"Wouldn't You Consider it a Privilege to Associate Yourself with Such Fine-looking Men?"

The moon and stars, unaware of the hills and grass, glisten in the dew drops that fight the darkness in the woods that surround the property. A place no light can penetrate, and from the kitchen window, where the moonlight shines off the shards of her heart, stuck in the grout between the tiles, the night, seen through her eyes, is an open wound, clear as any tear that rolls down her face, just like the dew and dying petals amongst the hard bark and long limbs of the spruce trees.

Her feeling of inadequacy at the kitchen sink and her desire to help the wounded confuse her. She heard his arguments, and they were enough to tear anyone to pieces, but though she loved her brother, she could not grasp why he insisted on fighting. To her, he was still a boy, but he felt like a man when he tied his boots. He grabbed his rifle and joined the others, along the Samaria River, on the side of the White Mountains, untouched by war, where, as long as snow fell, they had nothing to worry about.

According to British intelligence, Nazi’s were going to fall from the sky, and hopefully into the many gorges of Crete, where they would make fine targets against the limestone. You could see everyone’s breath, but only because they had traveled far and quickly. They pushed the Italians back into Bulgaria and Albania, but the Nazi’s rolled right over the mainland, and with the Royal Navy’s help, the Greeks ended up on Crete, an island with no cities and much history. A place where Mionians, Byzatines, and Phoenicians died in the towns, mountains, and a network of gorges that gave the impression of a chipped landscape from above. A broken plate that they had the power to rearrange.

The Nazi’s fell from the sky, and the III Battalion, 1st Assault Regiment lost 112 out of 126 men. Old, Greek women shot Germans in the stomach, and a 55-year-old cobbler blew up a bridge.

When he was a boy, baseball was the most important thing in his life, and his favorite player, Lou Gehrig, the luckiest man on earth, had just died. His aim became sharper and pity harder to find amongst corpses of unarmed comrades that lay in olive groves and rocks. Though he’ll never be a Yankee, he shares a cigarette with Andres Catsoulas, and all anyone can think about is being a child. It has no advantages, but they are winning. An entire island is fighting back, but loneliness crept in from the sea, and they stopped talking, cut off by the sight of German rearmament. Soon, there would be tanks and artillery, but not yet. There was still a breeze of loneliness that came from the shores. A wind that reminded him of Long Island in the fall, but that would be gone when the tanks and artillery got there. His British and Australian allies retreated. They took with them their radios that broadcast everything that reminded him of home, of New York, but when asked if he wanted to go, he looked at the Greeks. A group of tired men who would most likely die over the course of the next few days and could not judge him. America had yet to enter the war, but he was here to defend his remaining family and the home of his immigrant parents. “When you look around, wouldn’t you consider it a privilege to associate yourself with such fine-looking men?” said Lou Gerhig. “I might have been given a bad break, but I’ve got an awful lot to live for. Thank you.”

Despite their better aim, the knowledge of the land that no map shows is no more than what Andres Catsoulas knows; they are forced into the gorges by German shells, down into the pits of limestone that were littered with the dead of their early success.

Missed shots and scattered rounds of Nazi fire created clouds of limestone powder, and scattered rounds turn those clouds of limestone powder into storms. He remembered the passion he had heard from the broadcasters and the crack of the bat behind home plate, but like his favorite player, that was gone and would never come back. He saw the faces of hungry men who fought in the dust, pinned down by superior weapons. News had reached them, under a cloudless night sky, via a child, of what had happened in Kondomari. A Nazi who was infuriated with the time it was taking to take Crete, and drawing resources away from the invasion of the Soviet Union, had the first town he saw, Kondomari, rounded up and shot in the olive groves. Men, women, and children. Old and young. An elderly man was shot three times as he reached for his crying grandchild.

When the kid was finished telling them what had happened, he made the mistake of looking at a pocket watch, and the glare was enough to get him shot through the stomach and onto the limestone.

They followed Andres Catsoulas under heavy fire, through vast fields, and up the White Mountains, where the snow reached the hair above their ankles. The sound of rifle fire was never far, and leaning against the calabrian pine and evergreen holm oak, they shared a cigarette and talked about what to do. They built a fire from a smashed tree around a bomb crater. Their feet grew warmer, but they started to feel sick, and his first memory came down like snow, soft but scattered. He remembered meeting his sister for the first time and smiled.

The snow kept falling, and the war surrounded them. When the Nazi’s reached their fire, they shot at them until they died.

His sister saw the clear skies and the droplets of water crawling across their window, and how she wanted to be out there, under the Long Island moon, in the woods where no light could get through. Her brother carried a light that was as much a part of him as his stubbornness. She thought one day that might change, as we all do, like the rose petals she could not see but knew were under the kitchen window, dying. Her feelings of inadequacy left her right then and there, and it wasn’t until she found out what had happened that she realized an honor had fallen to her to remember the good times for those who no longer can. She remembered her brother playing baseball in the yard with his friends, and arguing amongst themselves who was the greatest Yankee. Those forgotten times, calm and clear like early morning. Like the dew they complained about until the sun dries it all up again, and the rain comes during a summer storm. She looked at the sky and could hear him screaming, “Lou Gerhig.”