Hook came back with a medic jeep, Kennet wrote. It was already crammed full of wounded guys, but Hook had convinced, bullied or threatened the medic to come get Pete. In the end, we put our Hollywood boy on the hood of the car and I got on top of him to keep him from rolling off.

As I lay with one hand clinging to the windshield, the other arm and both legs wrapped around Pete, I kept talking to him, kept telling him to hang on and stay with me. Joking about the shitty quality of the roads. How I had a few goddamn words for the people in charge (strong letter to follow).

Pete had stopped talking, but every now and then he’d make a little sound against my neck, or squeeze his eyes open and closed very deliberately. He was going grey and his eyes stayed closed for longer and longer. When they opened, the gaze was far, far away.

When he said “Mom” softly, I knew I was losing him and it made me feel like dying, too. I grabbed onto him even tighter. I was babbling anything I could think of to keep him with me, keep him alive. I paused for breath and he opened his eyes and whispered something.

I think he said, “Love you, Fish.”

I’m pretty sure it’s what he said.

I want it to be what he said.

Please let that be what he said.

When we got to the battalion aid station, he was dead.

…

Fuck this fucking war.

…

Like I wrote before, Asta, you never know what little bit of something-or-other is going to get you through or comfort you. When I think that von Asselt didn’t die in the battalion aid station, but died in my arms, smiling at a dumb joke I made, whispering “Love you,” it comforts me. It got me through the day. Because it’s war. You kill three kids and leave it behind. You murder German prisoners of war and move on. You deposit your friend’s dead body, unzip from his tent, unstick from the bond and go back to fight.

You do what you have to do.

No shame.

No prisoners.

No rules.

I had to walk back to the unit unarmed—in all the commotion of getting Pete on the jeep, my rifle got left behind. When I got back to the place where the shell had exploded, I found my gun all smashed up and useless. But a little ways away, I found a carbine in the snow. It must have been Pete’s. So I took it.