Chapter 3: A View to a Life

Rather than gathering for breakfast, each family had Room Service deliver. It felt a little safer than exposing their mob to a public restaurant.

By nine in this overcast Saturday morning, they'd managed to get to the funeral home for the viewing.

The five old friends looked at their companion of many years.

"He looks so lifelike, doesn't he?" RC whispered. Even he was hushed under the influence of a funeral parlour.

"Yes, you'd almost think he was housebroken," joked Brad. "I'm going to miss our paintball games."

"I'll miss our hunting sessions," confessed Robert. "We never actually caught anything except wet, but the good time we had made up for it."

"I think he really didn't want to," Henry concluded. "Remember that trip up to Canada? To shoot ducks?"

"With a camera." Chuck smiled at the reminiscence.

Brad reached in his jacket and drew out his PDA. It was loaded with pictures — including ones from the trip to Canada, showing ducks landing, ducks swimming, ducks upended feeding, and their amused guide who wasn't used to big tough Yankees who only shot critters with cameras — and not electronic cameras at that. Every shot had been taken on single-lens-reflex cameras using 35mm photo film stock.

"Remember that guide we had? What was his name, Bill something?"

"Yeah, Sam always had a soft spot for the innocent ones, that's why he never wanted to kill the ducks, or deer or any other ruminant. The ones who wanted to kill you, though — look out." Chuck looked at the five of them. "I know you weren't all with him in the Army, but he had this reputation as one of the toughest sons of bitches going. But it was all an act. He wanted everyone in the best possible shape and trained to a knife-edge so they had the best possible chance of staying alive. The men took his crap and loved him for it. They knew where he was coming from."

Henry nodded. "You remember that old line attributed to the Duke of Wellington?"

Brad frowned and shook his head.

"In effect, the Duke said that the regimental commanders will see to it that their men eat before they do, are bedded down before they are, that their men's welfare comes ahead of the commanding officer's. 'Do that, and your men will follow you into Hell itself. Fail to do that, and I will break you in front of your own regiments.'" Henry gestured toward his old roommate, lying silent and still in the coffin. "He didn't just pay lip service to that, he lived it, every second of every hour of every day. He made sure we all lived that. And I'm certain that because of that, he had far lower casualty rates than any other, lesser commander."