Weep for yourself, my man,
You'll never be what is in your heart
Weep, little lion man,
You're not as brave as you were at the start
Rate yourself and rake yourself
Take all the courage you have left
And waste it on fixing all the problems that you made in your own head.

-Little Lion Man – Mumford & Sons, verse 1

The rain was cold and biting as it hit my face. The Atlantic storm had been pounding the French coast for hours and showed no signs of abating. At times, the temperature would drop, turning the rain into sleet. It made the weather even more miserable for all of us forced to endure it. My greatcoat had become sodden hours ago and did nothing to keep out the dampness.

Despite the unpleasant conditions, I ordered my men to continue working on the fortifications. I wanted to make the most of the remaining daylight. There could be no rest for any of us as we prepared for the inevitable Allied invasion of France. I and my superiors possessed no doubts regarding it; the invasion was only a matter of time. The only unknown was the place. And when they had decided the right place and time, the Allies would arrive to begin their reclamation of Europe, sooner rather than later.

I looked across the extensive beach to the teeming gray ocean, angling my sight to the northeast, in the direction of the United Kingdom. The Allies were watching and planning, staring out across the expanse, matching our preparations.

I personally believed the German planning and fortifications would ultimately end in failure. They would slow, but not stop, the Allies in their crusade to crush the Nazis. Just as they had expelled us from North Africa and were in the process of doing so in Italy, they would eventually banish us from France.

There was a significant difference: North Africa had been across the Mediterranean, but France bordered Germany. From France, the Allies would begin the inevitable drive to capture Berlin. Germany would be conquered for the second time in less than three decades.

I shook my head already accepting my beloved Germany's defeat. I prayed for wiser heads in Berlin to prevail and to seek immediate peace with the Allies. But Hitler would never surrender under any circumstances while the Allies would never accept anything less than an unconditional surrender from him.

I was unable to prevent my focus from eroding as I continued looking out upon the Atlantic. I took a few steps away from my men, walking closer to the water. The air was heavy with salt and an occasional spray would hit me, mixing with the rain. It returned me to the reality of the moment.

I stood there with my hands behind my back, my thoughts consuming me.

The months has passed quickly since my evacuation from Africa. I viewed the passage of time with mixed emotions. I had believed the respite from active combat would provide me with some welcome mental relief from the constant stress and anxiety. Instead, I found the opposite to be true.

I had healed physically, but still suffered the emotional scars I had received from my captivity at the hands of Stuart Guest. Sometimes I would speculate which was more extensive: the nauseating physical scarring of my back from his floggings or the indescribable emotional mutilation of my mind from the heroin and his intimate touching.

I allowed no one to see my back nor my mind. I kept them strictly private for my own internal damnation to deal with on a daily basis.

Almost ten months had passed since I had been tortured and assaulted, ten months which seemed more like a lifetime. I thought time would have eased my emotional scars as they had for my body, but the memories remained as fresh as if they had occurred yesterday. There was little escape from these scars except through the vices of nicotine and alcohol.

And as for my other addiction yearnings, especially for heroin? Well, Guest had also seen to their omnipresence. My addictions were always with me, waiting to be reconciled or fed, whichever side having the power to win against me at the critical moment.

Each passing day grudgingly separated me from the pleasant memories of heroin. Gradually, my desire for the drug began to subside. My craving would always be there, waiting to reappear when I would be able to least control it. The craving generally now only manifested itself after I had experienced an extreme stressful situation.

One dark night soon after my return to France, the heroin cravings had been particularly intense and almost impossible for me to control. I had almost resorted to suicide to end my unrelenting hunger for the drug and the pain it was causing me.

I was unsure as to what had finally stopped me from completing the act. Perhaps it was me being able to finally bring my inner demons under control or the shame I would have caused my family when they were notified of my cause of death. They would have known nothing about the heroin and would naturally assume I had been unable to handle the stress of combat.

Wanting to redirect my mind elsewhere at this dark moment, I had grabbed my sketch book to capture my desperate situation. I drew a dark and disturbing picture of an anonymous man being consumed by swirling fog in the ragged garden of my parent's devastated estate. The man was attempting to escape but had been lashed to a wall preventing him from doing so.

During the few brief minutes I had sketched, I had drawn the trees as dark and sinister beings. Their branches were like emaciated arms, the twigs bony fingers, reaching out to grasp a passing victim. The ground was barren and if one didn't know better, you would believe you were in an abandoned graveyard. And yet in actuality, my parent's garden had been beautiful and peaceful. I had spent many restful moments under the graceful trees and nearby geranium beds since my childhood.

Occasionally, it would cross my mind how life would have been more pleasurable if I had remained with Guest in Ater. It would have been easy for me to just slip away and begin a new life permanently in Libya. The Afrika Korps would have quickly listed me as missing in action, presumed killed, during those final chaotic days. There would have been no men, let alone time or desire, to search for me. I would have become just another statistic of the war.

There were more than enough fallen German soldiers for me to quietly assume their identity as a cover for my new life. No one would have to have known the truth as to where I had actually disappeared. It then would have been a simple move for me to begin assisting Guest in running and expanding his drug and prostitution operations. An easy job to with the rewards of being pleasantly under the embrace of his delicious heroin or accepting the offerings of one of his lovely ladies.

Ironically, an added bonus of my disappearance is that I would have permanently escaped my father along with his constant demands for perfection. Eventually, the heroin would erase even his emotional commitment from my psyche.

Yes, I would have quietly disappeared and never been found.

I shook my head. I would not have been able to follow through with it.

I would roughly push aside these thoughts of being with Guest, vowing to never have them again. No, to have remained with Guest would have meant for me to forsake my honor, not only to my officer's oath, but also to myself and to the captured American sergeant whom I would have doomed to death.

I was lying to myself about the heroin and women. I would have almost immediately become a hopeless drug addict in the same category as Cheri. It then would have been only a matter of time before I became the physical confidant of the privateer to receive the heroin, I realized grimly.

And my other addictions? Well, they had not subsided in the least, either.

I had attempted to quit smoking soon after my return to France. Perhaps Hitler is correct, I had reasoned, trying to convince myself of the necessity of not smoking. It would be best for my body and mind to give up nicotine. The occasional cough I had developed convinced me cigarettes were adding nothing to my long term health.

I had failed miserably after only a few days.

I had uncharacteristically been issuing increasingly sharp orders to my men. My leutnant, Rainer Hahn, had finally reached into his breast pocket and casually tossed his cigarettes to me. Without saying a word, I had hungrily removed one from the pack. I dug for my lighter and blissfully lit the cigarette, taking a deep drag of it into my lungs.

I had felt myself instantly begin to calm, the nicotine providing me its warming embrace. I would never be able to quit after such a blissful reunion with cigarettes. I would remain unapologetically addicted to nicotine until I was carried to my grave.

Now if I could only feel the embrace of a woman and the delightful offerings of her body for even the briefest moment . . .

I had not been intimate with a woman since the final day I had spent with my fiancée, Agathe von Stein, in Italy. The absence of sex was almost more difficult than the nicotine and heroin addictions tearing at me. I had always enjoyed a very active sex life since an early age and to be celibate was difficult, to say the least. I considered sex natural and necessary for my physical and emotional health, essential to my existence and central to my identity as a man.

I had always been frank with my interactions to the numerous women I was with, never providing them with any false hope or promises of exclusivity for the future. However, my situation was now different. Agathe was my fiancée and I had promised and committed myself to remain faithful to her. My honor as a man and as her future husband demanded me to give her the respect she deserved.

With so many yearnings tearing at me, it was necessary for me to do something, anything to rein them in and maintain my sanity.

I had learned from Kommandant Eberhardt Schnass that dedicating one's self to work was as good for the mind as it was for the body. I was in desperate need of healing for both so I had forced myself to concentrate on my new duties, as tedious as they were, since my arrival in France.

I was normally up before dawn and frequently worked past midnight on the unending fortification work. When I wasn't in the field, I worked on the unceasing paperwork and provided translation services when requested.

On particularly tedious days I would muse as to why I had not been sent to the eastern front. I was never able to formulate a reasonable answer. The Eastern armies were begging for men, let alone the luxury of having an experienced combat officer being reassigned there.

Yet, here I remained in the relative safety of western France overseeing the construction of barriers, the so called Atlantic Wall.

I heard the hard steps of Hahn coming up behind me, interrupting my thoughts. He had learned to walk heavily near me so as not to startle me.

"Herr Hauptmann!" Hahn crisply saluted me.

I returned his salute knowing I would not have long for him to state his purpose.

"It is becoming late. Should we call it a day?" Hahn asked.

I glanced over to my men and noticed them looking at me expectedly, aware of the darkening sky.

"Yes," I agreed. "We've accomplished as much as we are able. Finish up and then cease for the day." We had little time to reach our compound before the darkness would settle around us. It was at night the partisans appeared, greatly increasing the already tense atmosphere.