1944 (moving east)

There is a tightness, just under my ribs. A corset under the skin, under muscle and nothing I eat will digest as it should. I am not ill in the way of illness and there is no medicine that can cure what afflicts me. Nights vanish and days die and somewhere between, the hours are lost as sand thrown upon the shore. This is what war does. It changes your vision, your perception, your relationships with all you know. Flowers, now, are for graves, stolen as youth, as spring in this endless winter, this endless march east, into the fire of a new day that brings not joy, but death. We move like vagabonds taking only what can be carried but our shoulders bend not of pack or rifle, but of blood, and odors, and unspeakable acts so common we are shocked at our own callousness, whistling like butchers in the day's due. And we tell ourselves lies, we build them like walls and in this way we find our shelter, our protection, our silent conspire. Writ not of letter. Whispered even not among ourselves. It is the language of eyes, for what is seen has no language, no translation and worse of all, no forgetting.

Load up! We do. Back of a truck. Low gear. You feel the vibration, smell the fumes, watch those little raccoon eyes watching you go, dirty and cold and hungry, children wearing stress and fear for warmth. We leave behind our dead, our detritus, a village with no means to support itself. Like flotsam it feels, jetsam our trail, as every bump translates straight up through the spine, ache accumulating like some account unpaid, overdue. And it all hurts. We stop. Just us and our horse breath. Shouts up ahead. Cursing. Everybody out. Mines to be cleared. Bladders to be voided. Behind a tree. Sometimes not. Nobody cares.

We spread out and crouch like shrubs. War has it own smell. It gets inside your nostrils, lives beyond any soap. Every nose runs. We blow them out of habit, out of hope that somehow, we could breathe not sweat and piss and shit and bloated putrefying death black in sun, hard as brick. You never, ever, get used to it. And you never forget it. We hear an explosion. More shouting. Medic. Medic. That word. Always shouted. Five letters. Five minutes left in a life--maybe, and you . . . cry, inside. Then you pull up your pants. Wipe your nose on the back of your sleeve and try not to shiver, the line blurred between fear and cold and a numbness that destroys the very foundation we profess to fight for. The war makes a whore of us all. Some of us admit it. Some don't. Either way, we've moving east.