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✲꘏ ꘏ ꘏ ꘏✲
Pushing aside the seat where the one-eyed soldier's lifeless body slumped, I searched for what I needed. Beneath it I found a large metal case. I opened it to make sure it contained medical supplies.
It did.
Climbing back out of the tank, I dropped to my knees beside the wounded soldier and began dressing his wound, even though I knew I could not save him. At the very least, I could give him painkillers so that his final moments would be less agonizing.
Before long, the medicine took effect.
Though he was still struggling for breath, the British soldier exhaled a little more easily. His eyes drifted toward the sky, and his breathing became slower and more even, though every breath was accompanied by a ragged wheeze.
I kept pressing my hand against the wound beneath his chest, silently praying that no patrol would pass by, that no military trucks or tanks would rumble through, that no fighter planes would fly overhead.
Please, let no one find me sitting here beside this charred tank, tending to a dying soldier.
Please, let nothing happen to me while I try to save another life.
Even if the effort was futile.
I do not know how long I remained with him, but eventually his gaze froze, just as Private James's had that night.
A sharp pain seized my heart once again.
Slowly withdrawing my bloodstained hand, I let out a deep sigh and offered a silent prayer for his soul. I had never been especially religious, but after witnessing so many deaths and hearing soldiers pray for one another, for themselves, and for their loved ones day after day, I had grown accustomed to whispering a prayer myself from time to time.
Rising to my feet, I slung the two-part pack Tobias had given me over my shoulders and, forcing my way through mud, corpses, and scattered body parts, finally reached the fifth foxhole.
The moment I jumped into it, I collapsed.
I pulled a chocolate bar from my backpack.
But suddenly I remembered the German partisan sprinkling white powder into the Allied soldiers' food in the mess hall that very morning, after Private James had died.
For a moment I wondered whether Tobias had made sure that none of the food in this pack contained those same white crystals. Had he remembered that I wanted nothing to do with drugs?
I thought about asking him.
But I couldn't.
He had made it perfectly clear that I was not to use the radio until he contacted me first.
My stomach growled loudly, playing what felt like its hundredth march of the day.
The only thing I had eaten was the soup Tobias had brought me that morning, and it had done little to satisfy my hunger.
