“Maybe the to means important. If you say you’re going to make love to someone, you’re going to make love important to them.”

“Make them more important than love,” Nichols said, his own finger in the air.

“Or you can bypass all the poetic nonsense and just use the word fuck,” Jock said.

“You know, Jock, sometimes you can just participate nicely in a conversation to pass the time.”

“I’d rather fuck to pass the time.”

“We know.”

“It’s a lot of context to pack into one little word,” Nichols said.

“Maybe it’s an infinitive,” O’Hara said quietly.

A beat as everyone looked at the normally reticent man, remembering he was there.

“What do you mean?” Kennet said.

“An infinitive. To run. To walk. To shoot. To kill.”

“To fuck,” Jock said.

“To be or not to be,” Anderson said.

“Pardon you, Shakespeare,” Hook said.

“Those are infinitive verbs,” Kennet said. “But you isn’t a verb. There’s no to you.”

“There should be,” O’Hara said.

“What would it mean?”

“How would you even conjugate it?” Schmitt said. “I you. You you. He yous. She yous.”

“We you?”

“I’m youing?”

“I want to you you.”

“Damn, I wish I’d youed that.”

O’Hara smiled at the banter, but his arms were crossed over his chest and his chin tilted into his idea. “Joke all you want,” he said. “I think it works. To you means to be yourself.”

“I’m going to make love be yourself?” Kennet said.

“No.” O’Hara’s chin tilted the other way. “I mean, yeah. Kind of.”

Schmitt laughed and jostled him. “You have no idea what you’re talking about.”

“I’m participating nicely in the conversation.”

“Jesus Christ, this is stupid.” Jock said to no one in particular.

“What’s up your ass?” Nichols said.

“Nothing.”

“Yeah. Like this whole war is ‘nothing.’”

“Say what’s on your mind, bud,” O’Hara said. “Participate nicely.”

“I didn’t finish high school and when you guys talk all intellectual about infinite and conjugal verbs, I feel really stupid.”

“You’re smarter than all of us,” Ingle said.

Jock sucked his teeth. “Go fuck to you.”

Schmitt laughed. “See? That was a witty, clever comeback.”

“Nicely done,” Kennet said. “Touché.”

February-April 1945

Nothing For It

February dragged by with an agonizing, mile-by-mile, battle-by-battle slowness. As well as becoming anesthetized to death and gore and dismemberment and misery, the men of Kennet’s unit became immune to how they smelled after months of living, moving and fighting in the open. Body odor was the least of it.

“War smells like a million dirty diapers,” Emil Fiskare had told his eldest and finest.

You were right, Paps, Kennet wrote home. As usual.