Fuel. Nerves. Bullets. Tears. Blood. Death. That's all you know anymore. The life back home seems so far away now. It's like it was a lifetime ago (and you suppose it was) and now your life is here. It's serving with these men. It's eating at arms length away from the rotting corpse of the man you laughed with the day before. It's mourning over the unexpected death of your best friend. It's following orders into what everyone knows to be a suicide mission, but not complaining once, because that's who you are. You're a soldier that doesn't care anymore. You've seen one too many deaths, survived one too many missions that you shouldn't have lived through, survived one too many times when more deserving soldiers haven't. You're tired of this whole goddamn war, but all you can do is breathe. Put your head in your hands if you must. Cry away the memories if you must. You have to live through it, if not for yourself then for the men who couldn't. The men who weren't lucky enough to be where you are now. You have to survive for them. You mustn't let their ultimate sacrifice go to waste.
You chuckle darkly at the thought. Luck. Sometimes you think that they are the lucky ones. They don't have to live trough the blood and guts and death and nightmares and tears and mourning that all of the rest of you have to now. You sometimes think that death would be a simpler alternative to the life you're living now. The life where all you've ever known was the horror and terror of war.
You clutch onto the rosary beads that hang loosely around your neck and you think back on why you ever joined the paratroopers. Why you ever made that foolish decision to defend a country that probably doesn't give a shit if you end up lying in some ditch bleeding to death in some place in a foreign country that no one has ever heard of. You think about why you're defending the people who only see you as another number. As an acceptable casualty. But then you look down at the beads clutched between your white fingers and you remember. You remember your little sister back at home and the way she would always ruffle your hair playfully and make fun of you. You remember the smile on her face when you get her an unexpected present. You remember all the laughter and happiness that she always has. You're defending the country for people like her. People with their innocence still in tact. People who are blissfully unaware of the horrors going on outside of their beautiful little world. And you suppose, in a way, that's all okay. You can deal with that being the core reason for your being there, but you know that people like her aren't the only reason.
And you smile down at the beads. The beads belonged to your best friend that died the month before. You think about his, and all the others that have fallen, ultimate sacrifice to save the very people you curse in your head. You have a scar running its way from your wrist to your elbow, and you notice it with a frown. You got it while you were saving a young private from being blown to pieces. The kid's only 17. He has so much to live for. That is, if he ever makes it out of this godforsaken hell hole.
The seed of doubt was placed in your mind the first time you saw someone die at the hands of the Jerry. You saw the way he was thrown up in the air by a shell that landed right next to his foxhole. You saw, with horror, the way he was flung mercilessly back onto the ground. You saw the far away look in his eyes (that you would soon come to realise was the stare of a dead man) and the blood slowly trickling from the corner of his mouth and down his neck. You knew, then, that you had no chance in hell of surviving against these servile scum. From then on it wasn't a question of if you'll die, but a question of when. That was also the first time you felt motivated to kill every single last one of those Jerry's. Each and every one of those killers. And, you suppose, that makes you a killer too. That doesn't make you much better than them, right? But you try to convince yourself that you're different from them. You're doing this for the right cause. You tell yourself that over and over again, but the more times you say it, the more you don't believe a word.
This whole thing is just a big game of hide and seek. You remember fondly the way you used to play it as a child, and you would try to find the best hiding spot so that you were never found. Now, the game is the same. The only difference is that it isn't as innocent as it was when you were a child. Now, losing the game meant death, and winning the game meant you had to kill. If you were found, you were dead. It was as simple as that. So you hide away, tucked in a little corner somewhere hugging your gun close to your chest as you listen for the enemy. Listen for the person that was in.
You drop the rosary beads when you feel them dig deep into your skin. You look down and see that they have pierced the skin and you see tiny Scarlett droplets form and drop to the ground in little perfect circles. You choke on your laughter as you think of how ironic this whole thing is. The only perfect thing in this whole world you live in being your blood pooling onto the ground in slow droplets. If you're silent for long enough you can hear the small pitter patter of your blood landing on the blinding white snow underneath your boots. You follow the blood drops to see it stain the purity of the snow. You see it stain the deep red colour that you're so damn sick of seeing. You swear to yourself that when you leave this war that you're never going to own a single red thing. Blood has come a part of your daily life now, and it sickens you to your bones. You tare a piece of your sleeve off and wrap it around your hand where the rosary beads had cut. You love the pain that the beads caused you. You love the sharp pain that made you wince every single time you moved. It made you feel alive.
You hear the soft hitch of breath that you have come to know as the sound of someone having a nightmare, and you look to your left to see Gene lying in his foxhole turning his head left to right frantically as he mumbled incoherent words. You think about going over to his foxhole and waking him up, but you stop yourself. You realise you have no idea of how to comfort him. Thankfully you spot Babe, who shares his foxhole now that Julian's gone, softly shake Gene awake. You hear him gasp desperately for air and you hear the soft whimpers that have managed to escape the quiet medic. You frown as you remember all of the nightmares you have had since D-Day. You never used to get many nightmares before, but now it seems every time you close your eyes you see flashbacks and memories that you would rather forget. You see Joe Toye's leg get blown off over and over again. You hear his screams as he tries to find his helmet. You see Bill Guarnere's leg getting blown off as he runs out into the middle of a raid to help Joe Toye. You see Hoobler lying on the ground, wriggling about, as the blood from his leg slowly seeps into the cursed snow. You see Muck and Penkala being blown to ash while they were trying to get George into the safety of their Foxhole.
You don't know how to stop these nightmares and, after a while, you start to think that there is no way they can be stopped. You start to think that maybe, just maybe, this is where you belong. You think that the life you have now with those cursed bullets and fucking Jerry's and dead friends and pooling blood is the life that you were supposed to have all along. All you can do is hope the dreams go away.
You don't know when you started to think that you belong in such a fucked up place. You try to think back to the life you had before the war. You try to picture your little sister's laughing and smiling and your little brother's grumpiness but you just can't conjure up an image. That might just very well be one of the scariest incidents in this whole war to you.
You can feel your sanity slowly seeping through your fingers but you just don't know how to stop it. You know you need a break from it all but you don't want to abandon your men. Everyone here is like that now. You're all tired and sick to death of this place, but none of you would ever leave any member of Easy Company behind. You're just not those kind of people. You stay together until the very end. Even though you love these men like brothers, you don't tell any of them about the nightmares or your slowly fading sanity. You've already lost Buck to this forest and you don't want to follow him down the drain of hopelessness. You're not saying that Buck's a hopeless case, you would never think that, but you saw the look in his eyes when he saw Joe Toye and Bill Guarnere lying on the ground with only 2 legs between them. You saw how he just crumbled inside and you saw his sanity fly out the window. You don't want to end up like Buck.
Someone slides into your foxhole but you don't look up. You know who it is, anyway. You hear Shifty remove his gun from his shoulder and place it beside him. You feel him looking at you but you don't do anything. You don't move, you don't breathe and you don't think. It's only when he shuffles towards you and places his head on your shoulder that you realise how homoerotic this whole war is. It's men fighting men and killing men and keeping their sanity by talking to men about their manly feelings. This whole thing is man on man and you can't help but wonder how you got yourself into this mess. Shifty wiggles and tries to get comfortable and you sigh in defeat before placing your arm around his shivering form. He's your best friend and you know that if he wasn't here you would have cracked by now. So you take in a deep breathe and tell him everything. You tell him about the nightmares and you tell him about your slowly fading sanity and you even tell him how you think this whole thing is so homoerotic. Shifty doesn't say a word and you're kind of pissed off and glad about it. You don't think you can keep up a full on conversation right now. After a while Shifty looks up at you with those puppy dog eyes and he tells you something in that soft accent of his that you never expected him to say.
"I lost my sanity a long time ago. It's nothing to be ashamed of. The way I see it, if you lose your sanity it makes fighting this thing a whole lot easier. You don't think about what you're doing and you don't think about the lives you're taking away. You don't think about how this action might get you shot, or helping this man might get you killed. You just do it."
And you suppose he's right. You think about how many reckless things Shifty has done and you think about the amount of lives he's saved by doing them. As well as being the best shot in this company, he's also one of the quietest. You know that there's a whole lot more to him than he ever lets on, but you don't call him out on it. You know that he'll end up telling you in time. You open your mouth to say something, anything, when you feel him lift his head from your shoulder. Without thinking, you immediately grab his arm and pull him back down to your shoulder. You hear him chuckle softly as he places his head back on your shoulder, but you ignore it. You don't care what he says or thinks because you're allowing yourself to have a moment of selfishness. You love the warmth he gives you and you love how Shifty is the only person who can make you feel happy and safe with just a glance or a smile or a laugh. You come back to think of how you thought this to be homoerotic and you come to realise you don't give a shit anymore. You don't care if this is homoerotic anymore. All you want is him. As if he was reading your thoughts, Shifty begins to speak again, his voice making you smile as soon as he speaks.
"And as for this being homoerotic, do you really care? Does it even really matter? I mean, does it even matter if a guy is in love with another guy instead of being in love with a girl? I don't know why it's so frowned upon. It's the exact same thing. Love is love and it shouldn't be defined by gender.."
You sit still and listen to Shifty chatter about how the great country of America is so homophobic and it makes you grin. You love how he rambles when he's nervous but you love how you make him nervous even more. You know it's wrong, and you know you're not supposed to feel this way about another man, but you've known you've been in love with Shifty ever since you first saw him. You cringe at how corny it sounds, but it's true. You look down to where you thought Shifty's head was only to find the dirt of your foxhole. You feel him looking at you and you raise your head to find him gazing at you intensely. Somewhere along your admiration of the boy from Virginia he had stopped his rambling. A smile slowly appeared on his lips and continued to grow winder until he was sitting there with the biggest grin you've ever seen the boy wear.
"You know you talk sometimes when you ponder."
Your eyes widen and your mouth hangs open a little as you realise your recent pondering involved a certain beautiful young boy from Virginia and how you were deeply in love with him. Before you could try and talk your way out of it he was leaning forward. And before you knew what you were doing you were kissing the life out of him.
Maybe, just maybe, a little homoerotic in this war was a good thing.
And maybe, just maybe, you can help each other out of the hole of lost sanity and survive this war.