Although the port of Liverpool had received heavy bombing, most of the city’s residential areas had been spared. That was not the case for London. An ashen haze loomed over the great city. Ollie stuck his head out the window to get a better look. Wind blew across his face, filling his nostrils with the scent of smoke. And as the train chugged into the city limits, he saw destroyed factories, burned buildings, a church with its steeple toppled, and blocks of what used to be row houses reduced to smoldering rubble. It looked as if London was being cremated, one piece at a time.

As the train passed the first cemetery, Ollie noticed scores of fresh graves tarnishing the once-manicured grounds, with dozens of new holes being dug for those waiting to be buried or in preparation for another night of bombing. Rows of pine boxes were propped against the side of a mortuary like a macabre assembly line. And just as Ollie was becoming numb to the horror, he saw them. The small coffins.

Ollie felt as if the air had been sucked out of his body. “It’s not supposed to happen this way,” he whispered to himself. Children were not supposed to go before their parents. And wars were not supposed to be fought in cities. He had been taught in school that combat took place on battlefields. Gettysburg. The Western Front. Gallipoli. The Battle of the Somme. Bloodshed was in the muddy trenches, so he believed. Weren’t those the rules? But that was not the case with the Nazis. The Luftwaffe had taken the war to the cities, with no regard for the killing of innocent civilians, including children.

Ollie watched the cemetery disappear in the distance and wondered if there would be enough trees in all of Britain to build the coffins.

A child whimpered. He turned and saw a mother two rows behind him attempting to console her daughter, who was perhaps five or six years old. The woman was caressing the girl’s face and doing her best to distract her child from the ghastly view outside the window. “Your father is safe . . . the war will be over soon,” the woman repeated, as if she were chanting affirmations. But the girl wailed harder. And the mother broke down and wept.

Ollie reached in his suitcase and found his only clean item, a sock, the twin to the one he had used for his head. He stood, rolled the garment into a ball, and walked down the aisle. The woman and her child looked up, both with tears running down their cheeks.

“I wish I had a handkerchief,” Ollie said, handing the sock to the woman.

The woman accepted the gesture and dabbed her daughter’s cheeks. Ollie returned to his seat and put up the window, attempting to shut out the death and destruction. He sat for the remainder of the trip with his face buried in his hands.