Normandy

 A lone figure of a man walks ahead of me on a cold December night, each gust of wind causing him to stumble a bit, but he quickly regains his mission that lies ahead. He was back in Normandy in 1944, and he was just eighteen years of age. What must he be thinking? I say to myself, a hot bowl of soup or a piece of chocolate cake. Little did I know the depth of his thoughts on this cold December night some sixty years later. The sounds of the eighty-eights were deafening as the rounds hit treetops, exploding in mid-air, sending wooden splinters deep into a soldier's now lifeless body face down so he couldn't know who it was. Another explosion and the man sharing his foxhole was cut in half, still conscious enough to scream out in pain. I wonder if he has a wife, a family probably all grown up with kids of their own, and a house he bought decades ago with the GI Bill for veterans. I wonder what his profession was. Maybe a carpenter or plumber, perhaps a newspaper writer or a cook. Whatever he did, I'm sure he did it well, and don't ask me why I think that; I just do. The old man reaches his small house and stops a moment before going inside. There's nothing waiting for him. There is no one to share his day with to make new memories with. Only thoughts of a battlefield littered with fallen soldiers and faces he will see has seen for all of his adult life. Maybe he was a preacher spreading the word and giving comfort or a medic doing his best to keep soldiers alive. The old man disappeared behind the closed door, and I went on my way, picking up the pace a little as tonight was Thursday, which meant Roast beef for dinner. I turned to look for some reason and saw him coming down the steps and walking the path he walked so many times in his head. This time, he talked out loud to his brothers-in-arms and didn't care who thought he was crazy. They were walking beside him because he needed them to, and that's all that mattered to him anymore.

MO