Good Fellows: Debt & Dishonor

1. Godspeed

Monday, 22 April, 1918

Daniel Freitag sat tucked away in a trench with a fine rain falling over the faded brown of his mud stained uniform. His cracked helmet he held over his sketch of a young soldier who lay sleeping with his back against the dirt wall and his helmet angled down over his face. He laid the helmet overtop of the portrait, feeling tired himself, and pressed his head back into the slick wall of the trench. He lowered his hand down into the shallow pool of water which had filled the ground around them and his palm sank down into the mud. Up into the sky he stared, his pupils as black as a widow's mourning, surrounded by ghostly blue irises... surrounded by mud, like everything was. The clouds were a ghostly grey, just as they had been for days, and the light rain which fell on them continually was only enough to compound the unfavorable battlefield conditions; it could never wash a man clean. He closed his eyes, exhausted, and within a few seconds his muscles relaxed. His fingers fell open and dropped his pencil down into the murky water as his hand slipped from his knee.

"Dammit!" he muttered, springing again to life as he felt around for his prized instrument.

The young man across from him began to stir and pushed back his helmet. Clutching his rifle as though the enemy was near, his bright blue eyes shone with steadfast courage. "Corporal?"

Daniel shook his head. "Sorry, soldier. I just dropped my pencil. That's all."

The boy nodded. He caught sight of the sketch book Daniel held on his lap and smiled. "Here. You can have mine." He drew an artist's pencil out of his bag and offered it to the distressed corporal.

Daniel's eyes widened. "You draw?"

The boy's cheeks turned pink with embarrassment, and he waved his hand dismissively. "Only a little. Mainly animals."

Freitag wiped his muddy hands on his uniform and accepted the pencil. "Thank you," he said, and he stared at the child, who must have been half his age. "I'm Daniel, by the way. Daniel Freitag." He offered his hand in friendship.

The boy grinned, and he grabbed his hand to shake it. "Walter Kirchlich."

His hands were still soft, and Daniel surmised that he couldn't have been long in the field. "Where's home for you?"

"Bevel."

"Bevel? You're not related to the psychiatrist, are you?"

Walter glowed with pride. "My father."

Daniel nodded. It figured.

"And you?" Walter inquired. "Where's home for you?"

Daniel shook his head. "I haven't got one. Haven't got a family, either." He paused, looking up at the sky. "Years ago, my father died, and I inherited." He laughed with scorn. "You volunteered, didn't you?"

Walter nodded.

Freitag smiled. "I thought so. You're too young to be drafted. Your old man must really be proud. You know that? He must really be proud to have a son so brave and valiant. I was never that for my father." His eyes dropped and his heart was like water. "He was always telling me to be strong, but I never was. I was always a weakling, given more to art than labor. I got drafted into the militia once, and I ran. They wanted to arrest me for it, but I took the last of my inheritance and I ran. But then came the day when I spent my last pfennig, and I remembered my father, how he told me to be strong. I could feel his disappointment in me, in the soft coward I always had been, and I promised myself that never again would I run."

Walter reached over and patted Daniel's boot. "I'm sure you never let him down," the boy replied, gently smiling.

They were empty words, filled with the kindly sentiment of human compassion but void of any concrete truth. Freitag smirked. How like the son of a psychiatrist.