"Drop it!" Eugene yelled, his usually soft voice reaching maximum volume. His frozen finger crept towards the awaiting trigger, "I said drop it!"

The boy's head swung from side to side, much like a toddler in blind defiance. The youth held on tighter to the gun, his hands white and shaking "Ich liebe Deutschland!"

"Don't be an idiot kid." Lieutenant Buck Compton growled, taking a step towards the crazed boy.

"Ich liebe Deutschland!" He yelled again, pistol pointed at the two approaching Americans

"Sure sure," Muttered Compton, dropping his gun into the snow, and holding his large hands up in an example of appeasement. "We believe you. Now lower your damn weapon."

The boy did not listen to Compton's orders. Either he didn't understand English, or he was simply intent on killing the two men encroaching on the post he'd been charged with defending. With hands that were as unsure of the gun as they would have been a woman's hips, he took aim, and the air was filled with the sound of a single gunshot.

The bullet from the boy's luger whizzed past Medic Roe, somewhere a few feet above his head. The boy's jaw hung open, at the sight of the two men still standing. He hurried to cock the pistol again, but struggled with the mechanism. Compton, whose gun was cast into the snow as a gesture of appeasement, cast a glance over his shoulder at the medic that stood behind him. "Anytime now Eugene!"
The boy fidgeted with the handgun once more, his thick gloves hindering his ability to reload the weapon.

"Is that an order sir?" Eugene asked, grimacing into the frigid headwind as he waited for an answer.

"Yep."

The boy took aim again, clumsy fingers feeling around for the trigger.

"Lord forgive me for I have sinned." Eugene breathed, as he flipped out his own pistol and shot the boy square in the head.

The teenager dropped to the cold cobblestone, as hot blood gushed from the gaping hole in his forehead. Compton said nothing, but retrieved his gun from the ground, and sidestepped the large puddle of blood that had poured out into the snow, staining it an all too familiar shade of red.

Eugene shook his head, and lifted the boy's limp body into his arms. He trudged through the knee deep snow and carried him over to a pre-assembled pile of corpses. He looked for a moment for the kindest place to set the boy, and finally decided to leave him on the right of an old man whose hair was greyer than ash.

"Eugene! Objective's up here. I found the rest of the company!" He heard Compton call. "Let's get move on."

Eugene straightened the boys jacket, readjusted the collar, and placed his hands across his chest.

"O divine Master, grant that I may not so much seek to be consoled as to console; to be understood, as to understand; to be loved, as to love; for it is in giving that we receive, it is in pardoning that we are pardoned, and it is in dying that we are born to Eternal Life."

Eugene drug his gloved hand down over the boy's face, shutting his open eyes.

"Amen…"

x.x.x.x.x

Eugene shot up in bed, and wiped away the cold sweat that dripped off his forehead. He squinted desperately into the murky darkness of the army tent, trying not to see the boy's piercing blue eyes, that horrified expression the boy's face had contoured into as the bullet shattered his skull. Eugene tried to picture the image of the teenagers body where he had left it- beside the peaceful old man.

But only saw gaping blue eyes, and blonde hair stained with crimson streaks.

Eugene gripped his Red Cross armband, and felt tremendously guilty.

He had killed.

He had gone against his family creed.

He had induced death, the thing which he usually fought so hard to elude.

He had gone against every instinct in his entire body.

And yet, at the time, he had only felt instinct and nothing more.

x.x.x.x