Katja

Promise to Protect

"What happened to your legs?"

"Accident. Tripped on ice."

A hum of agreement tried to escape the lips of Andrei as he shoveled a spoon full of soup into his mouth.

"Eat slower. God knows the last time you ate." His prominent bones gave away to anyone that he was only just weeks away from starving to death.

Picking up the piece of bread on his plate, I started ripping it into small pieces to prevent him from stuffing the whole piece in his mouth. The smaller pieces he would eat more slowly.

"Do you know anything about my brother?"

He held a spoon halfway up to his mouth before he stopped and looked up towards me. It was the first time he had looked me straight in the eyes since we sat down. His sad eyes grew glossy before he quickly dropped the spoon back into the bowl, splattering the soup around the table. He was quiet for a moment as he looked down at the bowl.

"To be honest," he began as tears slowly started to slide down his cheeks, "I don't know where he is. I haven't seen him in over six months. He uh-," he abruptly cut off as he brought his hands up to his face and violently starting crying.

"Do not worry now Andrei. You do not have to tell me now."

Some of the Russian soldiers who sat near us watched the scene. All of them with tired eyes and dirty faces. None of them made any reaction to Andrei's outburst. In these days, it was no longer rare to find a soldier breakdown.

"I'm sorry. I'm sorry." He softly repeated to himself.

"Shhh. It's okay. Finish eating so that you can wash up and then go to bed."

"I am the last one out of the group, Katja. Misha stepped on a land mine and exploded. His blood and guts were like confetti in the air. I was showered in them. Luka was shot right in the head as I stood next to him. He was shooting a machine gun as I fed the bullets into the gun. The previous guy had gotten shot so I had to help Luka fire the gun. Then the next thing you know he had a hole in his head and the gun went quiet. Oleg blew up by a grenade. Gennadi shot, Aleksei shot, Lev shot, and Peter shot."

"I will never be able to play soccer with them again, Katja. Never be able to yell at Gennadi for always cheating and never be able to gang up on Misha when I scored against him. It's all over."

My own eyes felt heavy as I listened to the deaths of the boys I had grown up with. The sound of Andrei's cries played in the background as I focused my attention on the fellow Russian soldiers who sat in the room amongst me. What terrors and horrors they had gone through, I would never know. I just knew that I wanted to do whatever it takes to save them. To save them so that one day they wound be able to see the joy in life again.

As I scanned the dimly lit room, I kept silently wishing that somehow one of the men would turn into my brother. That I could finally hug Nikolai again and tell him that I love him.

But every face and body was just the worn out soul of someone else.

Standing in the far corner in a doorframe to the hallway stood Wilhelm. He stood there silently, leaning against the door with his arms crossed, intensely staring at me. I met his eyes for a while, giving him back the same glare. Anger contorted his usually calm face. Wilhelm being angry made him seem more threatening than what I was accustomed to. He was the same officer who had given me gloves and saved me from a river. At the moment, he looked like an officer who would have done the exact opposite. An officer who would have let me walk off with cold hands and no gloves and an officer who would have let me drown in the river.