Indeed, while the older German troops looked weary, the youths were smirking and sneering. Their hands were in the air or laced on their heads, but their chins were high and chests out. Many wore American Army clothing, and Kennet saw von Asselt tear the name insignia off one boy’s shirt before backhanding him to the ground. Von Asselt strode back to where Kennet stood. His breath made frozen puffs in the air. It looked like he was breathing smoke. His face was red and his jaw clenched as he showed Kennet the blood-stained insignia.

It read MALINDA.

“Oh, you little fucking punk,” Kennet murmured, feeling the fury rise in him again. He was pure pirate right now. His blood was up. His gold was up.

I think it began then, Kennet wrote. If a man’s life is a tapestry, then I think today was the first tiny thread that snapped free. Just one thread but enough, when you pulled it, to unravel the whole warp and weft.

One little thread to unravel a man.

I remember Ma teaching Trudy to knit. How to pick up the dropped stitches and make it look like nothing happened.

This is a female skill.

Women know how to pick up dropped things.

Women know how to stitch and mend and fix what’s broken.

Women know how to endure the unendurable.

Women don’t lose themselves.

Women would never let a war like this happen in the first place.

But we are men.

War does things to men. It blows the old rules to shit and writes new ones, making men do things they never dreamed. Like killing three kids by accident and turning around to kill three dozen kids on purpose.

If the world is going to rely on ordinary men to right the wrongs, then those men have to rely on each other.

And what men do in war, they do only for each other.

Asta, it’s so much easier to kill for friends than for a cause.

Causes are distanced, abstract things. Friends are in your face, in your bunk, in your foxhole. They trust you with their lives, they die in your arms with their blood and guts sprayed across your face and their teeth embedded in your flesh.

Family isn’t only your blood. It’s who you bleed for.

What I did today, I did not do for Malmedy.

I did it for Malinda.

Say His Name

“Line ’em up,” Captain Patrick said.

He and a couple other officers started picking random American soldiers. Those soldiers moved forward with their rifles and machine guns.

“No,” Anderson said. “No, this isn’t right.”

“An eye for an eye,” Jock said. “Look it up in that good book of yours. It says, ‘A time for war’ and ‘a time to kill.”

“And a time to forgive and a time for peace. No man can pass judgment. That’s up to God.”