"YOU HAVE BEEN SELECTED"

I find myself in a precarious position. Stretched out as if on a medieval rack with thoughts pulling at my very fabric of existence. Each turn of the mind, each repeating memory pulls at my muscles, wrenching my body until the pain of the past becomes a reality, now, here, in the present.

I am uncomfortable. My thoughts seem to swirl about in a whirling panorama like a thousand movie screens flashing in rapid succession before my burning eyes…each scene crushed upon the next.

It is cold. I remember the cold of Nennig…in Hitler’s Germany. It was in December and January that heavy snows came again. The first year in France was the first memory. We were so green! We had frozen feet before we reached the front lines. It was 14 below zero consistently…day…night….day…night….until our thoughts became frozen into a sameness…always the same…always the past.

Once, while the column was stalled, an old, old lady…was she 100? Perhaps a thousand years ago? How many old ladies had performed this act before? With the Roman Legions? With the Crusaders? She was wrapped in a shawl, her features hidden, her figure bent. She fought through the deep snow to bring us firewood! She never spoke nor made a human sound, just handed me the bundle of small sticks.

The wind cut through our miserable clothing as if we stood there naked. Our feet had no feeling. Our fingers seemed to burn despite the cold…as if a torch was held by some devil burning our rack of memories.

Ah yes, the war to end all wars. Was that great conflict like ours? “They shall not pass” rang in each schoolboy’s head as some romantic whisper from the past….before memories.

Would we ever see home again? Taste a hot cup of coffee? Feel the warmth of our home? Or the gentle touch of a woman’s hands, caressing our flesh?

All of us, each bundle of miserable memories, stood, hunched….crumbling shapes in dumb silence. All locked in some private thoughts of the past …always the past. For who would want to recognize the present?

We were not here, in the middle of nowhere, locked in deep frozen snow, headed somewhere. Now, at eighty one locked in memories with a lower energy level and some bitterness, I realize that I could never endure such an experience today. The mental processes are no longer functioning, the desire is gone…the energy, the spark flew off into space long ago.

But we sat, stood, fell in total silence. The black, black air seemed to cover us like a huge, heavy blanket thrown across the countryside until there was a mass of nothingness to gaze upon.