The shutter on the Rolleiflex clicked intermittently as they hiked and Jess was grateful that nobody had really noticed her yet; her helmet hid her face, her uniform was the same as the men’s, and she was tall enough that she didn’t look too out of place. The only thing that marked her as different was the camera she carried instead of a gun.

They reached a place where the slope leveled out into a ledge, with a large flat rock in the center. The men veered off and found positions, seating themselves on the ground or leaning against the face of the mountain. Jess sat near the edge, the daredevil child still hidden inside her making her hang her legs and boots over the side, swinging freely. Dan did the same and they both stared out at the massive Garigliano Valley spread before them. A faint ribbon of distant sea shone blue on one side; the mountains loomed up over the other. Most of the ground in the valley was ruined but, up here, olive trees clung stubbornly to the hillside and anemones bloomed pink and purple in cracks of ground. She drank in the view like whiskey, trying to ignore the fire that burned below them, blazing high even though Jess couldn’t believe there was anything down there left to burn.

She lined up the Rolleiflex and shot the once fertile valley, which now grew nothing but guns, then a group of men sprawled on the ground, then a mule with, inexplicably, a small camp organ on its back, then another man with a large book that he placed on the flat rock. Jess realized he was wearing a chaplain’s uniform but before she could ask Dan about it, a shell whizzed over the group, dropping harmlessly into the valley below them, more fire marking its detonation.

“How close exactly are the Germans?” she asked Dan.

“About four hundred yards,” he replied cheerfully.

“That sounds a little too close,” she said.

“They won’t hit us. It’s Easter; a temporary ceasefire. Besides, we’re not in range. They’d have to move and they’re not going to come out of their dugouts with so many of us sitting here.”

Before Jess could decide if Dan was right, the chaplain began to speak. Somehow, they had a microphone and loudspeakers rigged up and the chaplain’s welcome, to both Catholics and Protestants of the U.S. and German armies, and his wish to them all for a joyous Easter, was proclaimed in both German and English, the sound ringing out to where Jess imagined the German dugouts must be, and carrying far out over the valley below them.

“After the Sabbath, and toward dawn on the first day of the week, Mary of Magdala and the other Mary went to see the sepulcher,” the chaplain read in German. Then he reread the gospel in English.

Throughout, nobody spoke. Instead they sat listening to the story of a miracle, all too aware that what everyone wanted, no matter their nationality, was a miracle of the kind that hadn’t been seen since the Gospel of Saint Matthew was written.