Silent Night

476 words

“Son of a bitch, it’s cold tonight!” Sgt McKenzie cursed as he stomped his feet with every step he took back towards the barracks.
“Should have had another pint!” Spc Hill realized he was speaking way too loudly as he tried to suppress the slur in his words and stepped out quicker to keep up with McKenzie.
“I believe your last three pints is where the rest of our money went to, otherwise I’d be sitting in a cab right now.” McKenzie remarked sardonically.
Hill made an oomph sound as he crashed into McKenzie who had suddenly stopped. “Let’s cut through here, Base is just past these woods and it’ll take all night if we walk the long way around.”
“Fine by me”, Hill said, again trying to sound more sober than he was.
Soon the dense brush blocked out all sounds from the road they had been walking on and fallen leaves muffled their steps, their breath formed little clouds in the frigid December air.
“Choo, choo”, Hill whistled pretending to be a steam engine. He had forgotten all about trying to seem sober.
McKenzie stuffed his fists deep into his pockets and tried to tuck his nose under his collar, pulling his shoulders up high. He did not like the cold, for more than the obvious reasons. Whenever the cold moved into his bones like it had that Christmas a few years back - would this continue to haunt him for the rest of his life?
You stare into the darkness, eyes wide like it makes a difference, branches looking like people, people looking like branches and then the illume round lights up the night. That split second you see the enemy right in front of you and you order fire on your own position just to blast them straight to hell. After they are dead and you lived and the adrenaline leaves your body you can’t remember if you actually saw the fear in your enemy’s eye or if that is just your conscience telling you, you took a man away from his family?
Whatever had happened to the days where there at least was no fighting on Christmas Eve and as the story went, everybody sang Silent Night and you could even hear the enemy joining in from across no man’s land?
“Hill, shut up, you fool!”
“Roger that, Sergeant!”
They continued on walking, both quiet now, each in their own thoughts. Usually they would have been cracking jokes about the little brunette who had been trying to act coy, while actually she came across like a regular GI tramp in her attempts to get kissed underneath the mistletoe, but the dark of the woods had turned the mood somber.
“Rudolph, the red nosed reindeer…” Hill ventured.
Fine, McKenzie thought as he stepped out of the woods. That will have to do.