"Hollowed ground" - Germany, 1945 That's what his mother always called cemeteries. Said that they were peaceful places were the dead rested eternally, to quell his childhood fears. But then, what becomes of our land when the dead are strewn about like fallen leaves? Shriveled and mutilated, scorched equipment left to wither away. Had the whole of Germany become one gigantic cemetery under the Third Reich? If his mother was alive still, he'd had liked very much to ask her. Along with his young wife and daughter, she had perished in the hellish firestorms in Dresden from the Allied bombers. Even the mere thought of that searing hot loss turned his upper lip into a scowl. This conflict, the largest in human history, had driven him certifiably insane. He was sure of that. To the direct front of their tank, a massive lumbering Königstiger, left the rust in the blood soaked mud, say a U.S. GI's steel pot. Friedhelm's eye twitched as he focused on it. Did that GI have a wife and daughter? Or did he have a brother who took pride in flying the colossal B-17's that were ripping cities like Dresden and Hamburg apart at the very foundations? The scowl returned now, his hands tightening around his optics. They were scanning for anything alive in this desolate section of the front line. Waiting. The Americans would come again, after all, they had to push on to Berlin. Most had given up the "heroic" struggle for "final victory" by now; but some, like Friedhelm, knew that the war's end would signal that they'd have nothing left. No wives, no daughters, no families, no homes to return too. Their pasts obliterated. Futures turned to ash by shells and bullets. So here and now, in the present. They fought on.
