Finally, Upham saluted Horvath and continued on to Jackson's grave.
"Hey, Upham! Careful you don't step in the bullshit."
Upham walked with his head down, to hide the tears pouring down his face. As he approached Jackson's grave, he felt himself bump into something. He looked up and saw a man about his age staring back at him.
"Sorry," they both said roughly.
Upham almost walked away, but then he noticed something familiar about the man's voice. He couldn't quite place it.
"What did you say?" Upham asked quietly. The man looked confused.
"Sorry?" he said again.
"Never mind, sorry," Upham said. What was he thinking?
The man started to walk away, but stopped abruptly. He slowly turned around.
"You knew him, too?" he asked. Upham nodded. The man stared at Upham, as if he was waiting for something. Upham didn't know what he wanted. After a few moments of silence, the man turned and began walking away again.
"You're a strange bird, Upham."
"Reiben!" Upham shouted, finally understanding. The man turned around, a familiar devil-may-care smile exploding across his face. What Upham couldn't have known was that no one had seen that smile in sixty-five years.
As Reiben heard his name, a thousand memories of laughing with his comrades resurfaced in his mind.
"Finish your book, Upchuck?" Reiben asked. Upham grinned.
"Fifty-five years ago," he said. The smile on Reiben's face only got bigger as he shook his head.
"Fifty-five years, huh?" he sighed. "It's been a while."
"Sure has," Upham agreed.
As they stood in front of the grave of their fallen comrade, they caught the end of Ryan's sentence.
"I've tried to live my life the best I could. I hope that was enough. I hope that at least in your eyes, I've earned what all of you have done for me," he said shakily.
But how could that be enough? How could one good life be a fair exchange for six?
"How do you earn the lives of six men?" Upham asked quietly.
"… You don't," Reiben answered sadly.
A moment of silence passed between the two as memories of a perfect sniper shot, a fallen medic, an extra dose of morphine, an exploding bell tower, and a motionless hand passed in front of their eyes.
They stared at the beach as each remembered how a single prisoner had almost torn the squad apart.
"I'm done with this mission."
Upham stared at Reiben. Reiben had never really liked him, not until all of the other members of the squad were gone. Upham was all he had left. He thought back to the day they had taken the machine gun.
"Hey, Reiben?"
Reiben looked away from the beach and glanced at Upham.
"Yeah?"
"I was glad you stayed with us," Upham said quietly. "…We all were."
Reiben stared at Upham for a few minutes, squinted up at the sky, then looked back at Upham and nodded.
"Catch you on the other side, buddy," he said quietly before turning and walking away.
Upham nodded. He knew that if there was a Heaven, he would be seeing his squad again shortly. He turned to walk away in the direction he had come from.
"Hey, Upchuck!"
Upham turned around again.
"Yeah?" he called out to Reiben.
"What's your book called?"
Upham grinned.
"…Saving Private Ryan."
And as the sun beat down on a vast graveyard on the coast of Normandy, Reiben's last devil-may-care smile exploded across his face. That was because his smile wasn't for the world to see.
… It was for the seven bravest men Reiben had ever known.
"What if by some miracle we stay, and actually make it out of here?"
As Upham and Reiben walked away in separate directions, knowing they would never see each other again, they stared at the gravestones. Those used to be people. Living, breathing, people. But now they were nothing more than a memory.
This was all that was left.
"Some day we might look back on this and decide that… saving Private Ryan was the one decent thing we were able to pull out of this whole, god-awful, shitty mess."
Reiben and Upham could've sworn they heard it whispered on the wind.
"We do that, we all earn the right to go home."