George Luz pounded through the snow. No, he thought. This ain't snow. This is one hell of an ice box. Worse. It was Bastogne. No Merry Christmas here. No New Year's Eve either. No presents from Ma or Pa. He wouldn't have gotten much any way in the condition he left them in before arriving at Toccoa, before becoming part of the toughest sons of bitches in the entire U.S. Army. Maybe even the world. Snap. Pow. Yowza. He tipped his helmet up, his fingers turning light blue from having no gloves. Ice screamed onto his hand. He winced slightly. The spine of his body nearly broke every time he moved and his eyelashes seemed to crackle whenever he blinked. Dark icicles killing him and the rest of the men internally. Their feet avalanching cliffs and their chest chaffed from the hunger of their clinging shirts. The thought of putting a bullet to your head began to look glamorous. No ammo, no clothing for that kind of incompetent weather. No words for it either. The scarce food anyone had was split and shared amongst the men. A meal turned into a munch. The water was thawed from the snow without carpets and rugs of blood; German blood, American blood, and animal blood was stretched everywhere. Sometimes you thought there was more blood than snow. Something cackled past him. Luz careened into his foxhole, beginning a half remembered 'Hail, Mary'. He recognized what had passed him.

"Goddamn mortar," he muttered as Liebgott sat asleep beside him in their foxhole. Monsters. Goddamn monsters. It was one of their mortars. He first knew by the sound and the way it had cackled, not screaming like the American ones. He was not a liar. None of them were deep down. They all were afraid of the same thing and of the same consequences. Not only for themselves but even more for the man next to them. They were afraid. In fear. On the point of starving. But there was one thing that the Germans didn't. At least not the German SS. They had thoughts and beliefs. They had thoughts and beliefs to win. Luz remembered all of the breaking points of the men. When a man lost his legs to save another who was in the same state. When the observant Harvard boy of the company gave a little Dutch boy his chocolate bar. Many more moments with no more words left to use. He realized that the reason each of them were not giving up was because of the other man in the foxhole next to them. He realized that they'd never give up on each other. Never in their wildest realities. Like the one they were in now. He realized that they were afraid but could go on because of the men who had always been right next to them.