H e could go to sleep. He should go to sleep. He’d lucked out: this billet this cellar was as immaculate as the Dutch village they’d liberated today its stone walls offering sturdy shelter from German artillery attacks. When they’d realized the Germans had left the owners had returned to their home and he’d feasted on a meal of apples bread and fresh milk from their small herd of cows. (Their precious sausage presented to him with gestures of great fanfare he had of course refused.)
He’d insisted on sleeping in the cellar — much safer if a German counterattack began during the night — so they’d hauled down for him the unheard-of luxury of a mattress and a goose-down blanket. Brave people: if the Germans returned and found they’d assisted the American G.I.’s they would be publicly hanged — if they were lucky.
Tomorrow he might be in a foxhole or a barn or on the bare earth. Now he should get some badly needed sleep. He tried but it eluded him: jumbled thoughts of bravery and warfare and death were keeping Abe Levine awake.
Maybe writing would help; it often did after a disturbing or difficult day. He lit the small kerosene lamp they’d given him — another extravagant rarity in war — and began to write.
