I don’t know what made me look to the right—a sound, an intuition—but there I saw a German soldier in a filthy and tattered uniform bearing down on me with a bayonet raised high. I turned just in time to grab the knife-wielding hand by the wrist. In that instant we had seized each other, locked, almost motionless, in a struggle to the death. My cigarette fell onto his coat sleeve. I don’t know what I looked like to him, but his gaunt face was desperate and, oddly, almost pleading. He pressed harder and harder but I matched him sinew for sinew. Probably the deciding factor in that brawl was the fact that I was well-fed and he was not. He might have been trying to kill me in hopes of getting a few rations.

The smoldering sleeve started to burn. Smoke got into my left eye. I winced and he pressed harder. We were both shaking under the exertions, literally on fire. I noticed a tear coming from his eye. At first I thought it was in reaction to the smoke, but then I saw, and felt, that he was crying. He shook harder and I was able to press him down onto the rain-soaked mud. There I got the upper hand, forcing the blade toward his throat. He was trying his best to protect himself while blubbering.

I could have killed him as I had a dozen others in hand-to-hand combat. Death dealing was second nature after years on the battlefield. But instead I pushed his bayonet arm to the side, slamming it down on the wet earth, extinguishing the fire. He released the dagger, curled into a ball, and cried for all he was worth. I sat there next to him for long minutes. When he finally sat up I handed him my rations and indicated that he could leave. I should have taken him as a POW, but lately our troop had been executing anyone they deemed a Nazi.

Craig Kilian reminded me of the soldier I spared. Shell-shocked by war and stunned in civilian life, he was living in a world of his own, still trying to find a way back home. There were thousands of young men like Craig coming back from Vietnam. Innocents, killers, and children, all rolled up into the war-hardened bodies of veterans who had no idea what they’d done or why.

I reached into the drawer that held my pistol and came out with an ashtray kept there for whenever my friend Mouse came by to visit. Placing the ceramic dish in front of Craig I said, “Knock yourself out.”

He took another drag off the low-tar cigarette and then tapped a smattering of gray ash onto the white porcelain.

There we sat; him hunched forward, smoking, and me leaning back, wondering whether I should have taken the pistol from the drawer.

Maybe two minutes passed.

“Why are you here, Mr. Kilian?”