#ah jeepers...i can't even imagine being in this situation. how to even wrap your head around it that they were just gone so completely.

[pastlivesandpurplepuppets]

A few days later we were clearing the woods west of Foy and resistance seemed light. We hiked to where we were supposed to be and dug in, then the Krauts started shelling us almost immediately. It was the same sort of horror. Huge bursts. Whole trees falling over. The air awash with flames. After the smoke cleared, someone called for Skip Muck. He didn’t answer. Someone else called for Alex Penkala. He didn’t answer either. George Luz usually shared a foxhole with them. Maybe it was his voice I heard. Maybe he had dived for cover in a different hole this time. I crawled out of my hole and worked my way through the trees. The voice was still calling, still looking. “Skip! Alex! ” George Luz was digging. He was on his knees in the snow with his helmet off. He was using the helmet to scoop away dirt. There was franticness to his motion. He stopped digging, sat back on his heels, then looked to the side and held his gaze away. His eyes were ringed with dark circles. His hands were filthy and bloody. He picked up something from out of the dirt, but I couldn’t see what. “Luz?” I said. He shook his head. Others gathered around. They knew. “Luz?” I asked again. I looked closer. In his hands he held a small corner of a sleeping bag.

Sergeant Taylor came over. “Shifty,” he said. His voice was husky. “C’mon. Help me out over here.” There were no bodies. Just a few parts. A shell had flown in and landed directly on Alex and Skip’s foxhole. Everything was gone. A man can’t quite get that through his head. No. He can’t. I thought about Skip Muck, the heart and soul of Easy Company. When we were back in Aldbourne, he had taken Joe Lesniewski under his wing and made him part of the group. I thought about Alex Penkala, how you’d often see him writing little letters to his sisters. He’d read me one of them once. It was a cheery note, you know, asking his sisters to send him cookies, promising he’d write again soon. I helped out doing whatever I could do for a while. Then I brushed away the snow and sat on a stump. I thought about praying, but I didn’t know how to put anything into words. I wished I could go home. I wished we all could. Then I went back to my foxhole in the woods in the snow in the ground. My feet were aching and frozen. My stomach hollow and tight.

~ Shifty Powers