“My mother. After the divorce, we went to England. She wanted us to have English names. My father stayed in Germany.”

“Stayed?”

“He was a Mischling. Half.”

“And that saved him?”

“He thought it would.”

Lasner looked away. “I’m sorry. So it’s personal with you? That’s no good, you know, in pictures. You get things mixed up.”

“Not personal that way. I just want to get this done and get out of the Army. Same as everybody.”

Lasner picked up the cigar again and lit it, settling in.

“Why’d you pick the Signal Corps?”

“They picked me. My father was in the business. Maybe they thought it got passed down, like flat feet. Anyway, I got listed with an MOS for the Signal Corps.”

“What’s MOS?”

“Military Occupational Specialty. Civilian skill the military can use. Which I didn’t have, but the Army doesn’t have to make sense. They probably wanted guys with German but everybody did, so they grabbed me with an MOS. And once you’re assigned-”

“Well, at least it kept you out of combat.”

“Until last winter. Then they needed German speakers with the field units.”

“So you saw some action?” The standard welcome-back question.

“Some. The camera crews got the worst of it. They had to work the front lines. We lost a lot of them.”

Sometimes just yards away. Ed Singer, so glued to his lens that he never saw the shell that ripped his arm off, just turned and looked down, amazed to see blood gushing out. Ben scooting over. To do what? Dam the blood with a wad of shirt? A stump, spraying blood as it moved, even the camera covered with it. Ed looking at him, frantic, knowing, until his eyes got calmer as shock set in, then closed, no longer there to watch his life run out.

“I was lucky,” Ben said. “The closest I came was in a plane. When nothing was supposed to happen. You see Target Berlin? Some of the night footage in that. They told us the AAs had been wiped out, but they forgot to tell the Germans. Our gunner was hit. We get back, the plane is full of holes.”