Eddie Greenwood wasn’t sure what had happened in the dark forests between France and Germany; only that things had gone terribly wrong. He hated the biting cold, the way the blowing snow felt like pieces of glass shredding his exposed skin, and how he was never warm enough. When the snow eventually stopped falling, and it became warm enough to breathe without pain, everything in sight turned to mud coated by a bitter rain. Then the temperature would fall once more and everything, including his patience, would freeze.
It was small consolation that the German’s were living under the same conditions, though he was sure they were more adapted than he would ever be. Marching helped somewhat though his feet had long since lost all of their feeling even with two pairs of socks squeezed into boots that were too tight. The rifle he carried hurt to hold without gloves, but he clung to it as if it was his lifeline. Perhaps, in some strange way it was.
He remembered the winter very clearly as if he had just been there. However, when he opened his eyes, he found not the black forest stretching around him filled with snow and German’s and the distant whisper of legend that echoed caution to his blood, but the sun and a cascade of sweet grass speckled with dew. Somewhere nearby a grasshopper danced in the air making a tiny flutter of wings he always believed were fairies when he was a youth growing up in Idaho. His fantasy came complete with a sudden warmth that spread out from his exposed skin to deep inside the soles of his feet.
I’m dying or maybe I’m already dead. Eddie thought. I’ll never see my Ellie again. He had more than once thought that this war was nothing more than a bad dream, that he would one morning awaken to the bright sun streaming in through his bedroom window, his wife Ellen snoring against his back. She would get up before he did, as was her habit and all of his nightmares would be forgotten against the backdrop of eggs, toast, and a warm pot of coffee. He would never be cold again, even in Idaho in the dead of winter, for nothing would feel as cold as the devil-haunted woods of ancient Germany.
If I’m dead, then I must’ve gone to heaven. Eddie thought, but it wasn’t like anything his grandfather had told him. For one, the sun was too bright, almost painful the way it would be in the Valley in early summer. For another, his friends were nowhere to be seen. Shouldn’t they be waiting here for him?
He sat up, wincing when the feeling rushed back into his toes. Frostbite, the pain told him, but what he saw next made him forget the pain. He'd somehow come to rest on a hillside overlooking a lake that wasn’t iced over by the jealous grip of winter surrounded by mountains in the distance that looked feeble compared to the ones dotting the German countryside. The land felt familiar to him and the landscape stretched for miles with more open spaces he had seen in a long time. Even the birds flying in the air felt familiar to him, and on the lake he saw what looked like a sailboat from a distance.
A pair of boots sticking out from the grasses nearby gave him the boost of adrenaline he needed to get to his feet. He picked up his rifle that was lying nearby and was surprised to find that it was still cold to the touch. The boots were attached to a solder he knew well. His hands lay folded across his chest, a look of serenity painted on his face.
“Tucker…” Eddie said, his voice choking, but the man wasn’t dead as he thought and raised a single finger which he waggled back and forth.
“Don’t you dare ruin this for me sergeant,” Tucker yawned. “I’m having the best dream I’ve had since I set my boots in this damn country and you’re not going to ruin it for me.”
“I don’t think we’re dreaming,” Eddie said, taking a chance to look around. The countryside spread out before him both familiar and foreign. He had been here before, he was sure of it, but in the same breathe he knew he was lost and somehow in a place he had no right to be.
“Where are we then?” Tucker asked, finally sitting up. “Because this sure ain’t Germany.”
He pulled off his helmet and squinted up at the sun, running his hand over his scalp the way he used to do back when they were still in the valley together growing up. Even though his hair had been shaved to nearly the roots, he still tried running his fingers through it. That small quirk was one of the many little things that reminded him of home.
“Purgatory,” A voice said from behind them.
The voice belonged to a young man with olive tanned skin and dark hair. He was stripped to the waist, wearing only a silver cross which dangled from his neck on a hempen cord. Eddie knew him as Diaz, a kid from a neighboring town they called Dizzy.
“Purga-what?” Eddie asked.
“He means we’re dead,” Tucker said.
Diaz nodded. “It’s the place between heaven and hell where we go after we die to face judgment.”
“How did we die then? How did we get here?” Eddie looked at Tucker who shrugged back.
“I’ve only heard of this place by my papa when he used to take me to mass. I’ve never actually been here,” Diaz said.
“No…that doesn’t feel right,” Eddie said. “I don’t feel dead and my feet still hurt.”
“Shoot me, then,” Diaz said, holding his hands open and exposing his chest.
“We’re not going to shoot you, Dizzy,” Tucker said. “We’re not dead. We just got lost is all.”
“We’re not lost,” Eddie shook his head, “but I don’t believe we’re dead either.
What’s the last thing any of you can remember?”
Tucker opened his mouth to speak, but closed it when nothing came out. Diaz said nothing.
“We were marching…moving North by North East. Anyone remember that?” Eddie asked. “I remember the cold and the forest…”
His stomach dropped when the first burp of machine gun fire exploded into the tree next to him, a sharp pain raking across his chin. He was on the ground before he recognized the ambush for what it was, his training overriding the fear that was always with him. He heard someone scream out in pain and then the sound of mortars as they began dropping from the sky like banshees from hell. It was a paralyzing sound; one that told you that death was near and unstoppable.
The snow made it difficult for him to run; more so with craters opening up all around them. He knew they should’ve dropped prone and prayed for the best, but war is hell and chaos combined and even the best laid plans go to shit eventually. To stay would be death, but to run was also death.