LOSS
"He stayed behind so we could get clear. So the rest of us could get away. The camera jammed, we couldn't get film of the documents we were sent after. So I studied them, memorized them. I have the better memory. He stayed behind and got killed so I could get the information out. If he'd been a regular soldier he would get a medal for that, but as it is…"
"You're sure he wasn't just wounded?"
"I'm sure. I wouldn't have left him if there'd been any chance."
"What about the rest of them? Did they get away?"
"Three of us made it back to England. There was an air strike in the town before we could get out. Actor was killed in that. I lost Goniff and Chief after we got back, they both died of injuries they suffered in the air raid."
He sat silently with them as they held each other. She'd turned into her husbands arms as soon as he'd confirmed that there was no chance their son was still alive, held prisoner but alive giving them some sort of hope of seeing him again when the war was finally over. As soon as he'd crushed that hope her tears had started and she'd buried her face into her husband's chest and covered her ears, blocking out the sight and sound of him, the one who ordered her son into danger, the one who came back instead of him.
g
It had been the same with Goniff's mother in New York. He found the newsstand she operated and watched her through the day, following after she closed up and headed home. There were two of them in the small apartment, just two women who offered him tea and sat politely and grew old while he told them how their gift to the future had died from infection in the hospital in London seven days after they'd made it back from a mission that was classified as a success, but still left their Rodney in a grave outside London that they would never see. He had to tell it twice, Goniff's mother and Molly called a neighbor in to hear it all again so that they were sure they hadn't misunderstood him. The man wanted some kind of chance that there'd been a mistake, that it was some other boy who had died, his eyes pleading for a lie for the women. But he couldn't spin any kind of tale for them that would give them that hope, he could only give them the truth, and add the weight of their sorrow to his own.
There was no family to carry the news to for either Chief or Actor. He would bear the grief of their loss by himself. Actor at least was buried in Europe close to where he'd been born and raised but Chief would spend eternity in the green countryside of England far from the arid red rock cliffs of his homeland. He'd gotten permission to bury him in the graveyard near the mansion, the family that held the manor refused space on the grounds themselves, but the vicar at the local church had welcomed Chief, and Goniff. They buried them side by side. If there could be no family to watch over them at least they wouldn't be there alone.
Sergeant Major Rawlins and a few of the guards were there but as soon as the service was over they shook his hand and loaded on trucks and headed off to their new assignments leaving him alone there under the trees. It had only been a memorial service, the burials had been weeks before but he'd been unable to get there. The men that knew the boys from their trips into the Doves had held a wake then, but they'd never gotten to know him so when he entered the pub they'd left him alone while he drank his solitary salute to his men.
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He could have left the notification of their deaths to the Army. They always sent a cable and then followed it up with a visit from a chaplain and Reynolds promised him that small tribute would be paid to Casino and Goniff. But it was something he owed them, a duty he wouldn't shirk off onto some stranger's shoulders. So he sat in the kitchen and watched as Casino's parents held each other and cried. It had taken nearly an hour for their energy to spend itself, leaving them quietly clinging to the comfort of each others arms, leaving him bowed down with guilt. When he moved to take his leave of them they both reached out for him.
"You'll stay here with us? You can use the guest room again."
The offer was made out of kindness and love, but he saw the revulsion lurking in her eyes too. "No Ma'am, I'm afraid I can't. I have my orders and I've already asked them for an extension so that I could get to New York and then come out here to see you. They won't give me another one. I'm sorry."
"Can we take you? Is it somewhere close by?"
"No sir, I've been posted temporarily to Georgia. I don't know where they'll send me after that." And before they could offer to prolong the painful visit by taking him to the train he informed them. "The driver that brought me here waited, the car's still outside."
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His things were neatly hung away in the closet and drawers of the space that he would call home until the Army decided what to do with him. He'd arrived exhausted from the trip and the emotional meetings he'd had with Goniff and Casino's families. The paperwork had been done in a daze and he'd received his orders without listening to them, without fully understanding them. He was too tired to eat and refused the offer of a guide to the dinning hall, he'd find that tomorrow, he'd told them, after he'd rested. And so they'd finally left him alone.
He sat at the table in the corner of the room and stared down into the glass. He'd been there long enough that the afternoon light had faded into dusk and then the room had gone dark as night fell. He didn't have the energy or enough interest in his surroundings to get up and turn on the lights. As the things around him faded away into darkness the memories started to play out for him again... Selecting his men from the meetings he'd held at the prisons, their training at the estate and their first missions together… and then the disaster of their last assignment.