With grease still on my hands, I put my rifle down and unloaded my gear. The rough, olive drab was a second skin by now, not just my own, but of everyone it seemed. Greenish grey and greyish green stitched a patchwork between all aspects of life over there. Finding a seat set aside from the group, an overwhelming lack of fervor gripped me tight. The last drops of hope fell singularly to the dirt and evaporated.

Not that there was any need for hope. A brave soldier once said, “The only way to make it in this place is to accept the fact that you’re already dead. The sooner you can figure that out, you can stop worrying about being too afraid to fight.” I’d hated and loved him, and knew that he couldn’t be more correct.

***

For five long months, we’d been cutting down the lines. I was the ‘point man’: a figurative title meant to envision the point of a spear. First to see action, deepest thrust when all was afoot, and furthest to retract when the day was done.

This lance’s pole, also known as my captain, was a soft man whom I wouldn’t think of before the war to hold such a rank. His hair was brown and short, with his face round and large like a mixing bowl. Standing a few inches shorter than our company’s mean height, meek in tone, it was difficult to imagine this man rising in the ranks, let alone giving orders. But his words were carefully chosen, and his blue eyes were wild like those of a clever beast, which peered to and for when upon the approach. He juxtaposed a common American archetype of machismo and volume, and for that, he was like a favorite teacher. You always appreciated his differences.

The captain was also brilliant in his battlefield tact. He’d read Sun-Tzu to us out loud when we first set out on our campaign, every night, firmly believing that guns and grenades did not rule out those ancient axioms. Position and planning; efficiency and minimal risk. We had not lost a man to date, of the ten we were. Somehow, luck had put together the 10 most patient, disciplined, and humble men in all of the US army, and we glided through the French countryside like a manta ray. Never stumbling, with a deadly poison sting.

The captain had me at point thanks to my lightness of foot, as well as my blade. The Krauts were ruthless and trained to a science, but they were also slaves to technology. Catch a Nazi with his gun on the ground, and you’ve already won the fight if you can bury your nerves. I kept my interactions cordial and quick, like a dentist’s visit. I was there to drill and move on, without greetings or small talk.

My name, among my peers, was ‘the surgeon.’

***

A spearhead is only as good as its Spartan, so when Cpt. Timber had failed to plan for a couple of sharpshooters who’d been tracking, I simply became an artifact. At first, my momentum was enough to extinguish their fatal fire, but once withdrawn, I sat on a rock and fell inanimate. Sharp, refined, but without vector. I was the spark without tinder as we buried Timber. I followed our sergeant away and to the base I write you from now.

While on our journey back, we found a few skirmishes, but they washed over me before I knew they’d started. I was no longer point man; I had no point. Blasts of shrapnel barely caused me to turn my head, so I was kept out of sight until the work was done. My fellow men didn’t judge for they feared my knife, but I was no danger to them, or maybe anyone anymore. I had accepted the fact that I was already dead, but now it wasn’t making me feel any better.

A hospital was where I would heal, though I didn’t believe it at first. When first looking at the maison, I felt nothing at all about it. I felt as if looking up into an overcast sky; nothing was interesting and nothing was expected. And how very wrong I was about that.