He left after finding the medic’s body sprawled in a spot of sunlight that fell through a hole the mortar made in the broken chapel’s roof. The tall grass was speckled with her blood. He wasn’t at her ceremony, where the brigade sergeant major stood her rifle between her boots and rested her small unblemished helmet at the top. He’d already left through a hole in the wire by then, his clothes and disassembled weapon scattered in the dust. He was gone but we didn’t know it yet. We lazed around our platoon area half-asleep beneath the light of a moon that cast shadows over the plywood guard tower and triple-strand concertina. Nothing told us this night would be different from any other until a few hours later when Sergeant Sterling calmly walked into the middle of our imperfect circle and said, “Someone had a big old bowl of dumbass today. Get your shit together.” He’d looked annoyed by our random arrangement. Some of us were lying down, some were upright; some grouped together, some sat a little off, alone.
