Warnings: violence, gore, heavy subject matter, character death.
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The first rule of the army was that a soldier should never make any friends with other soldiers. Lives were fragile, like too many plates stacked on an unstable shelf, quaking in the aftermath of the war's tremors. Husbands kept photos of wives, girlfriends, and honeys they'd met the night before they were shipped off like packages, tucked away in the pocket closest to their chests. They kept photos of mothers, fathers, brothers, family members. They called the other soldiers their brothers, but they didn't keep photos of them tucked in their pockets. When bullets whizzed through their rib cages, visions of barley fields, lemonade, baseball games in alleyways and thanksgiving dinners plagued their dying minds as they cried for their mothers and pleaded with their God. They didn't think of their comrades, of their brothers- because comrades died, and mothers and sisters waited at home for those black cars to pull onto their driveways.
When presented with the opportunities for such visions, Ivan did not have any memories of Thanksgivings, or baseball games, or barley fields. He thought of snowfields, snow angels beneath the sycamore trees, and evenings spent by the fireplace illuminating a chess match against his grandfather.
With the only layer of warmth against the cold Italian nights being the rifle painfully tight against his sternum, the milliseconds where his eyelids stayed closed - one could barely call it 'sleep' - brought him nightmares of dying. War gave a man creativity with that notion to the point where Ivan could perfectly picture his corpse shot, mutilated, blown to pieces, punctured, severed-
-but the nightmares left him in places he was already unable to move, dug into trenches, backs pressed against fallen ruins of an Italian church, so still and cold and silent that it was almost a mirage or abstraction of the concept of death. The waking nightmares - the "daymares" - were dangerous, took place during moments when Ivan should be running, charging, shooting - when a bullet whizzed past too close to his helmet or his neck and he'd start screaming, digging his fingers into his unbroken flesh so fiercely that it surfaced beads of blood that shouldn't be there.
When the bullets ceased and cries died out, Ivan was granted the opportunity to (attempt to) close his eyes, but doing so brought visions worse even than the landscapes of blood, flesh, and bullets splayed over the jigsaw cracks in the ruptured cobblestone streets.
Close his eyes and wait, wait with backs pressed against stains of comrades' and enemies' dried blood on the walls, for the next day when Ivan would die. The day when the dreaded letter commissioned to the typewriter - Dear Miss Braginsky, we regret to inform you that -and the long black car arrives on his wintry driveway; and the men with their balding heads exposed to the cold and removed infantry caps pressed to their chests leave permanent tracks on the snowy porch when making their way towards the red door.
"Man, that was rough today."
Ivan shook from his thoughts like a man with a defibrillator, and turned to address the foul-smelling soldier who had perched beside him. The tiny orange ember at the end of his cigarette sprang to life from the man's deep inhale. He exhaled smoke into the night sky that rose to the stars without a steady wind to dissipate it.
While Ivan's eyes followed the smoke to the cosmos, the other soldier stuck out his hand and took Ivan's without physical consent, and squeezed it what Ivan thought to be a handshake - and it was strong, impressively so, and it was a wonder how a man could have this much strength to put towards such a meaningless task after the day they'd faced. "Name's Private Jones. Well, actually it's Alfred - Alfred Franklin Jones. Most people here just call me-"
"Why are you here?" Ivan removed his hand with a vigor he knew he would regret wasting, and not putting towards something more meaningful like the venom that was supposed to be in his tone. It sounded more like incredulity, but Alfred treated it all the same - with that irritatingly optimistic smile of his that dazzled like the notion that the war could end tomorrow.
"You're always off by yourself. I thought maybe you'd like some protection."
"I don't need-"
"Or company, at least."
The Russian fell silent, prey now to the thought of being marooned by those he was supposed to think of as brothers. The ones he was supposed to consider family, but who he saw as blank slates he could replace with his face to imagine his vision of death in another's eyes when they look upon him. Damn, no good communists. They's just as bad as them Krauts.
"Hey, soldier, you haven't even told me your name. You know, it's polite to tell your name, too, when someone introduces themselves."
The Russian swallowed, complying with an irritated utter: "Ivan."
"Ivan what?"
At this point Ivan believed he was wasting his breath to entertain a boy who looked like he'd barely passed the consenting age of enlistment. That still did not stop the hesitation… before he replied, "Braginsky."
Private Alfred grinned, his cigarette nearly sliced in half by the effort put into it. "Relax, Braginsky, I know you're Russian. I've heard some of the shit the others say about your kind, but they got no business doin' it."
Ivan sank against the wall, registering the tiny light of the cigarette being flung into a nearby pile of rubble where it extinguished itself. "I can't wait until the war's over," Alfred sighed, voice just above a whisper. "I'm going to get myself a burger the size of my head and a chocolate milkshake with whipped cream and two cherries… and I'm going to go home to Maddie, tell her much I love her, and make love to her all night long."
The tiny twitch in the corner of Ivan's mouth could barely be considered a smile, but Alfred took what he could get from his new found audience member (probably the only one in their battalion who hadn't heard that plan of his before), and began plaguing the Russian with an expectant look. "What about you?"
Suddenly put on the spot, Ivan realized that he hadn't put thought towards his plans postmortem, because he really had expected to die in the battles before, and if not - well, there was always tomorrow. Ivan lifted his helmet from his head just to card through his hair. "Go home."
Alfred wrinkled his nose at the boring, obvious response and pressed for finer details. "Ya got a girl waiting for you there?"
"Two." Ivan responded, replacing his helmet.
"Two?" The American's eyes lit up with a flicker of envy. "You lucky bastard!"
"My sisters." Ivan corrected.
The envy dissipated and made way for what sounded like pity. "What? Ain't got a squeeze?"
Ivan shook his head.
"Did you and your girl have a scrap or somethin'?" Alfred looked on as Ivan wasted another significant amount of energy shaking his head so shallowly Alfred could barely catch it in the dark. "Naw, don't tell me! Ya ain't never been kissed neither?" The American's hand clapped over his mouth, and the slap it made sounded like a gunshot, and Ivan flinched, waiting for the bullet to lodge into his heart because he never wanted to die as much as he did right now.
"We can't have that now. No man should go to war never havin' been kissed."
"It is all right," the taller soldier lied. "It does not bother me." At least it didn't until Alfred brought it up.
"You could die tomorrow."
A jolt ran up Ivan's spine as the bold American confirmed his fear in words. The tone in Alfred's statement motioned towards the idea that Alfred, too, was just as afraid as Ivan was, and hid behind burgers, cherries, shakes, whipped cream, and a girl to keep the morale most of his brothers lacked or depleted with anger.
Before Ivan could scavenge any means of a reply, it fell on silence when Alfred's hand rested on his cheek. He waited, waited for other to make the first strike as he sat, petrified with a fresh brand of fear that his heart beating until it hurt. The brims of their helmets touched first with a click, tipped back to the crowns of their hair to make way for a joining of noses and lips - lips that dwindled just a nudge together to test the warmth of their skin before the tastes of their breath. It was a press, a seal of warmth neither had felt nor remembered the feel of the entirety of the battlefield, then an experiment when bold American tongue slipped behind allied lines, into the other's mouth that tasted like dust and tobacco.
Ivan closed his eyes for the first time in weeks. Behind the veil of darkness, he saw only that, not his nightmares or a hint of blood or bullet. He didn't jump when he heard the sound of his helmet sliding off his head and hitting the cobblestone street, only savored the feel of the hand now in his hair. But the moment Alfred pulled away, Ivan opened his eyes again, feeling the nightmares loom at the corner of his eye should he keep them closed for too long. He was greeted, instead, by that dazzling smile.
"There, Braginsky. Now you can go into war knowing you've been kissed."
And Ivan did, charging into the battle that came the following afternoon with his tongue running along the roof of his mouth in memory of his only war-time comfort.
But a kiss was no match for an artillery tank, and walking among the rubble after the battle had left the American battalion coated in fresh dust and shivers, it was too simple to distinguish crimson blood from the layers of blonde beneath the green helmet. The eyes, blue and afraid, a mockery to the confidence Ivan had seen the night before.
Other soldiers carried photos of their mothers, girlfriends, and Ivan carried the memory of his fallen soldier. Because he'd broken the first rule and had become friends with another soldier, he suffered the pain and memory of that smile and knowing that his comrade hadn't another chance for a burger or milkshake.
But he'd also broken the second rule: don't fall in love with a soldier, or you'll go into battle, been kissed, and knowing that you'd never be kissed like that again.
Dear Misses Jones, We regret to inform you…