Harry repositioned the pups, turning them over and staring at their bellies. The heads both lolled backward, flowers too heavy for their weakening stalks. “I can be honest with you, Corporal. They’re going to die soon,” Harry said. He was not being cruel. He was speaking instead with compassion, and Lee realized he was the only other person in the world who cared about these puppies.

“What can I do?”

“Ah,” Harry said, looking up. He met Lee’s eye approvingly. “At this late time, you care, and perhaps that’s what you’re built for.”

“Please, just tell me.”

Harry’s explanation was brief: it wasn’t just milk they needed, but beestings, the first milk given after birth. “What about the bitch who lost her litter? Did she reject these two? Yes, that happens.” Harry said that no one knew what chemicals were at play, but unless an animal drank the milk from a mother who had just given birth, or expecting, it would never thrive. “You must find such an animal and have them feed from her.”

“But there aren’t any.”

“I saw one as I was being marched into camp.”

“I just told you there’s not.”

Harry wrapped each puppy separately in a faded olive cloth. Then he leaned forward, pulled up the wire, and, as carefully as if delivering soufflés, slid the dogs to Lee. “This is something you have to want. Their survival.”

“I want that.”

“You’ll have to want it more than anything you’ve wanted. You can’t just play at wanting it. It takes a commitment.”

Lee remembered a saying about the difference between involved and committed, like eggs and bacon. The chicken was involved, the pig was committed. “What do I do?”

It was early evening. Lee left the barracks without asking for leave, just nodding at the single guard posted by his side of the building. There was a frosty wind that whipped the autumn mists, which hit his face like pecks of glass. Men stood by oil drums that salvaged wood burned in. Though it was cold, the mood was exuberant, for in the last few days the Allies had advanced deeper into German territory, and it was becoming clear that Berlin would fall by Thanksgiving.

Lee wore his campaign hat to stay warm, and had thrown his woolen coat over his shoulders. Underneath it, his arms cradled the puppies, and as he walked, he could feel with each bounce of his step their loose skin, the sparse fur, the stubs of their toes that weren’t yet claws.

The town of Fleury was also celebrating, that an influx of Allied soldiers had brought in money, and someone had, through means no one wished to know, located bolts of Moroccan silk. Each had a different pattern, and so the women of the town had unrolled them, had already planned dresses they would make, and had given the children scraps to play with.