Dead
The hardest thing about being a dead man was accepting the fact that he was living. The war was great for men like Ronald Spears. The Adventurous type. The One Man Army type. The type who would be willing to throw their lives away for the adrenalin rush, and the type who would willingly accept the medal that came along with the action. The men saw them more as the spawners of the exclamation of 'That Crazy Bastard!', 'The Fuck did he do now?' and the ever popular if not so creative 'are you serious?'.
But when the war was over, when there was no more enemy to fight, no more chances to have their blood split upon the unforgiving ground, men like Ronald Speirs had to accept their time had come and gone. Had to come to accept that he had made it through the war, and now had nothing to show for it.
The medals meant nothing, the stories couldn't buy food or pay rent, the men moved away. Not even the army, who he had done so well for would keep him. They didn't want him, even as the leader of the holding party. They told him to go home.
So he went but he didn't go home.
Living
The sky was raining burning planes. The heat of their decent could be felt miles below them as they fell. Bill Guarnere watched their action in the mirror like eyes of a dead man. Slowly turning, knife clenched in hand, the war debauched man stumbled off, turning away from the living men, who fell burning to their death.
System
It was the systematic killing that got to him. The easy movement of figures across map. As if the Brass expected victory to have the nuances of swift feet. By their liking miles of European country would be wretched from its keeper's firm grasp within seconds, a veritable flood of seizure and relinquish, of positive movement down the proverbial number line. It was their expectance of speedy killing that made itself known to Lewis Nixon. If American generals expected such a thorough destruction of their enemy, did the Germans not expect the same?
Silence
Even after the war it was the silence that got to George Luz, it was the silence that signaled the pause before the advance, the split second when a shell existed in the space directly above you as it curved by. It was silence that signaled death, when those reddened lips could cry no longer and it was just you and the body that had once held your best friend. For Luz it would always be the silence that was his worst nightmare.
It was noise that signified life, with all of its speech and laughter, and the promise of friendship, it was life, even while proclaiming the arrival of bombs and bullets, that would always be an unmarked gift. Silence brought only death.
Punctual
Timeliness had always been important to the young man. Made more so by the armies staunch position about arriving on time. It should have made him smile, but the fact Sobel had yet to arrive at the objective, after all those claims to be the best, to be the fastest, really made him pleased. But then again Dick Winters was not a vindictive man, and he would have much rather had the rest of the platoon on hand as he took the imaginary target. At least the old man got a laugh out of it. He sighed.
Support
There was one thing Muck could always expect after the especially hard breakup with that days girl of his dreams, and that was a platoon full of support.
"I'm real sorry Skip," Penakala would say as he tucked his pants into the top of his jump boots. "Maybe you should give up on and find a new girl, maybe that Stacy broad, she was nice…I think."
Muck would laugh and pound the shorter man on his back, then turn around and head back into the bar, because he was an addict for heartbreak, and those English women sure knew how to hand it out.