I could apoligize a million times over, but you and I both know..

This asshole's words fall on deaf ears.

Brautigan

“The sun was like a huge 50-cent piece that someone had poured kerosene on and then had lit with a match, and said, "Here, hold this while I go get a newspaper," and put the coin in my hand, but never came back.”

PART IIII: Same War, Different Battle

The great powers of the world, countries exerting their influence on a global scale, had converged all across Europe. A chancellor rose in command, abolished democracy, rearmed his country and launched all out war on the surrounding territories. With blitzkrieg tactics, he swept the land with elite fighting power, and overwhelming vigor. Hitler believed "Strength lies not in defense, but in attack.." "Germany will either be a world power, or will not be at all." Here's hopin' for the latter.

Most of the men where sleeping for first watch that night, while I sat on the perimeter of our encampment. Reading over Scarlet's letters I could picture the way she smelled perfectly, as if she was here meeting me for the first time all over again. Her beautiful form captivated my mind and set it ablaze. I began writing, doing my best to reassure her of my safety and my love.

"…It looks like this war will be over soon, at least the end is in sight. The Germans still have a lot of fight left in them even they know they lost the war. It looks like they are intent on making it a costly victory. Darling everyday that passes is a day nearer to home and a day closer to you. Lets hope and pray that God will hasten this end. Will write tomorrow.

All my love,

Liam"

Things would be different after this war was over, much different. Could I look her in the eyes and tell her that I am fine, knowing damn well the demons I've picked up. Will she still love me after the hell and murder I've endured so far away from her gentle arms? I placed the letter down, and pulled out my pack of lucky strikes and her picture. I flicked my zippo to light my cigarette, illuminating her beauty on the 2x3 photo. I smiled as though she could see me.

I was on the ground before I heard the shot, it must have come from some distance. Pain surged through my muscles as I clutched my chest, feeling warm vital fluid leave my body. With shaking hands I reached under my back to find an exit wound, and more warmth. I some how managed to hold on to her picture when the bullet hit me, and paniced at the thought of never seeing her again. I don't remember much after that, just the sky above illuminated with flares and millions of stars. "Sniper!" "Medic!!" ..two words you never want to hear.

I woke up near a week later, in some OD colored nightmare, all sorts of tubes and bandaging in and on my body. I rolled over onto my side and let out a deep groan, feeling overwhelming pain throughout my chest. This is when I saw her letter.

"Dearest Liam,

I know this isn't the way it’s supposed to be done. Writing like this. But, it’s the only way I have left. Sitting at home, unable to look into your eyes, my mind goes blank, my thoughts jumble, and I am left with nothing for you but tears.

Being this far away from you has put a weight on my heart, and I don't know if I can bare it any longer. I wish I did not have to pass the burden onto you, while fighting for our nation.. but I must persist. Being with you has taught me so much that I will cherish well into my declining years. I wish for you, a happiness that will endure.

Good-bye my love,

Scarlet"

..Oh for fucks sake.

PART III: Tryannen Raufen

"Baker, you've got to be fucking kidding me, they HAVE TO take us off the line!" I said, breaking formation and jogging up to him. "You gotta talk to the captain, we've been fighting like dogs for more than a week." He turned his head smirking and replied "That's why you're called a dog faced soldier, private.. get the FUCK back IN FORMATION" flicking his lit smoke at me. I reluctantly fell back into the column and continued down the road. The thought of a hot bath and getting out of this god damn uniform was ever-so quickly shit all over.. thanks sarge.

I scratched my bristly face and reached down to undo my haversack and dig for my pencil and pad. I had been writing a little every day for the last year, and was surprised at the stories that accumulated. Writing about the things I'd done and the places I'd been in this country came MUCH easier than keeping track of lost friends and how many men I'd killed. I remember my first TEN and how I was proud to mark another dead kraut on my list; The thought of the fifty-five I had marked down since makes my mind numb.

I hastily slashed two kills (which was now 57 men), and wrote KIA: Stewart and Ski. When i closed the pad of paper and stuffed it into my haversack; I saw the line of black boots walking opposite of us. A platoon sized line of worn faces, bloodstained uniforms, and defeated men. We beat the hell out of them with all odds against us. Our hard fighting in these woods where the turning point for the push into Germany. They began singing:

"Wir sind des Geyers schwarze Haufen,

Hei juchhe!
Und wollen mit Tyrannen raufen,
Hei juchhe!"

From what little German I know, sounds like "we are the black hoard, and want a tyrants battle!" - ironic song to sing after being defeated. I could hear the low hum their voices fade off behind me as we made our way down the road. I'm sure everyone in the unit had a sense of victory seeing the big, bad Fallschirmjäger tuck tail and surrender.

The sun was a fiery low orange, just high enough in the sky to cast beams of warm light between the tree lines. The cold was setting in so we walked a few more miles, pulled off the road and into the woods to set up camp for the night. We had 15 miles to go until we reached Germany.

"I'm just a dog faced soldier, with a rifle on my shoulder, and I eat a kraut for breakfast every day"

PART II: Closing The Gap

The morning cold reluctantly passed from the earth, and amidst the retreating fog I cast my eyes upon the now amber-tinted field. An oddly calming glow of burnt-out tank hulls dimly lit the early hours of the day, revealing the remnants of what the forge-like roar of battle had left behind.

Though the woods surrounding where quiet now, the echoes of fierce and rapid gunfire was audible in the far distance.. poor bastards . I rubbed my eyes, brushed the frost off of my wool blanket and lit up a lucky strike. I didn't smoke much before the war, but bearing witness to the horrors of everyday battle changed that quite fast. I took a deep drag, gazing over at the black, scorched hole where two men had been turned into nothing.. "better them not me" , "better them not me" , "not me." I felt sick to my stomach.

I finished my smoke, and lit another as I clambered out of my hole, doing a sort of crouch run down the line. Passing foxholes, my eyes canvased the ground covered with shell casings, and bloody gauze but I was relieved to see the men intact. mostly. I slid down into Jameson's hole, and my rifle tapped his helmet startling him awake into a wide eyed frenzy. "Good mornin' sweetheart" I said as I took a puff and passed him my cigarette.

"Jesus Christ! you're lucky I didn't put two in your fucking chest, you asshole" he said angrily exhaling the smoke. I laughed at the fact that if indeed I had wanted it so, I could have bayoneted him in his sleep. "We gave them Hun's a chunk of hell last night" I said to him as I took back the ciggarette, had another drag, and and pressed it into the ground. With bitter remorse gritting in our teeth we talked a while about the men lost in the firefight the evening prior.

The smell of coffee had me up and out, moving down the line further toward the CP. Falling back through the hedgerows, I came up to the makeshift tent that our Captain had been running command out of. There where many higher-ups surrounding a table, drinking coffee, all talking at once; the general ambiance was hopeful, and decisive. I saluted as I bee-lined for the coffee, filled my canteen cup and took a harsh burning sip. Standing there sipping that burning oil-like sludge, overhearing their conversation, is when it finally hit me that the Falaise Gap was coming to a close.

"We've got the Fallschirmjäger and 2nd and 12th SS Panzer Divisions retreating." In the northern sector alone, German material losses included 344 tanks, self-propelled guns and other light armoured vehicles as well as 2,447 soft-skinned vehicles and 252 guns abandoned or destroyed.

Hitler's personal involvement had been damaging from the first, with his insistence on hopelessly optimistic counter-offensives, his micro-management of his generals, and his refusal to countenance a withdrawal when his armies were threatened with annihilation..

..We where pushing on.

PART I: The Valley Of Death

The sky was clear and illuminated with millions of stars that night.. as I lay clutching my rifle, the wood and steel speckled with dirt and my own blood. Such beauty so far above the brutal and bleak hosilities of man's struggle to conquer or be. Even if the bullet only grazed my arm, the horrifying knowledge of mortality was more prevalent than ever. In these situations, the mind triggers the starkest of questions and thoughts.

How will I die today?

Images of shattered bone, torn flesh, razor wire, mortar blasts, and life taken from young men flooded my thoughts. Close friends and men I hardly knew strewn about, ripped to shreds, screaming, trying to put themselves back together.. when will my days run out? The piercing sound of MG42 fire ripping earth up around me immediately expunges these thoughts. We had been dug in this position for three grueling days with no relief and pondering mortality was not high on the to-do list.

It had now been 2 months since the beaches in France where littered with bodies, and the oceans stained red. We had taken Cherbourg, Caen, and St. Lô but where now battling it out with the krauts in Chambois.. the last stronghold in the Falaise Gap area. We knew we would have France within days, and the hope of crossing into Germany and a massive airborne offensive kept us hopefull for the weeks to come. This war has gone on long enough.

Raising my rifle to eye level just above my foxhole I could see their silhouettes popping up, frantically moving about, firing at us. The German machine guns rate of fire made it easy to pick out amongst the hail of muzzle flashes, it sounds like a saw tearing through steel. I line up my shot and squeeze the trigger twice, the machine gun falls silent.. John C. Garand would be proud. I slide back down into the earth to avoid the hail of bullets raining onto my position just as a mortar round lands no more than 10 feet to my left, completely obliterating Odowski and Stewart. Better them not me. The dirt and smoke kicked up in the air provide me just enough time to position myself and fire a few more shots across the clearing and into the enemy.

The Brits and the Canadians had been fighting hard years before any of us had stepped foot on these shores, and now here we where crushing fascism.. side by side with them. Hitler's tanks and reinforcements proved to be no match for our lust for victory. With von Kluge's few remaining battle worthy formations destroyed by the First Army, Allied command realised that the entire German position in Normandy was collapsing. General Bradley declared: "This is an opportunity that comes to a commander not more than once in a century. We're about to destroy an entire hostile army and go all the way from here to the German border."

GOETHE

"We must always change, renew, rejuvinate ourselves; otherwise we harden." I have spent time with the undesireable and weeded out that which does not better me. You must carve yourself a place in the world, with your own hands and own reason. There is much to love in this life, as there is equally much to hate.. deciding which outweighs which is the only distinction between the two.

"Our passions are the true phoenixes; when the old one is burnt out, a new one rises from its ashes." My sympathies to cold lifeless man who's joy is buried beneath our society's "obligations." I'd much prefer scraping by with my music and my friends, than ever give up my character for a so-called normal lifestyle.

To All Our Loves, and Our Wars.

One can only argue so much..

Ill tounges lash deep wounds and resonate lifetimes in ones head, the heavy handed grasp of anger can clutch the mind, clouding obvious judgment calls. Be smart my friend.. tread thee not with grudge-filled boots.

Concubine

There I was halfway across town, half naked, half walking, half running. Rifling through your neighbors garbage cans trying to find any sort of shoe that would fit. I should have grabbed mine, but these thoughts don't register when you're trying to dodge a large ceramic ashtray and a slew of angry words. Both hit me hard, and did damage on all levels.

It had been raining, so the ashtray, filled with our 5 minute memories and late night smokes, had turned into this liquid-ash sludge. Disgusting, bloody, pissed. "Of course I remember to grab my fucking ciggarettes" I said to myself as I lit one, feeling the unforgiving brick road beneath.

I want to be like the road.. cold, hard, unforgiving, but I know before too long i would be back there, with you whispering all the right words into my ear. Not tonight, no "baby this", "baby that", baby "i'm sorry".. baby FUCK YOU. Tonight I WON'T be like the road, I won't be there for you to walk over, use, and overlook.

I rehash the reasons I left you the first time, and thier correlation to now, and wonder why I darkened your doorstep again. How did I stomach your shit and spit out such forgiving lies? I spent years chasing the beauty you buried so far underneath, but digging that deep left me nothing but calloused hands.

I was intoxicated with the drag and pull of your swaying motions, the quirks, and bitter memories. I wonder who else I would have let perform minor epidermal surgery with my switchblade.. although twisted, not as much as when it was pressed against my neck. That was my favorite shirt, bitch.

I spent the rest of the evening weighing your devils and angels, and god damn it's always such a close fight. Ruthless beauty, paired with disgusting wit, and a smile carved from satan's ivory collection.

Where the fuck is my flask?