Schmitt’s head was turned toward the eastern horizon, his stare somewhere in Russia. All around Kennet, men looked at the cardinal points with flat, empty eyes. Only Anderson’s gaze was down, in the pages of his pocket bible. He flipped this way and that, unable to find a passage that suited him.

“I’m so fucking tired,” Jock said to no one. A cigarette dangled from his bottom lip but he hadn’t lit it. O’Hara sat next to him, hands folded over his mouth and nose.

Little by little, new troops arrived in the village, insignia identifying them as the 17th Airborne Division. Lounging and strutting around, they looked fresh, sleek, well-rested and cocky. Grinning and calling to each other, making cracks, showing off.

If you only knew, Kennet thought. What lies ahead. If you’d seen what I’ve seen, you’d wish you were leaving. You poor bastards, if you could only…

A wave of sympathetic anxiety rose up in his chest. His fatigued body gave a minute twitch, wanting to do something to protect these new brothers. Then he softened and slumped into resignation again. Nothing could be done. There was nothing for it. Kennet’s platoon had clocked out, now these fellows from the 17th were the next shift in the factory of war. Kennet couldn’t warn them, couldn’t protect them, couldn’t save them. They had to go in blind and do the job on the fly. Physically trained but mentally unprepared. And at the end of their shift—a week, ten days, two weeks—they’d be relieved and they’d sit around, depleted and staring, pitying the incoming troops and trying to avoid looking at the gaps in their ranks.

Every squad was full of holes, but the battered platoon would rest, then go back into battle and more of them would die. Rest. Fight. Count the dead. Rest. Fight. Count the dead. Until, just as Marty said, “nobody was left.”

Kennet followed Schmitt’s gaze toward the east. Toward Russia, Siberia, China, Japan, across the Pacific to Canada. His vision threaded out long, making a transcontinental leap to the Great Lakes. It wended the ancient waterway of Superior, Huron, Erie and Ontario, into the mouth of the St. Lawrence River and the tiny peninsula of Clayton. His eyes looked up at the Fisher Hotel, at the carved wooden fish hanging over the veranda stairs, and he knew he’d never see his home again. Just as every man around him knew, or was quickly coming to grips with it.

Few of them were getting out of here alive.

And, thought every man in uniform, I doubt I’ll be one of them.

They stayed quiet and introspective as they assembled and trudged toward the waiting half-tracks. Thinking of all the things undone, words unspoken, dreams unfulfilled, knowledge unlearned, girls un-kissed.