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He hears Liebgott say it long before he does. Words he hears uttered in rage, shouted as if they gave proof of something.
As if their lives are a court room and the whole world is there to judge. The jury is faceless and they have committed no crime. And their only defence is what they can muster themselves.
Except Liebgott doesn't have to defend himself.
Though passionate, and beautiful and amusing and a welcome reprieve above all else, the words are empty. They are hollow.
"My people."
It's two words. It has many translations, and twice as many connotations. It is written in their Holy book, and his. It is a title worthy of everyone, and no one.
And it doesn't need the word 'Israel' attached to be important.
His people, the people he has long hidden being part of, have seen death for longer than any one person has lived. They have seen crusades to wipe them from each and every corner of land, and they have endured and endured.
But, he supposes, so have most people. He is alone in his faith, but not alone in his experiences. There must be dozens, hundreds even, of men in the Airborne who have seen similar. Who have shared the fear, the misplaced shame.
The feelings of not belonging. Of not being comfortable to say your own name.
His people, the people he is growing weary of covering up in his life, are ones of a rich heritage. Maybe not wealthy, or paved with good fortune, but filled to the brim none the less. With experience, and endurance, if nothing else.
And traditions that have lived longer than any Bible.
It seems that tradition, coupled with experience, create a truly unparalleled mix.
Don feels like he can finally claim both.
He is young, he knows. He was not born in another century, he has not seen his thirtieth birthday. He has neither travelled the world nor read a library's worth of books.
But he is experienced.
He is young, he knows. Young enough to still marvel at the English countryside, even as he tore through it at a motorcycle's top speed. Young enough to risk his life for a Luger, a piece of well-formed metal, and laugh about it afterwards. Young enough to swap stories of school days and tales of family life, crowded into dirty foxholes and layered under a dusting of snow.
Young enough to love the world, to enjoy it for a little while, before he had to shoot it to pieces.
His experience is one only a young person of these times can have. Unique, and terrible.
His experience tells him that stones last longer than flowers.
His people's traditions, his traditions, support this wholeheartedly.
He remembers visiting the cemetery back in Oregon. How the graves stood straight, tall, and confident. How the stone bore the Hebrew characters with a look of pride. How green the grass had been.
"Why are there no flowers?" He remembers asking, in a voice that is no longer his own. The voice of a child.
And even then, back in such a peaceful place for him, he remembers expecting a terrible answer. Because who could possibly come to place flowers on the graves of a people so hated?
But his mother's face had lit up with a smile, he remembers, without any remorse or pain or terrible, terrible sadness.
"Because we don't leave flowers on our graves, sweetheart." Her words spur his feet onwards even now, "They wilt too fast; they die once plucked from the ground."
The image is strong in his mind, bright sunlight and green, green grass covering up the bleak, snow-filled landscape that he really sees.
"Then what do we leave?" The child speaks again, from his memory, from a peaceful time, "How do we show we care?"
Crunch after crunch of boots, feet upon crisp snow, echo across the sweet picture of the graveyard, of his mother's smile.
"Look."
Her slender finger points across the grass, between the headstones, past the dirty foxholes and broken, dying trees. The child's gaze, his gaze, follows her instruction. Over the beautiful sunlit cemetery and the green, green grass. Past the filthy shell craters and bloody, red snow.
And as he looks, he starts to realise that there is more than just proud, lonely headstones here. Amongst the warm morning glow and the bright, healthy leaves of the trees, there is more than meets the eye. Where there is no bold and colour-filled flowers, there are smaller, humbler respects being paid.
His feet come to a halt, stock-still in the burnt and blistered snow of the forest, just outside Foy. Eyes slipping shut, against the cold and tumbling snowflakes; Don remembers.
Not a headstone in that cemetery was left untouched, each one bearing the signs of those immortal flowers. Some boasted piles of them, climbing up the sides of the graves, mismatched and crudely placed against the earth. Others had only a few, but still; he remembers how they shone in the light, proud all the same.
"See?" His mother says in his ear, and he almost wants to smile, "They last far longer than flowers."
Don opens his eyes.
No headstone greets him.
Because there are no graves here.
There is only mottled dirt, dusted by the finest lining of white. The snow has only just settled. A speckling of sugar on an otherwise bitter sight.
The charred earth still shows through. Brown and black, burnt and long since drained of life. Not even smoke remains. The foxhole is motionless.
It isn't a resting place worthy of a grave. It is too shallow, too irregular. And too large, even for the bodies of both the men who rest there.
Rest is the wrong word, Don thinks. Rest is when you are laid to sleep, when you shut your eyes and drift.
When you are buried.
The only burials here are from artillery shells.
From his jacket pocket, he can feel Skip's rosary shift idly in the wind, as if it wanted only to fall into the pit at his feet. What remains of its beaded cord holds fast, keeping the smudged cross from toppling into the hole.
Don is not there to return the rosary. And he is not there to lay flowers, either.
He knows it's wrong. Wrong for Skip, for Penkala too, for the men who are still smiling in his mind and laughing in his heart.
Wrong for his friends of such sincere belief.
He knows it's wrong.
He does it anyway.
The smooth rock in his hand is dark in shade, small enough to carry silently through the unusually quiet trees. (Their enemy seems to have gifted them with some reprieve, if only for a short while.)
The stone's surface is clean of snow and dirt, polished and polished again by Malark's calloused hands and his own jacket sleeve. Nobody had questioned it, since nobody had come to share a foxhole with him since the incident. The men of Easy knew better. Or maybe they just didn't want to know at all.
Don had scrubbed the stone until it almost gleamed in the dim light, under the cold, grey sky. Almost.
He had wanted to polish it more, until it didn't just gleam; it shone. But there isn't time, and he knows that even a rock made of pure gold would not be perfect enough for who he places it atop of.
So, he takes his clean stone, with its chipped edge and poorly scrubbed surface. He takes it and he carries it and he kneels with it in his freezing fingers. Lays it to rest against the snow and the earth in the dip of that shell crater, in the dent of a foxhole that stole away his friends.
There is no headstone to lean it against and no pile of rocks to balance it atop of. But why would there be. He is as alone in his tradition as he is alone in his grief.
Don trudges back towards the line overlooking Foy. To his own sheltered foxhole and maybe the chance of a cold meal.
The stone is left to collect snow across its surface, resting on the grave of Alex Penkala.
And Warren Muck.