Perspective

By Patrick McCormack (Bio on Choices)

The snow was thick on the ground. Weeks of accumulation. It was wearing on us. You can only live, eat and sleep in a frozen foxhole for so long before you get driven mad. So, early one morning I took a walk along the line, alone.

I must’ve gotten turned around and wandered over to their line. What a dumb shit replacement thing to do. I trudged along for a good mile before it dawned on me that I no longer heard English voices through the brush. Then, suddenly, footsteps heard in the distance.

I dropped to one knee and unslung my rifle. I couldn’t pinpoint where the steps were coming from. My eyes searched every direction. Then he appeared. Two steps through the brush and there he was, about 100 yards in front of me. He immediately saw me, his MP-40 sub machine gun pointed right at me.

There was no sound. The snow had stopped falling. I didn’t blink. There wasn’t even a breeze. It was as if the entire world was frozen.

My rifle trained at his chest, finger on the trigger, I saw every detail of his face. Pinhole eyes under that Kraut helmet. The face of born soldier – flat, broad-nosed and huge chin. We stared through each other’s sites for what seemed like days but couldn’t have been more than a few moments. Both of us alone. Wandering. Brought to this frozen hell and looking for a way out, even for just a moment.

Eyes still locked on the German soldier, I lowered my rifle as three consecutive thuds echoed in the sky – mortar fire. I looked up to the gray sky, then back to the German. He was gone. No trace of him. I turned and ran toward the line, holding my helmet on as mortars burst around me. I got to my foxhole, and one year later got home.

I like to think we both had enough of the killing. We both wanted each other to get home.

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Out for a smoke away from the others I must’ve gotten lost. We’d been holed up in that shell of a town Bastogne fending off the Americans for months. So I strolled off on my own away from the decay, the noise and the nonsense of this campaign.

Three cigarettes later I heard footsteps in the distance. I tripped the safety on my weapon and took one last drag of my smoke before I tossed it and stepped through the brush ahead. One American soldier knelt down about 100 yards ahead of me.

We both froze. Statues in a museum of war. Rifles trained, waiting to fire.

Three thuds burst in the distance behind me – our mortars. The American looked up and I stepped back into the brush.

I knelt down and inspected the slide on my MP-40. To this day I still don’t know how it jammed and that American got off with his life.