said goodbye to our parents and me, he went and said goodbye to Clara too. He didn’t want her at the recruiting station when he got on the bus. Maybe because it was too hard for him to see her cry as he went off to do what he felt was right for him, but wasn’t right for her. Maybe he was afraid of wanting to back out, but knowing he couldn’t. Maybe because if he did die, he didn’t want his last thoughts to be of his fiance’s tears. Like I said, I don’t believe Ben was thinking clearly. On his last night with Clara, he waited for her to fall asleep, and waited in the living room of their home until the sun rose and it was time for him to walk to the recruiting station in the next town over. What a terrible, yet loving way to leave someone.
When I think about my brother’s time at war, the first thing that comes to mind is snow. Lots and lots of snow. We went through two winters without him, and I remember them more than I do the times of sunshine. Clara reminded me of winter in a way. She was always pale, and tired looking, much like the landscape around her. She blended in. Instead of joining the war effort, or heading off to work, she lived off the money Ben tucked away for her before his departure. Mostly, it was just put towards bills, and small amounts of food just for her, but she certainly didn’t eat much. She instead lived off of alcohol, which only kept her alive for the time being. Soon it became the talk of the town that every few nights, different men would go in and out of Clara and Ben’s home. We all knew she was having multiple affairs; she didn’t know that everyone knew, but she knew that if Ben found out, he would surely leave her out of heartbreak. To cope with knowing this, alcohol came into play again, and occasionally painkillers that were left in the medicine cabinet from old procedures and illnesses that she and my brother had had in the past. I heard years later from Clara’s neighbors that they were often woken up by her sobs as she would stumble up and down the street on the nights we had air raid drills, screaming for Ben. Sometimes the police were called after the sirens went off and Clara was still roaming the neighborhood in her drunken haze. It almost became the neighbors’ job to make sure Clara was simply inside her home where they thought she couldn’t get hurt. I wish the ones that knew how bad she was at the time had made more of an effort to get her out rather than keep her in.
I heard about the D-Day Invasion on the radio the day after it ended. All I could do was hope that my brother wasn’t in the list of casualties, as I was told it may take weeks to notify the families of any victims. I waited and waited in a state of constant anxiety every time the mailman came, every time the telephone rang, and every time the neighbors talked to someone outside their front doors. I hoped it wouldn’t happen to me- hearing about losing someone- but sure enough I did. Two weeks after D-Day, I answered the door to a man in uniform, saying he regretted to inform me that my brother was killed in action.
Shortly after I heard the news I ran up the stairs, slammed the door, and buried my head in the pillows of my bed. I don’t know how long I cried for, but I do know that when I stopped, there was a full moon outside, as pale as the snow from the winter before that June. I immediately thought of Clara, but I didn’t want to be the first one to face her. Once again, I waited.
Life was slow and quiet after receiving the message. My father didn’t talk, my mother always cried but still went on with her normal daily actions. Both of their eyes were filled with so much pain. I went to work at the factory everyday. No one noticed a change in me, or if they did, they didn’t say anything.
It was July 18th, 1942, just two weeks after the message from the man in uniform, I went to see Clara. As I approached her home, I heard the screams of a man in terror. My first reaction was to run and see what had happened. When I got to the stairs, I noticed the front door was wide open, only drawing me inside to the foyer. The sound of my steps echoed against the hardwood of the entryway of the house. A soldier was kneeling on the ground, and when I approached, he turned around to look at me. A scream tore out of my throat. It was Ben. His eyes filled with tears.
He had been reported falsely dead, when he had just been badly injured during the invasion. I was so taken aback by his appearance that it took me a minute to realize that he was screaming too, and was screaming about something different.
In the living room, he