Tom could still hear the reverberation of the gunfire that had been all around them. He wanted to forget it. But to forget it meant that it would be lost to history. And history had that terrible habit of repeating itself if one didn’t learn from it.

Building a makeshift bridge put our operation behind by half a day, allowing the German troops to rally and keep Allied troops from the ultimate objective: crossing the Rhine. Other bridges that had not been secured meant that reinforcements arrived later than planned.

Four days. Four whole days that the airborne had fought off the Germans with none of the support they’d been promised.

Cold, weary, broken.

Dead.

It had been the largest operation attempted by the new airborne division of the army. Had the defeat jeopardized its fledgling status? Twenty thousand men had descended by parachute, fourteen thousand by gliders.

Early projections were reporting that seventeen thousand men had been lost.

Seventeen thousand men. The nearest town of note near his home was Williamsburg. Nine thousand people lived there. It was as if all of Williamsburg were wiped out. Two times over.

It was nearly impossible to fathom.

A sniffle shook him from his memories. He couldn’t write these words to Margaret. They were too bleak. They lacked the poetry that William had eked out of him. She deserved more than a broken soldier’s sadness.

He was grateful there was no paper.

In the darkness, he couldn’t tell who had made the noise—someone from his unit? Or one of the British or Polish boys who were scattered in the area? The sniffle turned into a wail and oddly, it created a fissure in the hardness of his heart.

Like him, some unknown soldier had also found a hole in the darkness to rest in. If he had to guess, many woeful souls were hidden across the battlefield, wallowing for a few minutes before returning to their units for the night. Where they’d have to muster the façade of bravery. Where they’d have to pretend that they were grateful to not be among the dead, living to do this all over again tomorrow. And the day after. And the day after.

Tom’s father had never admitted to feeling frightened in combat. Sobel had been an impenetrable fortress and the men suspected that he had no emotions built into him at all. But Winters—God bless Captain Winters—had told his men that a hero is not a man who doesn’t know fear. It’s a man who does know fear and faces it head-on.

For Captain Winters, if not for himself or anyone else, Tom would rally in the morning and be the stalwart soldier that he had to be and he would press on.

But not tonight. Tonight, he would mourn in darkness all that had been lost.

*  *  *

“Lord almighty, have you looked outside?”