping hands, the translator’s careful voice, the medic setting a cup down and waiting, just waiting, for a man to swallow, the old man who’d said “danke.”

Louie closed his eyes and told whatever God listened that he’d had enough. He was doing something that mattered—he could feel that much—but his heart was tired of being taught how much horror the world could hold. He wanted to stop learning. He needed to go home.

Sleep found him in pieces and took what it wanted. The rest of him stayed awake in the dark, counted the breaths of strangers, and waited for morning.

 

 

Chapter 16

When the trucks rolled into Munich, the men expected a fight. But when they arrived, the city didn’t fight back.

What they found instead was rubble and silence. The buildings—grand, once—were hollowed out like skulls, their facades hanging open to the street. The flags and swastikas that had once fluttered over the city were either burned or trampled into the dust.

Here and there, small groups of civilians moved through the ruins with faces that seemed carved from chalk. Most kept their distance, watching from doorways as the Americans passed. A few raised white flags made from bedsheets, tablecloths, surrender in whatever form they could find.

By the time the 42nd Infantry reached the city center, the fighting had mostly stopped. The real work had already been done by bombers months earlier, and now the city simply lay there defeated, stripped bare.

That night, they bivouacked just south of the city. The next morning, they heard the news: the 42nd would keep moving, east and south, toward Austria.

The men groaned but started packing anyway, their displeasure irrelevant to the work that needed to be done.

On May 3, they crossed the Inn River under the kind of clear blue sky they had rarely seen since arriving in Europe. The bridge rattled under the weight of trucks and tanks, the air saturated with the smell of diesel fuel and exhaust fumes. Ahead lay Austria.

The countryside looked untouched by war, green hills and quiet farmhouses, idyllic, as if the world had already moved on. Refugees lined the roads, people walking in every direction, pushing carts, carrying children. They were trying to find their homes again, or what was left of them. The Americans stopped to hand out water, chocolate, cigarettes. Louie gave his last ration bar to a little girl with a torn dress and eyes too big for her face. She smiled shyly and hid it in her pocket, saving it for later.

At the border town of Palling, the division stopped. They set up roadblocks, cleared the last of the German holdouts, and waited. For the first time in weeks, there was no forward order, no gunfire echoing from the distance. The men slept for a whole day, some of them without even removing their boots.

It was in Palling, on May 8, that the news came.

Sgt Hoagland called the men together in a muddy clearing. His uniform was wrinkled, his cap crooked, his voice carrying that strained mix of exhaustion and ceremony.

He held a slip of paper in his hand and began to read:

“I have a message from the Supreme Commander of the Allied Expeditionary Forces.” His voice sounded more like a radio announcer than the sergeant they had followed to hell and back.

The men waited patiently, trying to figure out what was going on.

Hoagland started again. “The crusade on which we embarked in the early summer of 1944 has reached its glorious conclusion.

“It is my special privilege in the name of all nations represented in this theater of war to commend the men of the Allied Expeditionary Force and of the supporting naval and air forces who have joined in the achievement of this historic victory.

“Through their untiring efforts, patience and determination, they have preserved the liberty of the free peoples of the world. They have defeated the German forces.”

Defeated the German forces? The phrase captivated the men and they became restless, muttering to each other while the sergeant continued to read.

“The route you have traveled through hundreds of miles is marked by the graves of comrades. From Normandy to the Baltic you have fought your way through the evil of modern tyranny, and you have triumphed.

“Now that you have completed your task, I know you will face the future with the same courage and fidelity that you have shown so gallantly in the past.”

When Hoagland finished, he lowered the paper. The soldiers stared at him, waiting for more. His words hung in the air, heavy and unfamiliar.

Finally, someone in the back called out, “What the hell does that mean?”

The sergeant blinked, then smiled for the first time. “It means the war is over, boys!”

The clearing erupted. Men whooped and cheered, some threw their helmets in the air, others hugged whoever was closest. The sound rolled out across the camp, laughter, shouting, disbelief.

A soldier next to Louie grabbed him by the shoulders and shook him. “We’re going home!” he yelled.

Louie just stared, his mouth half open. “We are?” he said. He couldn’t quite believe it. He’d known they were winning, that Germany was collapsing, but this? The end of the war? It felt too sudden, too impossible.

Around him, men danced, smoked, cried. Someone started singing the national anthem, off-key but proud. Others joined in.

Louie smiled, but his mind went back over the past months: the snow outside Trier, the bridge at Bullay, Billy and Sandy, the camps. He thought of all the men who couldn’t hear this announcement, who wouldn’t be going home.

Still, for the first time in a long while, he felt something that might’ve been peace.

The next day, the 42nd began their occupation of Salzburg. There was no fighting now, just rebuilding, reorganizing, trying to bring sense and routine to a land that had forgotten what peace looked like. Louie helped unload trucks of supplies, directed refugees toward aid stations, stood guard at roadblocks that no longer mattered. It wasn’t glorious work, but it was good work. The kind that created order and started putting the world back together again.

That night, Louie lay on his back outside the barracks, hands folded behind his head. The stars were bright, the air clean. For the first time in months, there were no guns, no shouting, no planes overhead. Just quiet.

He closed his eyes, and he was home.

He was a kid again, sitting on the swing set at Pigeon Hill Park. The chains sang out softly as he leaned back, toes scuffing the dirt. Dan was on the swing beside him, seeing which of them could swing higher. Emil and Alex tossed a football back and forth in the grass, their laughter echoing across the park. Florence, Helen, and little Annie stood by the fence, whispering and laughing. The air smelled like lilacs and fresh-cut grass.

He swung higher, the wind rushing against his face, and he felt weightless, free.

When he woke at dawn, he lay still for a moment, listening to the birds. The dream lingered, warm and sweet, like the smell of grass after it rains.

He smiled to himself. It was the happiest he’d been in years.

The war was over.

And somewhere, just beyond the horizon, across the ocean, home was waiting.

Copyright © 2025 by Lou Mindar