Into the Motherland the Germany Army marched...

[youngsoldat]

Erwin had spent enough time exploring the ship to discover the media library. At first he had spent so much time simply reading books he'd missed or reading new books he'd never seen or heard of before. That had taken time. Then, slowly, his curiosity had turned to visual media. At first he had been amazed and overawed by the pictures produced

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[bostonbeatcop]

Rob's own dreams hadn't been much better lately. The thick forest, the shells coming in, corpses rotting as they struggled to move forward even five hundred yards through the bloody Hurtgen. He paused as he noticed the flickering black and white, turned.

The German kid...no. The German soldier. Almost his own age. Or would be if the timelines had matched up. He stepped over, standing behind Erwin quietly for a moment.

"Shit, they always made everything sound so clean and neat in those."

[youngsoldat]

Erwin jumped and glanced back at Robert He'd been so intent on watching that he'd lost track of where others in the room where. The sleep deprivation didn't help much either. He shrugged and glanced back at the screen. He still remembered the last time he and Robert had talked.

"...yes. They always do, don't they?"

[bostonbeatcop]

Robert sat down slowly next to the younger man, watching as Russian tanks ground over the plains of the Ukraine. Must have been hard. He rubbed his tired eyes, sighed.

"And it's always the enemy getting it. Not you or your guys."

[youngsoldat]

"Of course not. That would be bad for morale." Surprisingly enough, Erwin sounds earnest. "Do you think I want my family to know how bad it really is? Then they would just worry themselves sick over me, even more then they already do. It's better if they don't know."

He tapped the controller, switching over to... Poland, 1939. "...I thought the war would be over before I ever got involved in it. I was fifteen."

[bostonbeatcop]

"I was twenty. And I thought it was a European problem. Didn't effect me until 1941...That's over twenty years ago for me. Christ. And I still remember it, clear as day." He shook his head.

"You guys did a number on Europe, that's for sure."

[youngsoldat]

"...I suppose we did."

Erwin shrugged. He didn't like the idea that his friends had died in vain. He didn't like the idea that the Hell he'd suffered through had been for nothing.

[bostonbeatcop]

"I think we got off on the wrong foot...I just...I saw..." He trailed off, unable to put anything into words. Erwin would understand, right? They both saw the same kinds of things, did things that neither of them would want to remember.

"I saw some bad, bad stuff, Erwin."

[youngsoldat]

"You weren't the only one," Erwin snapped back. He still felt a bit bitter about being held responsible for crimes he'd never committed. The crimes he had committed had been necessary. Even if they haunted his dreams.

[bostonbeatcop]

"I know, I know!" It was hard to resist the urge to call him 'kid.' Had he ever been as young as Erwin?

"I just. What am I supposed to do? Forget what I saw with my own damn eyes?"

[youngsoldat]

"I did," Erwin retorted. Although, that was really a lie. He didn't think he would forget for as long as he lived, no matter how hard he tried to bury it.

[bostonbeatcop]

"Liar." It wasn't really a retort. More a statement of fact.

[youngsoldat]

"Be quiet," Erwin snapped, "You weren't there. You didn't see Russia. You didn't do the things I've done. I have to forget."

[bostonbeatcop]

"And you weren't in the Goddamn Hurtgen, you didn't see the camps. You didn't see what I did, so don't tell me to forget. We can't forget, because if we forget then it'll just happen again in Russia or France or Germany or even the United States. The world doesn't need another war like that one, especially with all the hydrogen bombs we have pointing at each other!" Rob clenched a fist.

"I have nightmares about the war still, but people need to know."

[youngsoldat]

"Why? Why should anyone have to know about what we did? Why should they have to know about the people we killed, about rotting corpses, about building walls out of the forzen corpses of your friends and your enemies so you don't freeze to death from the wind and snow? Why should they know about the villages? Why should they know about the feeling of tanks driving over your foxhole? They don't need to know! They shouldn't know!"

[bostonbeatcop]

"Because then maybe they'll think twice about going to war! Maybe they'll think twice about sending their young men off to die in some hole in some place thousands of miles from home! So my son doesn't have to go to war and hold his best friends guts in while he's screaming for a medic!"

[youngsoldat]

"It doesn't matter. Do you honestly think that the generals and the politicians care about what the common soldier thinks? They know more then us, they know better then us. Or they should. They ought to. In the end, I just want to forget all of it. I want to forget all of it and go home."

He turned away. "Maybe it's easier for you. You're, what, twenty years away from the war? I just lived it a few months ago. And you never fought the Russians."