It was mud in the wall that protected us and lead in the bullets, and the rain came heavy. What thin strength the wall held was dripping down its sides, and it seemed a weak hope that they would hold against the barrage coming from the other side.

I do not believe that I was the first to see him. He couldn't have been much more than five years old, tucked in the broken corner of a destroyed church. He held his hands over his ears and hid his face inbetween the tattered cloth on his knees, and all I could see of him were his clothes and his hair, both the color of kicked dirt.

I did not say anything and I did not move and I do not believe that my expression changed. I saw the child the way a man might see a tree or lamppost and understand that is a part of the scenery, but think. There was the sound of the small explosions of a barrel of a gun beating through the air, punctuated by the greater bursts of artillery; the fog of dust and broken pieces of people's homes; the steel smell of bleeding from the man laying below me. My body was stiff and still and I am not sure that I knew I was alive.

Then I said the words "A boy in the church" and I do not know if they heard me but they did not speak back. I waited again behind the wall and closed my eyes through forty beats in the rhythm of the fire before I opened them and when I looked again a part of me was hoping he had been hit but he had not. The boy was still, but his body was shaking from crying.

I said it again and this time yelled it, "Sir, there is a boy in the church," but nobody spoke though I knew they had heard me. I said "Sir" again and he said "Wait" and I looked at him for the first time and I saw that he was not looking at anything anymore and that no one in our troop was firing anymore. We were all of us just waiting and hiding, as if the battle we were fighting was a storm God had sent down onto the earth and we were helpless to stop it.

I looked at the child again and he was still alive and I thought maybe it would be okay. The boy was good at staying still and I thought maybe he would wait and we would survive. Then there was an explosion right next to him and pieces of concrete rained down upon him and I saw it had cut up his arm and he looked at me and his eyes were big and brown and they saw me and they knew I was doing nothing.

"He's a kid," I breathed, and then, louder, "He's a fucking kid, he's just a fucking kid. I've gotta get him."

"Hold the position," he told me. "You can't do anything now. We'll get him out when it's calm."

"He's a fucking kid, he's a fucking kid, he's just a fucking kid," I said again like it was the air was breathing, and then, "I'm going. Fuck it, I'm going," and I realized I was.

I kept my head low and I ran and I did not really know what I was doing, except that my whole body was tingling. I could see the whole battlefield crisply as if the air was clean and I watched a shell fly through a wall and saw the men behind it die and it seemed so slow and so calm that it felt almost peaceful to watch. Then I hit wall and I ducked down and I grabbed the boy and covered him.

"It's okay," I said. "It's going to be okay. Do you understand English? I am here to help you. It's going to be okay." but he looked at me and he did not understand anything.

I said it was okay again although I did not know why and I patted his chest in a way I thought might be reassuring. He seemed to relax a little and I just sat there for a while, my back to the church wall, unable to move anywhere safer than here, and I felt intensely the uselessness of my existence.

I rubbed my finger across the cut on his arm and it hurt him. I told him I was here to help him again and I found a bandage and covered it. He still look terrified and I tried to smile and him but it did not feel right and he looked more worried.

He said, "Chere me bodzei," and it seemed to mean something to him so I said, "Okay," and then, "Alright," but couldn't think of anything better. Then I waited quietly and listened to the violence all around us and now it just sounded to me like drops of rain falling outside.

We waited an hour. When we saw the planes overhead and knew it would be over soon, and when their bombs dropped the shooting stopped. For a moment I'd forgotten to move at all, and we just sat there motionless, waiting for something more. Then the life came back to me.

I grabbed him by the arm and told him to come. There was this warm heat in my chest and my breathing felt smooth and gentle as I made my way to my feet. I took him by the hand and kept my head low, ready for the firing to begin again, and then I felt a cold pinch in the side below my ribs, and a sudden intake of air, as if a hot breeze had found its way into me, and I saw the knife he'd had in his sleeve.

The boy spat at me before he ran. It was a thin droplet that fell short of my face, but he spat.

Then he went, stumbling on small legs, using every ounce of his strength in the childish belief that the sheer force of his will would propel him faster than I could chase him. I watched him go, more stunned than hurt, through the shattered walls and broken homes that had been his village.

The strange thought that I could stamp out his life in an instant passed through me, not as a desire but as something else I could place. It was almost like a thought of admiration.

The cut was not deep, but I waited for the men to get me anyway, propped up against dead stone.