Epilogue

Bob woke with a start his heart racing, beads of sweat on his forehead. As far as he could remember his 50 years of sleep had been peaceful, for a while after waking from his long nap his wounded psyche had not bothered him like in the years after the end of the war. He looked at the TV images playing silently on the cable news program of young men in combat in Afghanistan. Along with the events of September 11 which they all watched in real-time this was the first war he was watching live as it happened. Not the delays of weeks or sometimes months to read the war news or go to the cinema to see a news real like when he was growing up in the 1940s.

The dream was always the same a dark German panzer (tank) swiveling its big gun toward him. He could not move, his bazooka empty his friends dead he could do nothing but wait ... then he was at the concentration camp bodies everywhere the living dead pleading for help, the helpless feeling and later the anger as they lined up SS guards machine gunning them to death.

Bob knew in a clinical way this new ‘war on terror’ was bringing up these old memories that to him were only a few years ago not over five decades ago. In time he would need to deal with the memories. Maybe see if any of his old war buddies still lived.

It was dark outside the faint glow of the clock on the microwave in the kitchen told him it was after 3 am he had fallen asleep on the couch and now was restless. He retrieved the box from his room that he had pulled from the attic when the dreams started again, shortly after Zack being called up and disappearing to fight this new type of war. Clicking on a lamp he looked at the small meticulously crafted wooden box he had stored in his old army footlocker for all these years.

Opening the lid, he let his eyes then his fingers sort through the items. Colorful campaign and service ribbons from his time in European Theatre ... the blue, white, and red striped piece of cloth holding the silver star ... the enameled blue of the musket and wreathe of his CIB ... a black metal Iron Cross ... numerous black and white photos. Digging past the old pieces of uniform like his Thunderbird divisional patch worn from wear, his fingers found the heavy object wrapped in an oiled piece of silky cloth. He set it aside. He let his eyes stray over the photo’s not lingering lest they bring back an unwanted memory ... nevertheless he saw himself in uniform first in training then dirtier and harder in Europe, posing with friends or with destroyed German machines of war. An image of him and his older brother Frank, a pilot, who found him in Munich after the war ended for a short reunion. Another a picture of a pretty German fraulein who a uniformed Bob had his arm around, his Munich girlfriend who gave him the box. He set the stack of photo’s aside his mind full of memories.

Each piece in the box represented a significant memory of his short time in uniform. He had turned 18 in the summer of 1944. He enlisted before the draft got him. Even though he wanted to be in the army air corps like his brother Frank the Army needed infantry more than anything. The end of 1944 found him in the back of a cold truck being dropped off at his new unit as the German army’s winter offensive exploded through allied lines. A lot of that first month was a blur mostly trying not to freeze in the deep winter cold as he learned how to fight the Germans and live. His biggest test came months later as his division, the 45th, crossed into Germany. He earned the little piece of blue, red, and white cloth, knocking out a tank among other actions in close quarters city fighting. But he did not want to go there to those memories because then his mind would fall to the end of the war and Munich and Dachau the place of nightmares, even worse than the memories of the tough fight at Aschaffenburg.

He closed the box leaving the heavy object wrapped in the oiled cloth out along with the picture of Laura his German girl, and a second of Laura a little older, smiling, holding their baby daughter. Good memories of a difficult time that he would soon revisit.