Grantville Gazette, Volume 40 Read Online Free Page B

had come out easier than expected, and Ella Lou's handkerchief had stopped the blood, which he had placed tightly against the wound with the aid of a bandage from his med-kit. Nothing now but uninterrupted sleep could do the rest. Rice had checked the pockets of the boy's coat for anything else: matches, a flashlight, an extra blanket, a morphine syrette, food. Nothing. The boy didn't even have a satchel. His commander had put him in the field with nothing more than a coat, a gun, and a knife. Rice huffed. This war was over; the Germans just didn't know it yet.
    The next morning the boy awoke and was hungry. Rice gave him some rations. He gave him a drink from his canteen too, then checked the wound. The area around the broken rib was red, raw, swollen, but for the most part clean. "I think you'll live," he said, laying back. He winced. The shrapnel bits in his neck were beginning to hurt badly. The blood had stopped, but the skin was tender and smelled awful.
    "Would you like my blade?" The boy said, holding up his youth knife. "You have something in your neck. It looks infected."
    Cautiously, Rice took the knife and wiped it against his pant leg. "What do you know about it?"
    "My grandfather was a surgeon in the Great War."
    " Hm. My grandfather was a pig farmer from Ohio."
    Rice pushed against one of the larger pieces lodged in his neck. He then placed the knife blade beneath it and yanked quickly. The piece burst through the skin and flew out. He pushed the collar of his coat against the blood and said, "What's your name, boy?"
    "Oswin, sir. Oswin Bauer."
    "John Thomas Rice. Don't call me sir. I'm a private like you, and not much older I guess. How old are you anyway?"
    "Fourteen."
    Jesus! "Well, Oswin, when you get back home, you can tell your family and friends that you bested an American, left him for dead in a foxhole. You can embellish the story if you like. I won't tell."
    That got a smile from the boy. "Thank you, sir—I mean, John. But I don't have friends or family anymore. They are dead."
    "What do you mean? Where are you from?"
    "Darmstadt."
    Rice shook his head. "Don't know it. Is it close?"
    Oswin nodded. "It is not too far away, I suppose, but it is gone now. British bombers set a fire in it. A fire that would not stop. It destroyed almost everything. My mother, father, my little brother. All are dead."
    Rice had heard of this kind of bombing. First, incendiaries were dropped around the city. Then, high explosives were released, which ignited the incendiaries and created a self-sustaining fireball that grew and grew as winds were sucked in to feed the flames. It was a terrible, brutal way to wage war, and rumor had it that more of these kinds of attacks were coming.
    Oswin stopped talking and turned his head away.
    From his coat pocket, Rice pulled a black-and-white wallet sized picture of a girl. He smiled and ran his fingers across her bright face, trying to remember the color of the dress she had on. Red? Green? It hardly mattered. She looked good in anything.
    "Is that your wife, sir?"
    Rice ignored the "sir" and shook his head. "No, but I'd like her to be. I promised myself that when . . . if . . . I returned, I'd propose. But she's young. Not much older than you. Her father doesn't approve." He laughed. "He doesn't like me very much, and frankly, I'm not sure she likes me all that much either."
    Oswin clutched the heirloom tightly. "My mother used to say that love is like the weather. There are many rainy days, and sometimes winds blow so strong that you can't stand it anymore. But you put your head forward and push through, and eventually, you will find the sunlight."
    Rice picked another fragment from his neck. He gritted his teeth and hissed. That one stung. "She sounds like a smart lady. Did she give you that thing?" he asked, motioning to the heirloom.
    " Ja . She got it from my grandfather. He used to wear it during his surgeries. He said it brought him good luck. He got it from his father, who