The two men responsible for overseeing the camp in these final days of the war were standing side by side at the head of the body, watching as the honour guard entered from the compound. The evidence of the hard days and long nights was written plainly on the faces of both men.
The body had been carefully laid out in the main room and the two officers regarded the honour guard over the top of it. The officers kept the faces in carefully maintained masks; they could not reveal their thoughts or feelings to the men under their commands.
The eight men that made up the honour guard were dressed in the most complete uniforms that the camp could scrounge. People had rushed to volunteer their carefully maintained and guarded uniforms, but still, no man sported a complete uniform.
The lines of men had split before the remains of their fellow prisoner. One line had moved to the right of the draped form as the other had moved to the left. They kept their eyes up, away from the body that should not have had to be there. This was the duty they should not have had to perform.
By rights, the man under the pall should have had a hero's burial; instead his body was arranged on a makeshift stretcher and draped with a white cloth. His body had been laid out with great care, but there was no polished wooden coffin. They had no flag.
Eight pairs of work-toughened hands were reaching out to grasp the wooden slats making up the sides of the stretcher. Through the drape of the fabric, it was easy to make out the shape of arms that had been crossed over a chest that would no longer rise and fall with breath.