better off than schofield

I have been a bit twitchy ever since Michael's impromptu visit last Wednesday.
I like that word: twitchy.
It's one that the bfrb uses when he is feeling at odds and ends.
I should have thought to say it earlier when I was with him.
Proof positive that I "attend class and pay attention" to him.
(smile)
After our extra-long buffet dinner, at which he thankfully let me do most of the talking, we didn't have many choices at the cinema.
He opted for a second viewing of the WWI film, "1917".
We were the only ones in the screening room on this manic Monday night.
That was fine with me.
It was fine with him, too, as he babbled like a brook during much of it.
(smile)
That movie turned out to be the perfect choice.
Not only did it allow me to cry twice, but it also had a lovely symmetry unnoticed before.
It began with young Schofield sitting on the ground, his back against a tree.
By the film's end, he is again sitting on the ground, his back pressed onto a tree's trunk.
Less than twenty-four hours had elapsed for him between the two communions with nature.
But what horror-wracked, painful hours those had been!
First, his friend had volunteered him for a special mission that turned out very deadly.
He had torn his left hand on barbed wire when they'd scarcely started.
Then, his startled buddy had caused him to firmly set down the damaged hand directly inside a rotting corpse.
Together, they'd safely traversed the land between their bunker and the German bunker, beseiged by the sight of mutilated men and horses, assailed by the smell of rot.
While in the deserted barracks room there, a rat tripped a wire and caused an explosion!
Schofield was buried beneath concrete and roof timbers, his mouth filled and eyes caked with the dust.
Blind, he had to jump over a mine shaft, dependent upon the sound of his buddy's voice.
Water from their canteens soon had him sighted again, and on they traveled.
The abandoned farm proved to be a death trap.
A German pilot, forced to crash land, took the opportunity to stab Schofield's buddy.
Schofield held the younger man as he bled out.
Too late a cavalcade arrived, but it promised travel by truck... but it was too slow.
Schofield was again on foot, crossing a broken bridge, dodging fire from a sniper.
He managed to find and kill the sniper, but not before being catapulted backwards down a set of stairs.
He awoke some hours later, his head bleeding, with a stopped watch and night fallen.
How much time had been wasted in that spot?
He didn't know, so he ran, in and out of flare-lit brightness and pitch black, gunfire dogging his every step.
At one point, he had to strangle a German soldier to make his way to the river.
Then, night giving way to dawn, he'd jumped into the cold, rushing water, being swept around and into large boulders as he fought for air!
At last, he reached the water's edge, then had the absolute horror of ploughing his way through the bloated corpses huddled at the shore.
But dawn had broken.
He felt the dread fear of being too late to thwart the ill-destined attack against the Germans...
but he persevered, determined to follow through on the General's mission.
At one point, he had to run onto the battlefield, perpendicularly to the outgoing wave of men, in order to reach the commander and relay his message.
But, success was his!
But maybe not completely.
Two waves of men had already run out to fling their bodies against entrenched enemy.
He still had his buddy's jewelry and tag to give to the man's older brother... who was in the first wave of doomed attackers.
Had he survived?
Had the mission to save the older brother been too late?
After wandering through the medic tents, with its wounded and dying, he heard a voice...
one with the timbre of his buddy's...
and found he had succeeded in his task, after all.
Mission fulfilled, he'd sought solace from the lone tree near the camp...
taking the moment to look at the photo of his two daughters...
and the one of his wife, who'd written a message on the back:
Come back home to us.

That's when I realized how fortunate I truly was to not have been that young man.

i thank You, God.