"On pillar'd brass shall tell their praise; shall tell when cold neglect is dead. These for their country fought and bled." - Philip Freneau

I suppose in war it's easy to forget what you once were and think of yourself as only a soldier.

Me, I was a photographer before that. Not a newspaper photographer and not famous or anything, but I took pictures of people for a living and I like to think I was good at it. Over time you start to notice things in a photograph, tiny details you might never see just by glancing at a person's face, things like laugh lines or worry bracketing their mouth. And then you get so used to looking for it in photographs that you start seeing the people around you in a new and different light.

Take the men of the company I served in, for example. I was in the Italian Campaign in WWII. I suppose that means little to the young, and even some older people may give a faint nod or question what we did there. I don't suppose it's as well remembered as D-day or the like, but among veterans of that campaign it's a quiet code, a passed word I served in Italy and they nod knowingly, eyes tipping in silent salute to another survivor.

I don't suppose war is gentle or kind in any place but it seemed worse in Italy, with miles of open land crawling with the faceless enemy and no place to hide, with baking sun and nothing but a world of rain and mud. None of us were ever truly clean or free of filth all those months, and even the blood stayed caked into your hands, the gunpowder leaving a residue on your skin no amount of scrubbing could completely erase.

Saunders is the name. I served with hundreds of other men, some I never met, some of whom were only a face, a name, a dogtag clenched in the Captain's hand. I was drafted, like most of the others, and one day in September we ran onto a beach called Salerno.

Some of us made it. Most of us didn't.

Strangely enough I remember eight men better than all the rest, whether I actually knew them so well because they were my friends, or whether because we ate and drank and slept side by side under conditions you can't imagine, I'll never know. Only those eight faces stand out in my mind, frozen young and immortal within the only photograph taken of my company.

The first face was Conley Wright, war correspondent and voice of reason. He was older than the other men, and it was a while before I understood why an obviously exempt man would volunteer to enter one of the bloodiest places of this war.

The first time I understood was when I saw him hunched over his typewriter after a particularly bloody day, pounding on the keys as if taking out his anger. And when I read the words he wrote I understood, knew why he was there.

He suffered and bled that ink all over the page for the people back home, the ones who'd never see anything of the war but newsreels and movies, the women who didn't want to think about their husbands and sweethearts over there, the little kids who didn't understand why Daddy was gone and never coming home. He showed them images, photographs wrapped within words, a hundred days and a dozen ordinary men, pictures of why they fought, and who they were, from the wedding band wrapped around the lifeless hand of a private to the anguish in an officer's face as he realized it was his orders the man had obeyed last. He gave some meaning to flag-draped coffins and cold medals in place of living arms wrapped around their family and warm kisses against their lips every time he mentioned the laughter of a child running through a town we'd liberated from the Nazis, or the soldiers using their furlough to rebuild that town, to give it a school and a church for future generations.

Looking back, I don't know how Conley bore it. He never complained, not even when he carried the gun of the limping soldier beside him, or supported a stretcher, or held down on an artery while waiting for a medic who'd already been killed. He offered words of comfort to dying men like a chaplain, threw his anger into words against the enemy with as much power as the bullets the rest of the men fired. A weaponless writer who gave so much to a weary group of men.

Then there was Gibson, towheaded and soft-spoken, barely old enough to shave. He was just a kid and I guess we all felt protective of him. Smart as a whip, too. You should have seen him operate his radio in the midst of bombings that shook the ground, him huddled in a trench shouting over the noise, calling for help to get us out. There's many of us that wouldn't have lasted the war if not for that kid.

And Lucavich and Hansen, inseparable, seldom seen without the other. Oh, they fought like all friends do, but never for long. Joking constantly, both of them, but fine soldiers when the chips were down.

Lt. Kimbo, a quiet man with a hidden thunder. I remember him as a man of many layers, caught in the middle of a conflict. Most of all I remember his devotion to his men. He'd risk life, limb, even the war to save a single one of them. Put him at odds with the Captain at times, but he never sacrificed anyone.

Sgt. McKenna, Irish through and through and proud of it. He projected that mixed image of the best of non-coms, tough as leather with a twinkle in his eye that spoke of a softer side. I still see him some nights, standing in a little restaurant somewhere, trying to coax "When Irish Eyes Are Smiling" out of D'Angelo and his guitar.

Ah, yes, Pete D'Angelo. Italian, so he took the war personally. An odd sort of man, truth be told. I wouldn't have bet ten cents that he'd survive the war the first time I set eyes on him.

Out there, in the war, he was like a wall, hard, firm. I heard he killed more Germans than most of us saw. I think the man was born in a pool hall judging from the way he played cards and dice, smooth, slick. Half the men owed him the shirt off their backs and everything else besides. Not that he cheated, mind you, he was just that good. He chased women like they were about to go extinct and could sing the roughest blues you've ever heard.

And yet, you took him away from the smoke and the blood, and put him in a town and D'Angelo turned into an angel. The kids loved him to pieces, even if he was out of bubblegum. They'd just climb up on his knees or sit in front and listen to him sing the softest lullabies and love songs you've ever heard, all in Italian so they understood. It was like a depth buried beneath the surface that was hard to scratch.

He had a picture in his pocket of a woman. He found it during a battle in which nobody thought they'd survive. D'Angelo carried her picture over his heart. He didn't know her but it didn't matter. They all needed something to cling to and it was like a lucky charm to him, proof he survived odds he wouldn't have bet on.

The commander was Captain Benedict. A young man, never seen a day of battle or a dead man until Salerno, far younger than his lieutenant or sargeant. But after that day he stepped into his role like he was born to command. He was a good man, hard and unfair though he seemed, and a lot of weight rested on his shoulders. Too much, I thought at times.

I can still recall the horrible empty look in his eyes any time a man fell, every time he broke off a dogtag and stood, head bent over it, staring at the cold metal resting in his palm. He never showed regret, not in front of the men. He was their commander, after all. But he hurt, deep inside, too deep to heal with medicine or bandages, cutting into him like shrapnel.

And I remember one day most of all, a single incident that stands out above all the rest.

We'd had a week of furlough in a sleepy little town, days of merciful silence in place of the constant shelling still ringing in our ears, quiet moments of D'Angelo singing to the townspeople, talking quietly to a girl who spoke broken English and smiled like the sunrise.

And then the Germans came, so quickly, so suddenly we barely had time to scramble for weapons. They barricaded themselves into the church, that beautiful, newly-built church, along with a handful of hostages.

We crouched behind some rubble across the street, waiting and watching for them to make their move, firing high and praying we didn't hit one of the townspeople. We killed some Germans who tried to make it out the back. A couple of the hostages managed to escape, and I saw Lucavich and Hansen hurrying them behind the lines to safety.

After a while we saw a movement in the doorway, and Captain Benedict hissed "Hold your fire" as we held our breath to see what would happen.

It was a German, grenade - pin still in - in one hand, the other holding a gun smashed into the small of the back of the frightened girl in front of him. And, God help me, I recognized her, the pretty girl who'd listened enraptured to D'Angelo singing, who'd spoken of her dreams following the war.

D'Angelo hesitated, only a second, but long enough for the German to pull the pin on the grenade and draw his arm back.

Captain Benedict fired, hitting the German in the shoulder below the grenade, enough to make him lose his grip, dropping the grenade back on himself in the instant before it exploded.

I couldn't look, I just couldn't. I'd seen too many men die already. Instead I stole a glimpse of Captain Benedict's face and wished I hadn't, nausea clawing at the back of my throat. He looked like a walking dead man, face chalk white, eyes lifeless and frozen, mouth set in grim horror and resignation. For an instant I didn't understand, and then it dawned, like the moment you hold a black-rimmed telegram in your hands and know the significance, what he'd done, and what had happened.

I heard D'Angelo yell. Only it wasn't a yell, more like a raw scream, and it wasn't in English, but Italian, words jumbled together, as he lunged forward. Lt. Kimbro tried to pull him back but lost his grip and D'Angelo half ran, half staggered forward, dropping to his knees beside the bloodied body of the girl.

And I knew what had happened. In that instant, Captain Benedict had made a decision no man should have to make. A girl's life, a civilian, against his entire squad. He knew, by shooting the German, by that grenade falling downwards like a wounded bird from the sky, that there wouldn't be enough time for the girl to scramble out of the way.

He'd known that it was her life or his men, and he'd fired. I wanted to throw up, to scream in rage like D'Angelo. And somewhere in front of us, echoing like a thousand drums, a million war cries, I heard D'Angelo still yelling, Italian meaningless to us, voice hoarse and raw. His arms were wrapped around the dead girl, holding her against him, rocking her as he screamed at Captain Benedict. And Captain Benedict said nothing.

After a while he stopped screaming, buried his face against the girl, and sobbed. None of us moved at first, too sick, too angry, too...we couldn't even identify what most of us felt. Finally Conley got up, walked over to him, knelt beside him, and put a hand on his shoulder. I think he was crying, too.

Some villagers came eventually, and took the girl's body away for burial. Conley got D'Angelo to his feet and we went back in silence.

We moved to another town the next day, and sometime in the midst of the battle I caught a round in the knee from a German machine gun and my war was over.

I went home, stiff leg and all, settled back into photography, met the baby born while I'd been away. I've had a good life.

I never did hear what happened to some of the men in the squad. A few are gone now, I expect, and some never made it through the war. Conley did, though, returning to a desk job with his battered old typewriter. He cherished that hunk of metal the rest of his life.

And D'Angelo, the soldier I wouldn't have given ten cents on that he'd survive the war? He caught a bullet an inch from the heart in one of the last battles. They nearly lost him on the way back, too much blood gone, too bad a wound, and the lack of sleep and not enough food catching up on him, but he hung on and they managed to get the bullet out, and send him back to a field hospital to die. After a while they stopped waiting to bury him and started waiting for him to be up and around.

He wasn't quite the same after the war. He'd lost a lot of friends, seen too much. But he pulled himself up out of the filth and blood of the war and started over. Last I heard he'd settled down, married to an Italian girl he met at the end of the war, and the father of a little girl. I saw her once, with his eyes in her face, but different...dancing and bright, as his were before Salerno and all the other days.

I don't know what happened to Captain Benedict. I hope he survived the war, that he found some peace finally, some forgiveness for that day and the others like it, and that he found something somewhere that took that look out of his eyes.

I wish I knew for certain.