Frohe Weihnachten

IV.

The next morning people woke up at the crack of dawn. Naomi heard a few Germans singing Auld Lang Syne and also saw a few on the top of the trenches. Something that would've been suicidal at any other time. Somehow, no one shot. MacGowan, Spector, and Toussaint had been talking to each other. She was shocked and bewildered. That took guts and showed a lot of trust in the enemy. Seeing as Toussaint, MacGowan, and Spector were now heading back to their respective trenches. Her stomach did somersaults when she saw Spector. She chastised herself for it once again. 

"What's going on, MacGowan?" Naomi asked when he came back.

"We're burying the dead," he explained. "Maybe play a few rounds of football. Exchange more gifts. I have more cigarettes I have to get rid of."

Everyone nodded and got out of the trenches. "I'm gonna stay here," someone announced. Everyone looked at the lone soldier. "I'm gonna see what I can do for maintenance." Without as much as a response from everyone, he went to work. A few other soldiers stayed behind to help him. She expected the Germans were doing that as well. This was the first day of peace since the war had begun. They would use it tactfully.

In the morning, it was hard to ignore the bodies of the fallen soldiers. French, German, and Scottish, all dead. She walked over to a French soldier. "Passez-moi une pelle, s'il vous plaît," Naomi said to a soldier. (Pass me a shovel, please.)

He nodded and passed her one. The two started on digging a grave for a French soldier. His body hadn't decomposed, he looked so angelic, like he was sleeping. But she knew better. This boy, who looked like a teenager, had died in service of a grown man's war. She heard the quote MacGowan had told her that night in her dugout. "Older men declare war. But it is the youth that must fight and die."

"Le connaissais-tu?" asked Naomi, placing a hand on Frenchman's shoulder. (Did you know him.)

"Oui," he told her. Tears stained his eyes. "C'est mon cousin." (Yes. He's my cousin.)

"Mes condoléances," she stated. (My condolences.) The soldier grabbed her and hugged her. Sobbing into her coat. She held him. He was only a boy. They were just children off fighting a grown man's war. Children that had their entire lives ahead of them. That life was now robbed. Seeing the soldiers bodies that littered No Man's Land. She was overcome with raw emotion. In the back of her mind, maybe Jakob was one of them. Maybe he was lying somewhere, face up or face down, his body frozen so he couldn't thaw, effectively stopping decomposition.

"Restez avec moi," he begged. (Stay with me.) "S'il vous plaît." (Please.)

Her grey eyes met the young soldier's green ones. "Bien sûr." (Of course.)

For what it was worth, the soldier seemed close to his cousin. She didn't care that he was crying. The guy deserved an outlet for his tears, they were healthy. His emotions, whatever he was feeling now, were valid. She'd never take that away from him. The two carried the body of the fallen Frenchmen to the grave. The French Soldier, tears still staining his eyes, started covering the grave as Father McLeod said some Latin prayers over it. As he was doing for both German, French, and Scottish soldiers' shared graves.

Her mother had always told her that death was 'the great equaliser', and being a nurse in the war, seeing what she'd seen in the months she'd been in France, she had to agree with her.

She walked away to where Spector was standing. She joined him. "What you did for that boy was kind," he told her.
"Thank you," she said. "Every time I look at one of them, the teenagers that are going off to war, I think of my little brother. Who's fighting right now."