My heart is sick about it, but I think I’d feel even sicker if I had to see Schmitt mourning Nichols, or Nichols mourning Schmitt.

Both of them leave a wife and kids.

Poor bastards.

29 Mar 1945

Darmstadt.

We entered the city via a pontoon bridge over the Rhine. I’m not sure there’s a military unit more trusted and admired than the corps of engineers. No way, you think, as your track starts to trundle across the bobbing span. No way that thing is going to hold up a tricycle, let alone a track. But it does. Even tanks cross them without a hitch. Unbelievable.

Or as you and I would call it, darling girl: desenrascanco.

Fold up this memory: as we were crossing I saw Captain Jorgensson throw a bullet casing into the Rhine. He saw me watching and kind of scowled, like he was embarrassed to be caught in a superstition. Smack in the middle of the most superstitious men on the planet.

So I shrugged and said, “Nick, Nick, needle in the water, thou sink, I float.”

Jorgy’s whole face changed. He flashed a grin that could only be described as boyish and smacked my back. “You make me feel like home, gullgosse,” he said.

For a moment, I was home and if Jorgy asked, I would’ve dove into the river and gotten his bullet back. I would’ve killed for him.

I think we’re all homesick and craving heroes out here. Not to be heroes but to revere them. When you think about it, we’re none of us old fellows. Some of us are still in our goddamn teens. We’re all of us far from home. We want father figures. When it gets shitty, we want to be told we’re good boys, all of us eldest and finest and the best thing that happened to the unit.

(Oh, don’t laugh at my maudlin crap, Hook. You know how sensitive I am.)

Anyway. Darmstadt was utter desolation. The bombing here was intense. I’ve never seen such destruction. Obliteration. We passed the train yard and gaped at the rails uprooted and twisted into ribbons. Not one whole building remained in the commercial district, just roughed-out remains of ground floors. Block after block of rubble and ruin, and not a soul anywhere. Were the residents long gone? Would they ever come back? How could people possibly rebuild from such annihilation? Is there enough desenrascanco in the world?

We kept pushing into Germany. Lots of fighting in little towns and villages. In a place called Cham, we encountered some of the worst house-to-house fighting I’ve yet experienced. It was mostly the Volkgrenadiers—very old men and very young boys, but desperation made them lethal with their rifles. They were ready to fight to the death, to the last man…

In Cham, Chris Fragiacomo took it in the neck from a sniper.