Witness

22 - Variations on a Rose

My leaden head leaned against the cold stone of the cave we had turned into a defensive encampment, watching down the slopes as the first snows fell. It was my turn to keep watch, so I pressed myself to the wall of the cave mouth and stared out, eyes almost glassy as they watched for an enemy assault. Or at least, that was what I was supposed to be looking for.

Instead, I observed the snowflakes: one after the next and the next. They fell perfect, white, self-contained worlds that knew nothing of the suffering they melted against. The stones here stood scarred by blasts and small arms fire, the ground beyond our cave more like the surface of the moon than a normal mountainside. With winter coming to the valley, there was little green growth for the frost to claim that napalm and firebombs had not already destroyed.

That was their solution: to bombard us for hours upon hours, hoping to break us. What had we done? Hidden in our holes and then, as they reloaded and their planes coursed away, returned fire with the few shots we had. Others had volunteered to sabotage enemy armor and never returned, dying in hellish flame that took the tanks with them.

It was like the same day, lived over and over, for a thousand lives. The only difference was the little inch of ground won or lost. At least, until the reports trickled in.

They are leaving, our scouts reported. All of them are pulling out.

The others were celebrating behind me over scraps of bread and a bottle of some rotgut liberated from the corpse of an enemy. I shivered in the cold night air away from the fire, nestling deeper into my field jacket and the three layers of stolen shirts I wore underneath it. I carried my piece of bread like a talisman in my coat pocket, picking it apart tiny crumb by tiny crumb over the course of the week. I ate like a songbird. Survival, even victory, sweet as it was, meant there were no more rations to pilfer.

I heard rocks scatter lower down the approach and turned to look, bringing my sights up to my eye. I still used iron sights and an older model of rifle, even with the new weapons we'd captured. Mine was more reliable, required less cleaning, and suited me fine. It could kill. That was all I wanted.

A small group of people trudged up the path, but the cloth they held up was our flag. That didn't ‌mean it was safe, however. We had ambushed enough groups to know how such a game was played. I grabbed my radio, barely more secure than a child's walkie-talkie. "Identify yourselves."

The radio crackled as it came to life. "We're Telenni Section, ZDF."

"Who is leading your section?" My questions came as crisp and clear as the winter wind.

"Semele Kontos."

I straightened up. That was Ioudas's sister, which meant she had survived the war so far. It had been months since they had last spoken. Which meant...which meant... "Why are you here at our position?" I asked, feeling suddenly faint.

A familiar voice came on the radio. "We are your relief," Semele said.

Those words made no sense. It took me a moment to process, sluggish in my thought even though the muscle reflexes of my aim were still strong and quick.  "I thought you were fighting on the southern edge of the valley."

"They pulled out there two weeks ago. It's been all quiet, enough for us to redeploy. You're supposed to rotate back home."

I sat down hard, every ache and weakness of the flesh for the past six months hitting me in an instant. I remember making a noise, a little sob that stirred my comrades out of their celebration. As much as my body gave in, however, my mind couldn't understand what Semele was saying.

Home? We were going home? We the dead, who had manned our posts without relief for more than six months? We the dead, whose supplies came scavenged from the bodies of our foes? We who had lost toes and fingers to frostbite, we whose ribs jutted like the ridges on a washboard, we who had done everything we could, fought everything we could, with nothing for so long that we could not remember what it was like to have something? No, no, no. That was impossible.